DanSetu: A Location-Based Smart Donation and Volunteer Management Platform

Abstract

In India, citizens frequently possess surplus essential items and are eager to contribute to social welfare, yet face significant logistical barriers in identifying genuine Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Concurrently, small-scale NGOs lack the technical infrastructure to broadcast inventory needs, verify donations, and manage volunteer fleets efficiently. This paper presents DanSetu, a highly scalable, cross-platform, location-based donation management ecosystem engineered using the MERN stack. The system integrates monetary and in-kind contributions into a unified, transparent workflow. By leveraging HTML5 Geolocation, the Haversine formula for pre-filtering, the Google Maps Distance Matrix API for precise routing, and a rigorous state-machine tracking algorithm, DanSetu optimizes pickup logistics. Furthermore, the integration of cloud-based visual evidence and stateless JWT authentication ensures high platform integrity. Performance analysis of the fully deployed cloud architecture demonstrates highly efficient concurrent handling and optimized API response times averaging 0.9 seconds. This paper details the system architecture, mathematical routing models, database schemas, and end-to-end testing metrics that prove its viability for scalable, community-driven social impact.

Introduction

Social welfare and community development require efficient and transparent systems that connect donors with verified beneficiaries. While digital crowdfunding platforms have simplified monetary donations, there remains a significant gap in managing in-kind donations such as surplus food, clothing, books, medical supplies, and educational materials. Donors often face challenges related to transportation, lack of transparency, and distrust of informal collection systems, while NGOs struggle with manually managing inventory needs, verifying donated items, and coordinating volunteers.

To better understand these challenges, the researchers conducted a field study with Access Life, a Mumbai-based NGO supporting children undergoing cancer treatment. The study identified key operational bottlenecks, including difficulty in broadcasting real-time inventory requirements, assessing the quality of donated goods, and assigning volunteers for pickups across urban areas.

To address these issues, the study proposes DanSetu, a smart donation platform that creates a unified digital ecosystem connecting donors, NGOs, and volunteers. The platform aims to:

1. Develop a hybrid geospatial matching algorithm to connect donors with the nearest verified NGOs.
2. Replace manual logistics with role-based volunteer dashboards for task assignment and real-time navigation.
3. Ensure transparent tracking of donations using a finite state machine (FSM) supported by cloud-based visual evidence.

Literature Review and Research Gap

A review of existing donation platforms revealed several limitations:

• GiveIndia and Milaap focus exclusively on monetary crowdfunding without supporting physical donations or location-based logistics.
• Donatekart enables donors to purchase new items from NGO wishlists but does not facilitate donations of surplus or pre-owned goods or volunteer management.
• ShareTheMeal supports only monetary campaigns and lacks localized logistics.

Compared with existing platforms, DanSetu offers:

• Support for both monetary and in-kind donations.
• Dynamic geolocation-based donor–NGO matching.
• Integrated volunteer task assignment.
• Multi-stage logistical tracking.
• Real-time broadcasting of NGO inventory needs.

The study identifies a research gap in the absence of a unified platform that integrates localized donor matching, volunteer coordination, and transparent delivery tracking within a single system. DanSetu addresses this gap by automating the complete logistics workflow.

System Architecture

DanSetu is built on a three-tier architecture consisting of:

• Presentation Layer: React.js
• Application Layer: Node.js and Express.js
• Data Layer: MongoDB

The platform incorporates Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with four modules:

• Donor Module: Enables donors to upload donation details, GPS location, and images while tracking donation progress in real time.
• NGO Module: Allows verified NGOs to manage inventory requests, view nearby donations, and assign volunteers.
• Volunteer Module: Provides volunteers with assigned pickup tasks and Google Maps navigation.
• Administrative Module: Verifies NGO registration documents before granting platform access.

Geospatial Matching Algorithm

To optimize logistics, DanSetu employs a two-stage location-matching algorithm:

1. Haversine Formula: Calculates straight-line distances between donors and NGOs, filtering organizations within a 15 km radius.
2. Google Maps Distance Matrix API: Determines actual road distance and travel time to identify the most efficient NGO for donation pickup.

Finite State Machine (FSM)

To ensure complete transparency, every donation progresses through five authenticated stages:

• Pending
• Accepted
• Assigned
• Picked Up
• Delivered

Only authorized users can update each stage, ensuring secure and traceable logistics.

Implementation

The platform uses the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js), with MongoDB utilizing 2dsphere geospatial indexing for efficient location-based searches.

Donation records include:

• Donor information
• Item category
• Image URL
• GPS coordinates
• Assigned volunteer
• Donation status

Images are uploaded to AWS S3/Cloudinary, while only secure URLs are stored in MongoDB, improving database performance and enabling NGOs to inspect donated items before acceptance.

Security Features

The platform implements several security measures:

• Password encryption using bcrypt.
• Stateless authentication using JSON Web Tokens (JWT).
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) policies.
• API rate limiting to prevent unauthorized access and DDoS attacks.

Deployment

DanSetu was deployed using CI/CD pipelines:

• Frontend hosted on Vercel.
• Backend deployed on Render/AWS.
• Database hosted on MongoDB Atlas.

Testing and Performance Evaluation

Comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end testing demonstrated strong system performance.

Key findings include:

• Average API response time of approximately 0.9 seconds under concurrent user load.
• The Haversine pre-filtering algorithm reduced Google Maps API requests by approximately 65%, lowering operational costs.
• End-to-end testing confirmed successful synchronization of the donation workflow from donor submission through NGO acceptance, volunteer pickup, and final delivery.
• Security testing verified that unauthorized users attempting to modify donation status received an HTTP 403 Forbidden response, confirming effective RBAC implementation.

Conclusion

The DanSetu platform successfully architects a highly scalable, cloud-ready solution to the fragmented logistics of local philanthropy. By replacing unstructured manual collection drives with a dynamic, proximity-driven smart logistics ecosystem, the platform bridges the critical gap between donors and verified NGOs. The integration of HTML5 Geolocation, advanced routing algorithms, and cloud-based visual evidence establishes unprecedented transparency. Performance metrics demonstrate that the MERN stack deployment handles concurrent geospatial data flows with minimal latency. Ultimately, DanSetu proves that modern web technologies and smart governance principles can be synthesized to optimize resource distribution and empower community-driven social welfare.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Rohan Koyande, Samarthya Surve, Ganesh Paswan, Jenil Parmar, Prof. Jayashree Dhawale, Prof. Saeeda Chimthanawala. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.