Context

Many animal rescue organisations rely on donations to cover veterinary costs and daily care. However, access to large national fundraising platforms can be limited.

Cats Help, one of Estonia’s largest volunteer-based animal rescue organisations, had repeatedly tried to join a well known donation platform but did not meet the platform’s requirements. This meant the organisation needed to find alternative ways to raise funds.

For years the idea of building an independent donation platform existed, but the perceived development cost and complexity made it unrealistic for a volunteer organisation.

Problem

Without a dedicated donation system, fundraising relied heavily on social media posts and manual coordination.

This created several challenges:

• Donation campaigns were difficult to structure and track

• Donors had limited visibility into how funds were used

• Proof of payments or invoices could not easily be shared on social media platforms

• Volunteers had no central system to manage donation projects and statistics

• Administrative work around donations required manual effort

Another important issue was language accessibility.

The organisation communicates with donors in multiple languages, but translation required additional volunteer time. While Russian texts were sometimes added manually, there were simply not enough resources to consistently provide English translations as well. As a result, some donation campaigns were only available in Estonian.

Approach

Instead of launching a traditional development project, I built the platform myself using vibe coding with the AI development tool Lovable.

The system was designed and built iteratively, focusing on the smallest set of features that would solve the real operational problems.

Developers were only involved later to review security aspects.

This approach allowed the project to move from idea to working system without the typical resource requirements of software development.

Solution

The platform provides a lightweight donation environment tailored to the needs of animal rescue organisations.

Key features include:

• Donation campaigns linked to specific animals or veterinary bills

• Clear progress tracking towards funding goals

• Donations collected via Montonio payment gateway integration and Paypal

• Ability to publish invoices and payment confirmations for transparency

• Admin environment for volunteers to manage campaigns independently

• Campaign translation management

• Donation and debt statistics

To address the translation challenge, the platform also includes automatic AI translation.

Whenever a volunteer creates a new donation project, the system automatically translates the text into three languages. This removes the need for manual translation work while ensuring that donation campaigns are accessible to a broader audience.

Outcome

The application has become the most used product I have built so far.

It enables Cats Help to:

• run structured donation campaigns

• communicate transparently with supporters

• manage donation information in one place

• automatically publish donation projects in multiple languages

• reduce manual coordination work for volunteers

Most importantly, it helps raise funds for veterinary care and other urgent needs of rescued animals.

What this project demonstrates

This project also illustrates the practical potential of vibe coding.

Software that previously required a development team and a meaningful budget can now be built by a single person with the right tools and product thinking.

This platform was created pro bono as part of my volunteer work supporting animal rescue organisations.