How a few students rewired teen community service.
Impact Lynk started with a simple frustration: teens wanted to serve their communities, but the process was slow, scattered, and hard to track. So we built the platform — and the network — to fix it.
The Problem
Every high school requires service hours — and almost no school has a good system for tracking them. Students juggle paper sign-in sheets, lost emails, and last-minute scrambles to verify hours before deadlines. Nonprofits, for their part, struggle to find consistent teen volunteers willing and able to show up.
The Idea
What if teens could organize service the same way they organize their clubs and student newspapers — student-led, supported by adults, and powered by software built for them? That's Impact Lynk. Each chapter is run by students. Schools get visibility into student participation and exportable records for transcripts. Nonprofits get a direct line to motivated volunteers and a real-time view of every event.
Where We Are
Since launching in August 2024, Impact Lynk has grown to 14 chapters across California, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Ohio, and the United Kingdom — with 700+ teen volunteers, 200+ events posted, 27 nonprofit partners, and over 22,000 hours of service logged.
Where We're Going
Our vision is to expand Impact Lynk beyond our initial chapters and establish it as a new standard for connecting high school students with meaningful community service — managed by student-led teams, supported by technology built for them.
Timeline
- August 2024 — Impact Lynk launches. Our first chapter goes live with a small group of teen organizers and a handful of local nonprofit partners.
- Late 2024 — The platform is born. We build the tracking platform from scratch — students log hours, schools verify them, nonprofits post events. All in one place.
- 2025 — Expanding our reach. New chapters form across the US and internationally as the model spreads to more schools and communities.