Every day, in cities across Australia, yellow vans wind their way through back lanes and loading docks, collecting food that would otherwise be thrown away.
From bread and fresh produce nearing its sell-by date to trays of untouched meals from caterers, they carry it all to the people who need it most.
Those vans belong to OzHarvest, Australia's leading food rescue organisation.
Thousands of students, retirees, and professionals on their day off sort donations, drive routes, cook meals and keep the logistics moving. Without them, the whole system would grind to a halt.
Keeping that network running is a huge undertaking, and it's where an unlikely partner comes in handy: an Australian startup called Rosterfy.
The problem facing OzHarvest
Since Ronni Kahn founded OzHarvest in 2004, the company has rescued surplus food and redirected it to Australians doing it tough.
But as the cost-of-living crisis has driven demand for food relief ever higher, the pressure on its volunteer program has grown in step, and the tools OzHarvest used to manage that program were beginning to buckle.
Onboarding a single new volunteer could take up to six weeks and communications were manual and scattered across different systems.
The volunteer coordinators who were meant to be out working with the community were instead losing hours to administrative tasks.
OzHarvest knew the model wasn't built to scale, and this had to change.
A platform built with purpose
Rosterfy was created in 2015 by cousins Bennett Merriman and Shannan Gove, two Deakin sports-management graduates from Geelong.
A few years earlier, unable to break into the sports industry, the pair had started their own events staffing business. There they placed casual workers and volunteers into some of the country's biggest events.
As that business grew, managing thousands of staff and volunteers by spreadsheet became impossible. So they built the software they wished they'd had when they started.
What began as an in-house fix became a product in its own right. It’s an end-to-end system to recruit, screen, train, schedule and retain large workforces from a single place.
Their tech handles programs that range from a few dozen volunteers to hundreds of thousands.
Today Rosterfy is used by sporting federations, charities, universities, cities and major events around the world, including the NFL Super Bowl and the Commonwealth Games.
Making it easier to volunteer
Through its partnership with OzHarvest, Rosterfy is helping reimagine the volunteer experience from end to end, from a first online application through to shift reminders and everything in between.
The results have been immediate. Since rolling out Rosterfy across Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT, OzHarvest has cut onboarding times by 80%. What once took up to six weeks now takes, on average, just one.
Volunteers apply for roles online through an automated role-offer process that's clearer for them and lighter on coordinators.
A direct integration with National Crime Check runs fast, automated background screening, so safety checks no longer create a bottleneck. A two-way Salesforce integration keeps data flowing in real time between systems, cutting duplication and improving reporting.
Then the Rosterfy mobile app lets volunteers view shifts, manage bookings and update their profiles from their phone.
"Our volunteers told us they wanted an app to manage their volunteering on the go," says Lynda Baker, OzHarvest's National Volunteer Lead.
"With Rosterfy, we've been able to deliver this, and to improve our onboarding experience while reducing the manual admin load for our coordinators."
A better system, a bigger impact
The partnership has a further goal: freeing up time and resources so OzHarvest can do more of what it does best, feeding people and cutting waste.
As living costs rise and food insecurity spreads, organisations like OzHarvest are being asked to do more with less. That means scaling quickly, without losing the human care that makes volunteering meaningful in the first place.
"A better volunteer experience means more volunteer power for our crucial and timely work," Lynda says.
"Rosterfy is delighted to support OzHarvest in their mission to reduce food waste and fight hunger in Australia," says Bennett Merriman, Rosterfy's CEO. "We're proud to be part of such a meaningful cause."
Whether it's a first-timer signing up on the website or a long-serving volunteer booking their next shift from the app, the process now feels seamless.
Tech with a yellow heart
The real work still happens where it always has, in kitchens, pantries, warehouses and the back of a yellow van. And every hour saved behind the scenes becomes a meal delivered, a neighbour supported, or a child fed.
This is the kind of innovation we champion at Stone & Chalk: technology that amplifies purpose, not just productivity.
When a smart solution like Rosterfy meets an organisation like OzHarvest, the result is a deeper kind of change, one that lets people get on with what they came to do in the first place: help.
Because when volunteering is easy, more people do it, and when more people do it, we all benefit.
Stone & Chalk supports startups using technology to create positive change in the world. This is what innovation for good looks like. Join us
