A human-connection nonprofit, enabled by technology
Connect. Learn. Serve.
Hearts Understanding International helps people by building websites and other digital tools. Schools, churches, missionaries, and community groups can use these tools again and again. The tools help them connect with people in different places, languages, and cultures, even when they cannot afford to build their own.
Why we exist
Hearts Understanding International helps people stay close, even when they live far apart, speak different languages, or face hard times. We use technology to help them connect. People are the reason we do it.
Access
Modern digital community infrastructure shouldn't be limited to organizations that can afford commercial development.
Connection
Technology is valuable when it creates and sustains meaningful human relationships.
Multiplication
Build reusable capabilities once, so communities stay connected beyond the original group, keep serving together, and multiply their impact through repeated volunteerism and new relationships.
Who we work with
We serve many kinds of people and groups because the barriers that separate people affect everyone.
We're starting in Minnesota and with U.S. organizations that already have international relationships — then growing, through those same trusted relationships, into communities worldwide.
One platform. Shaped to your community.
We build reliable technology at little or no cost to help people find one another, form groups, learn, share information across languages, serve their communities, and stay connected for years.
Every group we help uses the same online tools. People can sign in, make a profile, join groups, plan events, send messages, translate words, learn, and organize volunteers.
Each group can add its own name, colors, languages, and information. We can keep the cost very low because we make one set of tools and set it up for each group.
Tell us your need
A needs-based intake, not a sales process — what boundary are you trying to cross?
We configure the platform
Branding, languages, content and workflows, built on the shared core — collaborative design, not a blank slate.
We host it for the long run
Managed hosting, support, and security — your data stays portable, and the relationship doesn't end at launch.
No bills. Clear costs.
We do the work at no cost. Then we tell the group what similar work might cost. For example: "Your group received about $4,800 worth of tools and help."
If the group wants to give, its gift can help another group. Giving is always optional. A group does not need money to get our help.
How we think about impact
By 2029, we hope to help more than 500 communities. Some may have 25 people. Others may serve 10,000 or more. We want to help them reach people in different places and from different backgrounds, learn and help each other, and build friendships that last for years.
Reach
People, portals, organizations, countries and languages.
Connection
Groups formed, meetings, service projects, and cross-cultural relationships.
Continuity
Whether those relationships survive 3, 6, 12, 24 or 36 months.
Multiplication
Whether one connection leads to new groups, service, volunteers, or relationships.
An illustrative example — one connection, multiplied
Traditional nonprofit reporting might say: 4 volunteer hours logged. We want to tell the fuller story: one connection crossed three organizational boundaries, two regions, and two cultures — and helped 37 people. That ripple effect, made visible, is what we call the Connection Multiplier: how many new connections or acts of service grow out of just one.
Ways to get involved
Whichever side of the boundary you're on, there's a way in.
Bring Hearts Understanding International to your organization
Nonprofit, church, school, or mission — tell us what connection is currently hard, and let's see if we can remove the barrier.
Request a portal →Volunteer your skills
Developers, designers, translators, and cultural advisors make this model possible. We'd love to know what you do.
Offer your skills →Give
Individual gifts, corporate giving and matching, or donated cloud and software credits — every gift funds the next community's platform.
Get in touch →