Serving those who served: George Mason students fortify veterans foundation

George Mason University students Spandan Khadka and Zachary Wasserman spent the summer building a digital platform for the Northern Virginia Vietnam Veterans Foundation that could support online giving, donor communication, and ongoing site maintenance by volunteers.

Supported by a $15,000 Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) grant, the team replaced the foundation's single-page website with a more functional online presence designed around two primary user groups: prospective donors and veterans seeking assistance. The project combined public-facing web design with operational tools intended to reduce manual administrative work for the all-volunteer organization.

Mingkui Wei, a faculty member in the Department of Cyber Security Engineering, helped get the project off the ground by securing CCI funding through the Cybersecurity as a Service program, where students provide pro-bono cybersecurity help to local organizations.

"Without the grant, we could not even start this project," Wei said.

Wei recruited Khadka and Wasserman to carry out the work. Khadka, a computer science student, led the process of translating the foundation's goals into a site structure and user experience. Through weekly meetings with foundation representatives, the students identified what information each audience needed, developed page drafts, and refined features based on feedback. They also created documentation so foundation volunteers can update content independently after the project concludes.

"A big part of the work was sitting down with the foundation and figuring out what they actually wanted," Khadka said. "They had a general idea of what they were looking for but weren't sure how it should look or work on a website."

Wasserman, a cyber security engineering student, developed much of the site's donation infrastructure, including payment and banking-process integration and automated, personalized donor acknowledgments. The team designed the workflow so donor payment information is processed without passing through the foundation's website and banking details are verified through secure channels. That approach paired practical website development with security considerations for handling financial transactions.

"Coming from cybersecurity," said Wasserman, "the first thing I thought about was attack surface. Small nonprofit sites get hit with card-skimming attacks all the time, so I designed the donation flow so cardholder data never touches NVVVF's infrastructure. Donors enter their card info directly into a compliant payment processor where it gets tokenized on their end. That means there's no card data on the foundation's site to steal, and their compliance scope basically drops to zero."

He also said he kept sensitive financial details out of email entirely, which is a key phishing target and usually isn't encrypted end to end. They coordinated the banking setup over Microsoft Teams, an authenticated channel within George Mason's environment with encryption in transit and at rest. "It's a small choice, but in security the small choices are usually where things go wrong."

One of Wasserman's favorite accomplishments was replacing handwritten donor thank-you letters with automated, personalized acknowledgments. "It's a relatively small technical improvement, but it saves the foundation time and allows them to focus more of their energy on helping people," he said.

They also prepared detailed documentation so foundation volunteers could maintain the website, add photographs and articles, and make future updates independently.

"One of my biggest takeaways was learning how to balance technical decisions with the needs and expectations of the people we were working with," Wasserman said.

Khadka said the project reinforced his interest in using technology to address practical challenges. "This project confirmed that I want to keep building technology that solves real problems for people."

Don Sutherland, NVVVF vice president, said the students' contributions were especially valuable to an organization committed to directing its donations toward veterans rather than administrative expenses. "As an all-volunteer organization directing 100 percent of donations, we simply could not justify spending those funds on commercial website development. Spandan and Zachary gave us more than a beautiful site-they gave us the credibility and professional presence we need to tell our story, attract supporters, and help more veterans facing financial emergencies," Sutherland said. He added that many veterans are George Mason students or alumni, making the partnership especially meaningful.

For Wasserman, that community impact made the project particularly rewarding. "Ultimately, I'm most proud that we created something with a real purpose, something that goes beyond a grade or a portfolio piece and can genuinely make a difference in individual lives and the community.