Welcome Back Home
A QR-code memorial platform for a veterans nonprofit. Scan the code on the marker, meet the veteran.
- Category
- Custom Platform
- Stack
- Next.js · PostgreSQL · Cloudflare · JDL hosting
- Year
- 2026
A code on the stone, a story on the phone
Welcome Back Home is a veterans nonprofit in Everett, Washington. Its founder had a simple idea: a small QR code on a grave marker that opens that veteran's story, service record and photos on whoever's phone is standing there, with nothing to install. He had the idea, a printer for the plaques, and no software. He called the number on our site; our receptionist took the intake, and a scoping call turned it into a phased build.
The challenge
The platform had to work for three very different people: a visitor at a graveside on a phone, a family member adding memories from home, and a volunteer approving submissions before anything goes public. It had to be respectful by default, fast on a weak cellular signal in a cemetery, and honest about its sources.
It also had to scale: Washington alone has more than 80,000 veterans in VA burial records, and the nonprofit wants every one of them to have a page a family can claim. And it had to be built in phases a nonprofit could fund one at a time.
Our approach
A questionnaire before a quote
Fifty questions on who scans, who uploads, who approves, which languages, what the QR plaques are made of, and how donations should flow. The answers became a fixed-price, four-phase statement of work.
MVP in weeks, not months
Phase 1 shipped a working platform: memorial pages, QR codes that resolve to them, a share form, a moderation queue, and sample memorials so the nonprofit could show it to partners immediately.
Story first, sources shown
Every memorial leads with the person, and every page carries a provenance block: where the record came from, who reviewed it, and how to request a correction.
Families can speak, not just type
The share form records voice memories in the browser and accepts video, so a grandchild can hear a voice, not just read a caption.
Every veteran gets a page
A VA roster import creates a draft page for each veteran in a cemetery's burial records, ready for a family to claim and fill.
Eight design directions, one choice
Phase 2 delivered a design system and eight complete looks for the site, desktop and phone, so the client could choose the feel before the rest was built.
Hosted and operated by JDL
Monitoring, backups, patches and content help, so the nonprofit runs its mission, not a server.
Key features delivered
- Memorial pages with story, service record, photos, memory wall and provenance
- Dynamic QR codes: the plaque never changes, the page can
- Family share form with photos, in-browser voice recording and video upload
- Moderation queue: nothing publishes until staff approve it
- VA burial-roster import that drafts a page for every veteran in a cemetery
- Pilot page for cemeteries with plaques shown at real size
- Partner and donation hooks for the nonprofit's own processor
- Fast static-first build on Cloudflare, mobile tested at the graveside
At the graveside
What a visitor sees after scanning the marker.
Building software for a mission-driven organization?
If your organization serves veterans, families or communities and needs software built around them, let's talk.