Empowering mental health support at scale

To develop infrastructure to support the goal, The Jed Foundation (JED) partnered with Futurice to build a digital platform, "The Hub," a centralized online tool that would equip schools and community organizations with everything they need to implement and manage JED’s program models to support schools and communities in delivering mental health programs more effectively.

JED’s primary objective was to accelerate the delivery and impact of its programs through a self-service, scalable platform. While they had already co-designed the first iteration of The Hub alongside school programs and consulting implementation staff, they needed additional support to finalize the design work, prepare development-ready assets, and build a flexible, user-friendly MVP. They also faced the challenge of transitioning internal processes, often managed offline, into scalable digital solutions without sacrificing accessibility or usability for busy school staff.

Futurice initially supported JED by refining the MVP’s UX and UI designs, building a Figma-based component library, and preparing a structured design system to future-proof development. A dedicated team, including a product owner and developers, was embedded alongside JED’s internal team to accelerate progress.

The platform was built using a headless Contentful backend and React frontend, enabling modular development and rapid iteration.

After launching the MVP in early 2025, Futurice’s involvement extended into a second phase of work focused on a new feature: the Strategic Plan. This tool replaced previous spreadsheet-based processes and allowed school teams to collaboratively define their goals and track implementation directly within The Hub.

Again, Futurice provided a product lead and development resources to work alongside JED in refining designs and building the new functionality into the live system.

The initial rollout of The Hub reached nearly 100 school-based partner organizations, each with teams of 5–10 members. The launch was smooth, with minimal technical issues and strong early adoption.

The Strategic Plan feature introduced measurable efficiency gains by migrating a key workflow into a centralized, easy-to-use interface — this enhanced oversight and usability for JED staff and partner organizations alike. In addition, it offers access to shareable mental health resources, interactive dashboards that track program progress, action items to guide implementation, and downloadable templates designed to support coordination and collaboration across school-based teams.

"As a counselor in a building that manages approximately 1800 students on any given day, The Hub provides a very user-friendly platform [...] and vetted resources [...] that not only ensure the most appropriate matches for a specific presenting concern, but also provide a variety of resource types that can cater to audience expectations (i.e administrators, faculty, students, etc.). "

With the foundation now in place, JED is better positioned to scale toward its goal of supporting over 13 million students by 2030. It continues to iterate on The Hub as it expands its partnerships across the U.S.

With its digital foundation in place, JED now has a scalable platform to grow its impact and ensure every school partner is supported with modern, accessible, and purpose-built tools.