AskAround.ai
Private beta now open

It takes a village.

We made asking easier.

Send a request to exactly the right people. They say yes, maybe, or "can't this time" — and it closes the moment someone helps. No group-text chaos. No guilt. No follow-ups.

Get early access See how it works

Free during beta · No credit card · Help shape the product

AskAround
D

Good morning, Dan 👋

3 circles · 2 open requests

Ask for Help

Send to your circles

🚗

Airport ride — Tues 7am

2 said yes ✓
🍽️

Sarah needs a dinner drop-off

I can helpCan't this time
Built for the moments that don't fit a fundraiser:🚗 Rides🍽️ Meals👶 Childcare🏥 Appointments🐕 Pet care🛒 Errands

The gap nobody's filling

The big tools handle the big moments. Life happens in the small ones.

MealTrain, CaringBridge and GoFundMe are wonderful for a diagnosis, a new baby, a loss. But they're built as campaigns — someone sets one up, everyone rallies, then it winds down. Real life isn't a campaign. It's a Tuesday when you're stuck at work and the school pickup is in 40 minutes.

The campaign tools

✕

Someone has to set up a whole page before anyone can help.

✕

Built for one big event — not the steady drip of everyday needs.

✕

Asking feels like "declaring an emergency." Most needs never qualify.

✕

Goes quiet after the crisis — the ongoing stuff has nowhere to live.

The AskAround way

✓

Post an ask in 15 seconds. No setup, no page to build.

✓

Made for one-offs and the everyday — a ride today, dinner Thursday.

✓

Small asks feel normal. No crisis required to reach out.

✓

Your circles are always on — ready whenever life happens.

We love those tools for what they do. AskAround is for everything in between.

Better than the group text

You already have a group chat. Keep it — it's just not built for asking.

Group chats are wonderful for talking. But an ask in a chat is a message everyone must read and most must ignore — so the loudest people answer, the quiet ones go unnoticed, and the person who most needs help often says nothing at all.

Texting the whole group

Hey everyone, anyone free to grab Milo from school today?? 🙏

I think I can? What time?

Wait did someone already get this?

I can't today sorry 😞

…7 more replies

Everyone gets pinged — most feel guilty they can't help.

Nobody's sure who's actually got it.

The same reliable person always says yes — and burns out.

Asking in front of 60 people feels exposing — so the hardest asks never get made.

No boundaries: you're either in the group at 11pm or out of it entirely.

Asking with AskAround

🚗

Pick up Milo from school

Today · 3:00pm · Jefferson Elementary

I can helpMaybeCan't this time
🎉

Maria said yes! Request closed — everyone else is off the hook.

Reaches only the people who fit — not the whole group.

One tap: yes, maybe, or "can't this time" — no essay required.

Auto-closes the instant it's handled. Zero follow-ups.

Hard asks can go out unnamed — details unlock only for people who lean in.

Quiet hours, categories and pause — all private, all yours.

💛

Most communities end up using both — the chat for the chatter, AskAround for the asks. Groups that make the switch don't just get organized; they help more often, because helping stopped being work.

How it works

Three steps. Then it takes care of itself.

01
✍️

Ask

Type what you need — or paste it in plain words and let the app fill in the category, time, and place. Pick which circle should see it.

02
💬

They respond

The right people get a gentle nudge. One tap: yes, maybe, or can't this time. No pressure, no guilt for passing.

03
✅

It closes itself

The moment help is confirmed, the request closes and everyone else is let off the hook. Then a nudge to say thanks — and the loop is complete.

For every kind of hard week

Whatever you're carrying, you don't have to carry it alone.

👶

New parents

A meal, an hour of quiet, a hand with the older kids.

🏥

Through illness

Rides to treatment, dinners dropped off, someone to just be there.

🕊️

After a loss

The practical help that matters when words don't come easily.

☀️

Ordinary Tuesdays

The late meeting, the flat tire, the pickup you can't make.

Ask without exposure

Coming soon

The hardest asks will be able to start quiet.

Some needs are too raw to post to a whole circle by name — a money problem, a mental health struggle, anything that feels exposing. We're building an option to send an ask out general and unnamed at first: your circle would see only the shape of it, not the details or who's asking.

Details unlock on interest

Only people who tap "I might be able to help" see who's asking and what's really needed. Everyone else just sees a category and a timeframe.

Less noise for everyone

Only the willing lean in, so there's no crowd of "not my thing" notifications to sift through or decline.

The asker still chooses

Revealing your name is always the asker's call — one interested helper, or several, before anyone learns who's behind it.

Neighbors · what they'd see first

❓

Someone in Neighbors needs a hand

Household · sometime this week · name hidden

I might be able to help →
after tapping in
🧾

Grocery run & a bit of gas money

From Priya · tight on funds this week

I can helpNot this time

Every kind of community

Same app. Very different villages.

A congregation, a class list, a street, a team — each has its own rhythm of asking. Pick one to see what it looks like.

184 members · 12 asks a month · 94% get a yes

Grace Fellowship

A care ministry that runs itself. Deacons post on behalf of families in a hard season, and 180 people who already said "I want to help" get asked — only for the things they signed up for.

🍲

Meals for the Alvarez family

7 nights covered in 40 minutes

🚗

Rides to Tuesday chemo

3 people rotating, no one asked twice

🛠️

Help moving Ruth to assisted living

6 volunteers, one Saturday

For congregations & communities

Care ministries, without the spreadsheet.

Churches, synagogues, mosques, schools, and neighborhood groups already do this work — usually through a volunteer with a clipboard and a phone tree. AskAround gives your community a shared, private space where care organizes itself.

⛪

Pre-built care circles

Spin up circles for a congregation, a small group, a grade, or a block — ready the day you launch.

🤝

Care coordinators & advocatesComing soon

A deacon, room parent, or volunteer will be able to post asks on behalf of someone who can't — or won't — ask for themselves.

🔒

Private & dignified

Needs stay inside your community. No public posts, no fundraising optics, no oversharing.

📋

Standing volunteer pools

People sign up once as available to help — no re-recruiting for every new need that comes in.

Get started for your community →
Concept
⛪

Grace Fellowship

Care Network · 184 members

12

Open needs

47

Helped this month

6

Care circles

Circles

🍲Meal Ministry
3 open
👵Homebound Visits
2 open
🚗Rides to Service
4 open
👶New Parents
3 open

Two kinds of circles

Some circles you build. Some you're invited into.

Your family and close friends are circles you make yourself. A church's meal ministry or a school's volunteer pool already exists — you just join it. Both live side by side in one app, and joining one never means giving up control of your own time.

🏡

Your own circles

You create them, you invite people

Small and personal — family, close friends, the four neighbors you'd actually text at 10pm. You choose who's in, and they only exist for you.

👨‍👩‍👧

Family

5 people · you're the owner

🥘

Close friends

9 people · you're the owner

🏘️

Our street

6 people · you're the owner

⛪

Community circles

An organization runs them, you join

Bigger and standing — a congregation's care ministry, a school's volunteer list, a neighborhood association. A coordinator maintains it; you opt in and set your own terms.

🍲

Grace Fellowship · Meal Ministry

184 members · you're a helper

🎓

Lincoln Elementary · 3rd Grade

62 members · you're a helper

👵

Elder Companions

31 members · paired with Ruth

Joining doesn't mean signing up for everything

A community can invite you. Only you decide what reaches you.

This is the part most volunteer tools get wrong: you sign up once and then get everything, forever. Here, the coordinator controls the circle — but never your notifications.

🎯

Pick your categories

Say yes to meals, no to rides — the same choice follows you into every circle you join.

🌙

Your hours still apply

Quiet hours and calendar blocks work the same in a 200-person circle as a 5-person one.

⏸️

Step back quietly

Pause a single circle or all of them. No announcement, no awkward conversation.

🔒

Nobody sees your limits

Not the coordinator, not the person asking. Your settings are invisible to everyone.

💛

Coordinators get a circle that stays healthy because nobody burns out or mutes it. Members get a way to be genuinely useful without dreading their phone. That's the whole trade.

Why we built this

"When my wife was going through cancer treatment, I became a full-time caregiver to our three kids overnight. My village showed up — meal trains, offers to drive, people asking what they could do. It was amazing."

The love was never the problem. The logistics were. So much good intention moved through scattered texts and sign-up sheets that someone — usually me — had to keep chasing and coordinating by hand. Who had I asked last week? Who was busy? What did we actually still need? Eventually the coordinating became its own job, on top of everything else.

AskAround exists to close that gap — between how much people want to help and how much of that willingness actually reaches the person who needs it. We think of it as growing the giving economy: not creating generosity, but removing the friction between it and the moment it's needed most. It shouldn't take a crisis to reach for your village. And your village shouldn't have to guess how to reach you.

D

Dan

Founder, AskAround

Built on trust

Your most vulnerable moments deserve real care.

🔒

Private by default

Your asks stay inside the circles you choose. Nothing is public.

🙅

No pressure to say yes

"Can't this time" is a full sentence. Declining never stings.

💛

People, not metrics

No leaderboards, no scores. Just help, given and received.

🤖

Tech that steps back

We reduce the friction of asking — we never replace the human connection.

Getting AskAround

No app store. No download. Just a link.

AskAround is a progressive web app — it runs in your browser, and one tap adds it to your home screen where it looks and behaves exactly like any other app. Nothing to install from a store, nothing to update, and it works the same on iPhone and Android.

🔗

Open the invite link

Someone in your circle sends you a link. Tap it and you're in — works in any browser, on any phone or computer.

📲

Add to your home screen

We'll show you how — it's two taps. From then on it opens full-screen with its own icon, just like an app store app.

🔔

Choose your notifications

Turn on alerts if you want them. Prefer email instead? That works too — you'll never miss an ask either way.

Notification control

You decide when your phone is allowed to buzz.

Most group apps treat notifications as all-or-nothing, so people mute them and quietly disappear. AskAround gives you real dials instead — and nobody can see how you've set them.

🌙 Quiet hours

Set the days and times you'd rather not be reached. Asks that arrive then wait quietly until morning.

📅 Calendar-aware

Connect a calendar and you simply won't be asked while you're busy. Your events are read on your own device — we never see them.

⏸️ Pause anytime

One tap silences everything, for an hour or a season. No explanation owed to anyone.

🎯 Only what fits you

Say which kinds of help you're glad to give, and the rest never reaches you. Fewer pings, and every one worth reading.

🔒

Your settings are yours alone. Boundaries and availability are never shown to your circles, never published on a profile, and never revealed to the person asking. They only quietly shape what reaches you.

Your village is closer than you think.

Join the beta and help us build the kindest way to ask for help — for families, for neighbors, for whole communities.

Free during beta · No spam, ever