Team, clubs & contact
Student-Led, Community Focused
Empowering the next generation of compassionate leaders across the Bay Area.
Our founder
It started with a sixteen-year-old and one family’s worst year
Krishna Nidamarthi · Founder & Executive Director
Cover The Caregiver was founded by Krishna Nidamarthi, a 16-year-old junior at The Quarry Lane School in Dublin, CA, after seeing what an ALS diagnosis does to the people standing next to the patient.
The patient had a neurologist, a care team, and a clinic that knew their name. The caregiver had nothing. No paid leave, no insurance of their own, no fund to call, and no one asking how they were holding up. Every organization in the room was built around the diagnosis. None of them were built around the person absorbing its cost.
So the gap became the mission. Not another awareness campaign — a small, fast, radically transparent fund that puts money and volunteer hours directly into a caregiver’s week, run by students who would rather spend their weekends doing this than almost anything else.
We are an independent nonprofit project. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking on behalf of any school or school district; school names appear here only to describe where our student volunteers come from.
The student leadership team
Every role here is volunteer. No one draws a salary, a stipend, or a reimbursement from the fund.
Krishna Nidamarthi
Founder & Executive Director
Junior, The Quarry Lane School
Grant Review Board Chair
Reviews every application for hardship and need
Treasurer & Ledger Lead
Reconciles the public HCB ledger each round
Volunteer Coordinator
Matches student volunteers with local families
Club Network Lead
Supports chapters at partner high schools
Advocacy & Outreach Lead
Prepares testimony and community partnerships
High school club network
Start a chapter at your school
Our chapters began at The Quarry Lane School and are expanding across Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore, San Ramon, and Danville. A chapter takes four steps and about a month.
- 1
Find two founding officers
A president and a treasurer are enough to charter a chapter at most schools. We provide the club constitution template and the pitch deck for your activities director.
- 2
Get a faculty advisor
One teacher willing to sign off. We will join a call with them to explain exactly what students do and, just as importantly, what they never do.
- 3
Run your first drive
A supply drive or a bake sale takes two weeks and funds a full micro-grant. Every dollar routes through the fiscally sponsored account, so your school never handles cash.
- 4
Get matched with a family
Once trained, your chapter is matched with a caregiver in your area for non-medical support: errands, yard work, meal prep, and companionship visits.
What student volunteers never do
Clear boundaries protect families and students alike. These rules are non-negotiable and every volunteer signs them.
- No medical or clinical care of any kind, ever.
- No lifting, transfers, medication handling, or feeding assistance.
- No unsupervised visits for volunteers under 18.
- No collecting, storing, or discussing a family's medical information.
Volunteer hours & service credit
We verify and log service hours for every volunteer, which most schools accept toward graduation service requirements, honor societies, and college applications. Ask your chapter lead for a signed hours report at the end of each quarter.
Contact
Get in touch
Donors, caregivers, student volunteers, club officers, and press are all welcome here. We answer every message.
- General inquiries
- hello@coverthecaregiver.org
- Confidential grant intake
- grants@coverthecaregiver.org
- Based in
- Tri-Valley, California
This form is configured for secure serverless submission via Cloudflare, with inboxes handled by Cloudflare Email Routing. We publish role addresses rather than personal ones so no student’s private email is ever exposed, and no address is harvestable from this page.