NPO Go

Problem Space

Homelessness in Seattle has been continuing to increase every year since 2011. With the increase in homelessness, charities and nonprofits are in need of more donations. Even for people who aren't homeless, many are still dependent on charities and food banks to be able to feed themselves and their families. As of 2016, roughly 1 in 8 Americans live in food insecure households. In 2015, 72% of food banks felt they weren't able to adequately meet the needs of their communities without adjusting the amount of food distributed. Because of the increase in demand for many necessities, we wanted to focus on helping charities and nonprofits reach out to potential donors and collect more donations.

Another problem we identified was the amount of reusable and recyclable material thrown out by Americans. Americans throw out 26 million pounds of clothing per year, accounting for 85% of the clothes that people get rid of each year. More than 90% of clothing can be reused or recycled, meaning much of the clothing people throw away is perfectly fine and can be donated.

Competitive Analysis

We looked at existing solutions to see what was already being done to help those who are homeless or dependent on food banks. We evaluated which aspects of these competitors addressed our solutions and which aspects didn't.

WeShelter

This app has a sponsoring company donate a small amount of money every time you tap a button.

Things that address our problem:

• Very easy for the user and requires no donation on their part
• Turns tapping into a competition, which incentivizes users to tap

Things that don't address our problem:

• Didn't offer a way for users to donate their unwanted clothes or other items

HandUp

HandUp is like a Kickstarter for nonprofits. Nonprofits can create campaigns where users make monetary contributions.

Things that address our problem:

• Helps nonprofits raise money for campaigns to combat homelessness and much more.

Things that don't address our problem:

• It only allows monetary contributions, which doesn't address our problem of helping reduce the percentage of clothing thrown out.

Both of these solutions are great ways to collect donations from people willing to donate, but the problem is that they only deal with monetary donations and don't reduce waste.

Research

Surveys

We created a survey to find out people's general attitudes towards donating and their current donating habits. The key findings we discovered were:

• A majority of participants indicated that they would like to donate their used items instead of throwing them away, but felt that bringing items to a donation center requires too much effort compared to throwing items in the trash
• Many people said that incentives or rewards would make them more likely to donate
• Some people said they would like more transparency about the donation process and where their money or items end up

Interviews

We conducted several interviews for people who worked at charities and nonprofits. I interviewed Alex, who was a board member for the NPO "Hugs for Ghana". Through our interviews, we found that:

• Many of the charities and nonprofits indicated that they could use more donations.
• Many of them felt that there was room to improve and increase awareness about their organizations.
• Some organizations wanted a way to request specific items that they were running low on.

Personas

Using our findings from the surveys and interviews, we created personas for NPO workers and potential donors.

Design Requirements

• Show the user their nearest charities and NPOs
• Incentivize users to donate
• Allow charities and NPOs to ask for donations

Ideation

We decided to make an app that listed local NPOs. Users could get rewards for donating. Companies could participate as a way to advertise themselves and offer coupons and discounts for users who earned enough points. NPOs would be able to create a profile and list things that they needed.

Prototype

Reflection

I would've liked to conduct more usability testing if we had the time. I also would've liked to see how effective our reward system was and if it was enough to encourage our users to donate more often. One challenge we had when design our solution was finding a way to make the donation process more transparent so users would know what was happening to their donations. We created pages for charities to make posts about donations received or upload photos of the donations being used. We hoped that keeping users updated would make them feel better about donating and also make them more excited to donate in the future. I would've liked to measure how effective this would've been in increasing donations. Overall, our surveys really helped us identify the many factors that prevented people from donating more often. Our personas also helped guide us during or wire framing process and helped us focus on making the donation process easy and enjoyable for our users. I had a lot of fun working with my group, and we won "Best Social Impact" out of 30+ groups. Check out the full project here!