Designing a new fundraising platform using emerging technologies for the British Red Cross
The Challenge
The British Red Cross (BRC) aids people in crisis globally, responding to natural disasters, conflicts, and emergencies. With the world experiencing more frequent crises, the BRC needs increased support to continue its work. Despite raising £220 million last year, more funds are necessary to address rising challenges. The goal is to develop a fundraising product utilizing emerging technology to engage new audiences and ensure long-term financial sustainability. The challenge is to design a digital fundraising model that attracts new donors and creates new revenue streams by meeting the needs and preferences of charity donors, encouraging them to choose and regularly support the BRC.
How might we create a new platform for donating that utilises emerging technology to engage new audiences?
Client
The British Red Cross Innovation team
My Role
User Research UX & UI Design Design System
TEAM
Michael Palfreeman
Alexandra Camp
Julia Briere
Morgan Ager
Tamara Zipporah
Duration
6 weeks
Competitive Landscape
We conducted market research and competitor analysis to understand the ways in which the main active charities fundraise for their causes. Our aim was to understand what charity donors seek in order to design solutions that encourage regular donations to the British Red Cross and support their global mission.
Our goals were to understand what their unique value proposition is within the charity sector, current donation channels for attracting donors, financial transparency and any use of emerging tech being utilised.
Emerging Technologies
To fully understand emerging technologies and how these might be used to meet the brief, we undertook some desk research.
Blockchain
Blockchain is a shared database storing data in cryptographically linked blocks. It is commonly used as a transaction ledger. In Bitcoin, the blockchain is decentralized, giving control to all users collectively, and is immutable, making transactions permanent and publicly viewable.
Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are considered unique digital assets that can be linked to physical assets or exclusive experiences. These tokens have been utilized in various fundraising and auction scenarios, making them a creative and innovative fundraising tool.
Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR)
AR and VR in fundraising events provide donors with immersive, interactive experiences, allowing them to explore projects, observe impacts, and engage with beneficiaries virtually.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI fundraising strategies have become an increasingly valuable tool for organizations over the past few years. It offers the ability to profile donors and investors, personalize fundraising campaigns, and employ data analytics to identify potential supporters.
Internet of Things (IoT)
IoT revolutionizes fundraising campaigns by enabling real-time donor engagement and data-driven decision-making. Smart devices track interactions, automate updates, and analyze effectiveness, leading to personalized, efficient outreach.
User Research
Now that we have a background on what the market is like, we switched our focus to gathering quantitative and qualitative research data via 1-1 interviews and sent out two surveys for a total of 31 participants.
We sent out a survey and received over 100 survey responses and conducted 42 interviews from which we gathered over 450 data points. Our aim was to understand donation behaviors, focusing on why people donate, their willingness to donate, reaching new supporters, successful campaigns, and emerging technologies
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People really care about transparency. They want to see where their money goes, and this transparency is crucial for their willingness to donate. There’s also a lot of skepticism about how larger charities allocate funds, so this is important in building trust in the organization. Furthermore, feedback, such as thank-yous and impact updates are highly valued.
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Overall, the people we interviewed mostly donated to charities that they had some personal connection to: either through their past experiences or through friends or family members that felt strongly about a cause. Social influence was found to be important in people's decision making behind donations and people also like to share their contributions with others.
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People prefer donating to local causes and supporting work done close to home.
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People really want control over where they donate their money and how they do it. They value being able to decide when and how often they give. A general feeling of fundraising fatigue was clear with people being tired of constant requests and the pressure to donate.
Other insights we gathered from our research included that:
People preferred simple online methods for making donations
Feedback such as thank yous and impact updates are important to donors
people are mostly aware and open to cryptocurrency out of emerging technologies
fundraising campaigns are largely discovered via social media.
Who we’re designing for
The BRC provided us with two personas to design for based on initial findings of their existing support base, the ‘skeptical altruist’ and the ‘concientious contributor’.
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Lucas
SKETPICAL ALTRUIST
Lucas is 37 with a young family in Paisley, who feels like he lacks control over his donations and has overall concerns about charity transparency.Pain Points:
General mistrust
Struggles with misinformation
Has no sense of impact over his donations
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Cody
CONSCIENTIOUS CONTRIBUTOR
Cody is a 23 year old biochemical engineering student who lives in london and donates to things she feels a close connection to
Pain Points:Concerned about trust in charities
Wishes to donate more frequently
Experiences fundraising fatigue
Does not appreciate being pressured to donate
Experience Maps
To identify opportunities in our personas’ charitable donation experiences, we mapped out their step-by-step journey in scenarios specific to them.
Empathy Maps
From this we took the experiences from our personas perspectives and explored how they feel when they're in that situation.
Problem Statements
Cody needs a way to choose specific projects to support because she wants to see where her donations go so that she can contribute to causes that she feels connected to.
Lucas needs a way to see impact information because he wants to understand where his donations are going because he questions the transparency of charities.
User Stories
We created user stories to help guide us through this ideation phase.
Lucas
As a skeptical altruist, I want a transparent way to donate , so that I can feel confident my donations are going directly to the cause.
As a sentimental donor who feels connected to certain causes, I want to choose specific projects to support so that my donations align with my personal values and interests.
Cody
Concept & Ideation
By understanding how our personas think and spotting opportunities for them, we kicked off the development phase with some rapid ideation sessions. We explored emerging technologies and narrowed it down to five initial ideas:
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Interactive Globe Map
Interactive globe map concept showing BRC appeals globally and a way to view donation impact.
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Crypto Donations
A Cryptocurrency donation platform utilising blockchain for granular impact tracking.
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NFTs
NFT Artwork Auction: Features artwork created by local artists from appeal areas.
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Saver Wallet
Allows users to save funds over time and donate when a resonant cause arises.
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VR Headset
Enables professionals to offer expertise and advice to BRC volunteers on the ground.
Refining our ideas
Taking the main ideas from our ideation, we focused these around the main requirements for the BRC and decided to move forward with three key concepts.
Decided to focus on the Crypto only payment options for the purposes of creating an MVP.
The concepts allow users to experience the impact of their contributions with the interactive map, powered by crypto, blockchain, and NFTs.
Crypto & Blockchain
New & emerging tech
World Map
Interactive & personalised
NFTs
Encourage retention
Design Principles
After this, we focused on three design principles to ensure we were meeting user needs:
Transparency & Trust
Autonomy
Sense of Impact
We built the information architecture of the core feature of the product (the interactive map page) to inform the rest of our design
User flow : Searching for an appeal
Building User Journeys
User flow : Tracking a Donation
Site Map- ‘Map View’ / Homepage
Building a design system that works
The BRC team sent us their branding guidelines including colour scheme and typography to use in the project and from there we constructed our own design library.
Iterating our concepts
We began sketching out our initial ideas and constructing the foundational wireframes. Key features we aimed to focus our designs on included:
User interaction, navigation and highlighting local initiatives
Users can see both the wide-ranging and community-specific work of the BRC, making the impact more relatable and personal.
Visually showcase the global scale
Our design aims to highlight the global impact of the Red Cross, allowing users to see the influence of its work worldwide.
Using NFTs to create a sense of impact and belonging
Utilize NFTs and blockchain to create unique donor experiences and recognition, fostering deeper engagement and loyalty.
What did we change?
Whilst developing our designs from low fidelity to high fidelity, amongst the many developments we encountered we made a few changes which we felt were important in enhancing the overall concept direction. Some examples included:
… We realised this would be much more effective to access as a part of the main homepage ‘map view’ experience. We therefore decided to integrate this here and create access by users selecting the ‘impact’ toggle when on the homepage.
We added in a crypto donation tracker button on the detailed information page for ‘Your donation’. This would provide users with an an additional way to see proof of their donation reaching the cause and follow the payment using using blockchain directly.
To meet user needs for transparency, we initially used an infographic to show where donations were used with the appeal. However, in our stakeholder review meeting the BRC indicated it was difficult to track exactly where money had been spent within an appeal, so we amended this to show where donations "could" have helped within the appeal as opposed to a depiction of precise allocation.
Final Designs
Initially, in order to track impact our design allowed users to see their total donation impact and a more detailed breakdown of all their contributions in a summary which would be accessed on their profile page…
Final Prototypes
Cody is a new user who is curious to explore the platform and donate to a local appeal she cares about.
Lucas is a returning user who wants to track his recent donation and see the impact of his contribution.
Design Solutions Summarized
Trust & Transparency
Making donations via Crypto allows for blockchain to track contributions so donors can see their donation reach their chosen cause.
What does sucess look like?
To evaluate the success we recommend to track the following metrics:
Awareness
Social Shares: number of time posts/ appeals/ updates are shared on social media
Percentage of visitors to site versus donators
Sense of Impact
Being able to track donations and be notified when they have reached an appeal, view where your money could have contributed to within your chosen appeal and viewing your contribution impact on the map clearly. Posting this to social media means impact can be shared within social circles.
Autonomy & Agency
Allowing users to find appeals that align with their interests via search and filter options on the map.
Donation
Number of monthly pledges that are signed up
Number of donations per user
Average donation size
Activation
Number of accounts created
Appeals being searched
Retention
Track the number of repeat donations /donators
Number of NFTs being earned
Where next?
Looking ahead we can envision how the product will develop in the future.
