Event Shared Case Study
A responsive website for nonprofits to easily organize and reach out to donors
Role: Lead Designer
Sector: Fundraising & Nonprofit
Time: 3 months
User group: Nonprofit event planners, vendors, & donors
Focus: Branding, User Interviews, Prototypes, Usability Testing, & Iterations
Overview ↓
“Nonprofits while orchestrating events tend to overextend their resources and staff - this process combats the main catalyst of putting on the event, e.g. to raise money and awareness for a specific cause or group of people.”
- almost every nonprofit event planner
Why nonprofit event planning?
The Problem
Background
Nonprofit event planners looking for funding while planning for an event, all the while juggling stewardship of their members and hopefully sustaining a bridge between their donors and causes is just a few of the many tasks needed when putting on an advocacy event for a nonprofit event planner. This undoubtedly is a lot to juggle.
The Idea
How might I create an event planning specific tool for the nonprofit event planner to easily connect to donor outreach?
I interviewed five nonprofit event
planners, through a forty minute remote interview process, via google meet.
The goal for these interviews was to gain qualitative contextual research for a deeper understanding of the specific processes event planners go through to create an event, the different CRMs they currently utilize, how they reach out to donors, and what ways they fundraise leading up to an event.
The Discovery Goals
What was commonly mentioned,
Take a peek into the
synthesizing process
The five user interviews, along with one survey response, confirmed several themes throughout each nonprofit planner’s experiences. I created an affinity map and gleaned common pain points, planning needs, planner motivations, and consistent notions in each of the below ten categories.
Key Takeaways: The overwhelming implication that clunky CRM platforms were the only software these event planners had to rely on in order to facilitate advocacy events in a virtual or hybrid context moved to the forefront of my intentions for the project. Due to this, I began leaning towards ways to move event organization, fundraising, and the traditional “master binder” day-of-event analog processes to the digital space.
secondary research takeaway:
Noting the consistent use of the term “clunky” when referring to nonprofit software, I dove into what is available for nonprofits now:
Research Key Findings
1.
The work that nonprofit planners do is very important to their communities; within that comes a lot of responsibility to get their message right the quickest & easiest way possible, so that donors & local vendors can aid.
2.
Nonprofit planners feel that the earlier they can begin planning for their event - (depending on it’s scale) - the better to make sure their budget needs can be met well in advance.
3.
Nonprofit event planners often juggle itineraries, speaker notes, & timelines simultaneously - typically in a “master binder” - often carried around in one’s arms day of event. This fact led to the notion that a digital tool that could be used to organize and lead ‘day of’ an event could be an ideal solution for hybrid/in-person activities.
Defining the Users
These two event planners are similar in age but live in different parts of the country and are coming to the nonprofit event planning space with different role needs and in different fields. A theme that became evident in research was no matter what event a planner is organizing for or even what community they are advocating for, the consistent thread that tied everyone together was the impetus of staying on track and maintaining organization while facilitating an event.
To address my users’ main pain points and needs, what’s next?
is a concept for a tool that nonprofit event planners can go to, look for corporate donors, and find helpful templates for funding/event planning purposes.
Event Shared...
will harness funding & ease the stewardship process for nonprofit event planners.
Event Shared...
Project Roadmap
Catering to a unique user perspective!
I decided to start with the sign in and account creation user flow - including the option of choosing a subscription plan. The reason I began with this user flow was the impetus of who the user will be that is using Event Shared. Due to the need for event planners to typically have budget needs or supply needs, upon account creation, the user will need to choose what kind of user they are - whether that is a nonprofit event planner, donor, or vendor. In doing so, Event Shared will cater to the user with a specific user experience filtered by their identity and purpose for using the site.
Detail of
User Flow:
Branding
When moving forward with a clear brand direction, I was still gravitating towards the name ‘Event Shared.’ I did concept several more names but Event Shared ended up sticking - mainly because the leading drive of my users is to easily create and reliably share out their events. In thinking about this, this really steered my fresh and bold color choices to clearly shout helpful, bright, and reliable. I wanted my brand to be held accountable for its reliability and helpfulness, its positive platform, and support focused solutions.
The Logo
Solution:
High Fidelity
Designs
Landing Page
Log In
Creating An Event Plan
User can create a unique event
strategy and then share to team board.
Team Board
Event Proposal Form
User fills out form to publish their event budget needs ‘live’ and receive donations.
Changes and Iterations
The highest priority for iterations was the need to scale down buttons and keep size & scale consistent. Each user mentioned that the sense of scale with the event proposal form needed to be sized down within one to two breakpoints.
Before
After
The toolkit was requested to already be open once a user begins an event plan template. They can close it if they’d like after. The toolkit is also now placed on the user’s left as opposed to the right of their screen.
Each of the users also mentioned that the preview page of the event proposal flow needed to very clearly state that they were on a ‘draft’ page and only a preview. They needed clarification that their event proposal form was not yet live until they clicked the ‘publish live’ button.
I included a congratulations pop-up once a user clicks the ‘publish live’ button on the preview page of the event proposal form flow.
I updated the hero image from an event photo to a gradient vector graphic.
What’s Next?
Next steps would entail creating high fidelity mobile screens for both the event plan creation and event proposal form flows.
Revisiting the product roadmap with some of the delightful feature ideas and future scope ideas.
It would be ideal to revisit and create more usability testing with a few different new event plan templates.
Crafting a user flow for an event plan template creation to then be able to transfer and populate pertinent/overlap information from the event plan to the event proposal form flow - saving time for the user.
Reflection Thus Far
This project has been so rewarding. I’ve had the opportunity to research some of the most passionate nonprofit professionals in the Midwest. The amount of CRMs, information these folks need to juggle, stewardship of their donors, logistical aspects of working with vendors, or making sure they meet their budgets on a daily basis is beyond multi-tasking. I’ve enjoyed creating Event Shared as a fictitious platform that I would love to see out in the world, if only it could make a nonprofit worker’s day easier even by a little bit. From the icons I created from scratch or the idea of having access to nonprofit specific templates for planners to use - I enjoyed empathizing with these wonderful planners to hopefully create more light & calm to their day.
I would like to say a special thank you to Illinois Action for Children in Chicago - this organization is a bright inspiration and strives to advocate for early childcare teachers, parents, and children in Chicago.
Thank you for following Event Shared!