Donor Link
Project Overview
DonorLink is a startup founded by BYU students and alumni who wanted to provide a tool for local nonprofit organizations to receive virtual donations.
Timeline: 7 months
Role: Product Designer
Team: 4 Developers, 2 Project Manager, 2 Founders
The Challenge
Inspired by the “Giving Machines”, operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Donor Link wanted to provide a way for patrons to be able to donate a tangible and specific item to a nonprofit; however unlike the “Giving Machines”, Donor Link wanted to make this process possible in a digital way.
To achieve this, Donor Link aims to create a product that is an ecommerce tool to be used on nonprofit websites. The vision is that once the DonorLink storefront is embedded into the nonprofit’s preexisting website, the donations can roll in! As the designer, my job was to build what the product would look, act, and feel like.
Identifying the User & User Personas
To fully address the design needs of this project, I found it easier to break down the pool of users into two different categories, nonprofit representatives and donors. It made the project more approachable to understand that these two different groups would be interacting with Donor Link with different priorities and motivations.
Donor
Name: Kevin
Occupation: Graduate Student
Demographic: 29 years old, living in San Francisco, single but lives with roommates. Enjoys playing guitar and video games.
Goals: Wants to help those who are struggling in his area and have a tangible, positive impact on the community around him.
Challenges: Kevin doesn’t have much free time to work with nonprofits but he would still like to help their cause. He would like to make a donation to a local charity but he is discouraged because he isn’t sure what specifically his money will be used for. He wants to feel confident that his donation will make an impact in the community.
Nonprofit Representative
Name: Jane
Occupation: Registered Nurse & Nonprofit Founder
Demographic: 58 years old, living in Sandy, UT. Married and has 4 kids, enjoys hiking and baking.
Goals: Wants to help patients who are lacking the resources to receive necessary medical care.
Challenges: Jane struggles to understand the technology required to promote her cause. Her nonprofit receives less donations because their website doesn’t have a way to donate virtually. She wants to increase donation volume by adding a way to donate virtually to their website. She needs a simple, and cost effective solution so she can continue to spend her time and resources on her patients.
Market Research
We identified other products that nonprofits were using to collect donations to see what features their product had, what seemed to be working, and if there were user needs that were being left unaddressed. Here are some of the products we researched and what we learned:
The Giving Machines:
“Vending Machine” style promotes donations from people who weren’t previously planning on donating.
Use of social media campaigns increases the public momentum towards philanthropy.
No option for virtual donations.
OneCause:
Donors can choose to donate anonymously, Donate on behalf of someone, and choose to cover processing fees
Fundraising pages depict a progress bars to communicate the causes need.
DonorBox:
Allows donors to designate where their donation goes.
Nonprofits can highlight “areas of impact”
Charitable causes do not need a website to use DonorBox services.
GiveButter:
Free to sign up
Offer a Donor Management and CRM software
Offers different features that are optional to add such as a goal bar, a countdown clock, fundraising livestreaming, scan-to-donate qr codes, etc.
Digital Platform Industry Standards:
Services offered in the format of website page or form, option for nonprofits to customize donation pages/forms, show progress bar, option for donors to repeat donations, allow donors to donate a customized amount, accepting popular payment methods, allow donors to write comments with donations.
Defining MVP Elements
Once we understood what the established standard for digital donations looked like, we started to plan how we wanted to approach our product to set ourselves apart. We decided to start with defining our Minimum Viable Product to establish what features we were prioritizing for our first version of Donor Link. Here is what our team decided on:
Formatting the donations page as a storefront, highlighting the resources that the nonprofit is in need of.
Including an introduction section at the top of the page, briefly explaining the method of donation.
Answer common questions at the bottom of the page in a FAQ section.
Establishing Brand Identity
Before I started building the product, I needed to establish the visual brand identity of Donor Link. I wanted the personality of the Donor Link product to be trustworthy and professional, yet modern and minimal as well. My goal was to emphasize that DonorLink is first and foremost a tool for nonprofit organizations, and secondly an ecommerce tool. To do this, I chose calming hues and modern typefaces for our brand.
Final Design
Throughout the design process, I worked with a project manager who I ran all of my designs past. I designed the storefront first, and once we were satisfied with the layout, I added the introduction and FAQ sections. After several rounds of revisions, we had a prototype that we could pitch to potential users and investors. Next, I developed the checkout page and expanded to mobile views as well. The developers began working on building the product and I am now working on designing the administrative program that will be used to manage the product on the nonprofit side!
Conclusion
This project gave me a lot of necessary experiences and I am grateful for the opportunities I had with this team. One of the most valuable experiences I had was learning how to present proposed designs in a professional manner, taking feedback, and being able to defend my design choices when appropriate. Having constructive design conversations in a professional manner is a skill that I am grateful I was able to develop while on this project. I believe these experiences will set me up for further professional success when working with clients whose priorities differ from my own.