Through our research processes, we continued to identify and implement features that would make it as easy and appealing as possible for our end users to donate to these nonprofits. These are the key insights that we generated using our processes.
Image: dashboard
- Specific referal goals- Initially, we thought it may have been better to leave the number of friends a user could refer open ended, but through user interviews we found that people were likely to refer more friends if given a specific and managably sized goal. The goal of refering three friends was decided on after a demographic survey showed that a vast majority of potencial users were confident they could find three friends willing to donate on their recommendation.
- Donor illusions – Based on results from psychological studies on the science of giving, we created a secion on our page the mimiced the design of traditional crowdfunding’s Rewards section. This strategy has also been used to great effect by nonprofits such as heifer internation.
- Time Limitations – More urgent causes recieved more donation, but when a time limitation was added to non-urgent causes, donations recieved a huge boost. This is the principle behind the success of local “Day of Giving” fundraisers.
- Ingroup recommendations – Our research, both of psychological literature and through interviews and surveys, showed that people were far more willing to give to a nonprofit when they knew their friends also supported the same organization. This effect persisted even when the referee had never heard of the nonprofit before the referal.
- Our beta tests showed that if a user hadn’t refered three people within three days, the odds were that their engagement with the system was over and they would not refer any more people.
- Leaderboard and gamification
- Tweet, FB, Email links w/prefilled content
- Fully accessible (potiencial clients)
- Simple clear dashboard