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OpenIDEO Giving Challenge 2020
Nov 2020 - Present
OpenIDEO posed a question for “How might we reinforce a culture of generosity by creating charitable giving solutions that are more accessible, inclusive, and effective?”
The organization’s vision of impact for this Challenge is threefold:
1. Empower everyday givers—of all races, genders, socio-economic statuses, and perspectives—with the tools they need to give in line with their preferences and intentions.
2. Catalyze innovation in the giving marketplace by translating research and evidence into products that improve the quality, quantity, and impact of everyday giving.
3. Surface new insights and concepts to inform the development of inclusive giving products and services.
The areas of opportunities are as followed:
- Opportunity Areas in the first category “bridging the evidence to practice gap” draw upon a large body of research and behavioral science about the challenges donors face. This body of research is growing, but very little of it is accessible to or taken up by nonprofits, platforms, and intermediaries.
- Opportunity Areas in the second category “design as research” represent important topics that could benefit from additional insights or new product solutions.
The Challenge
Problem Definition
Intention: Research shows that people rarely think proactively about giving. Individuals tend to give simply when asked, especially by friends or family members. This type of impulsive giving can lead to missed opportunities for donors to give to the organizations that most align to their personal values, interests, and community.
Simplification of Choice: In the US alone, donors can choose from nearly 400,000 charitable organizations. The large number and complexity of giving options make it difficult to choose, compelling people to make spontaneous decisions or defer a choice altogether.
Equitable Access to Giving: The motivations and current giving methods vary across communities and demographic. For example, research indicates people in Generation Z represent only two percent of the giving pie. Similarly, despite women are more likely to give, most digital solutions are not designed with women’s giving preferences in mind.
Identifying New Variables: What are variables are missing in regards to challenges associated to the everyday giver?
Objectives
- Introduce more planning, intentionality, and alignment in the giving process, helping donors tap into both the emotional and thoughtful aspects of giving.
- Simplify choice when identifying causes and organizations to support.
- Supercharge the act of giving together by creating digital products that make collective giving easier and more accessible (e.g., empower BIPOC donors, female-identifying donors, young donors, etc.)
- Identify other areas of gaps and variables that OpenIDEO is missing.
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Process
Step 1: Market and User Research
OpenIDEO had already listed a number of research surrounding giving. However, coming from a FinTech background, I noticed there were other variables missing from the giving concept that was presented in the prompt.
The three missing concepts include: financial literacy, debt, and budgeting.
From both prior market research and experience in working at a debt management and collection start-up, the influx of debt in the United State is massive. However, despite the rise in credit card debt as well as online loans (e.g., Affirm), most of the user-stories that I've come across boil down to unfortunate luck and/or a gap between financial knowledge and behavior.
However, on top of a decline in financial literacy in the United States, it was also evident that many of the digital tools that serve as a financial access point for many consumers were designed not for the consumer's best financial interest but for optimizing fees and recurring transactions.
In the user research that I performed, I was able to recruit a total of 45 participants between the ages of 20 - 35 years old. In the series of questions, I reviewed their self-assessed financial literacy, inquired their giving frequency, and their budgeting habits to benchmark the behaviors of 'planning' and 'intentionality'.
From the results, I proceeded to perform a product analysis of various financial tools (e.g., credit score trackers, budgeting, banking applications, investment tools, etc.) to understand how to best introduce a new behavior that promote intentional and planned spending and giving.
Step 2: Userflow and Taskflow
The underpinning design for equitable access was to fundamentally re-think what a banking application can offer and what business and design examples we can leverage from popular investing index funds as seen in Fidelity and Vanguard.
From there, I proceeded to review the problems that OpenIDEO wanted to solve, and broke the design into 3 user/task flows.
- Intentionality and Planning: Creating a budgeting and planning application for holistic oversight
- Simplifying Choice: Designing a giving method in the form of index funds so every dollar can be impactful
- Collective Giving: Rethinking of giving as a financial product in itself where you can see your contribution against a greater collective
Finally, for me, it was important to introduce an element of financial understanding on how one can asses where to give appropriately either by a non-profit's organizational efficiency so the user can see the immediate ROI of where they spend. This was something I had come to learn with charity watch dog organization that determine of the many out in the world, which of the organizations are in good standing.
Step 3: Design Iteration
For time intensive purposes, I leveraged existing design patterns from existing products in the market, and merged them into an application design that would promote a culture of intentional, equitable and planned giving. At this moment in time, I am still in the phases of designing and creating prototypes for the application so that I may continue gather user feedback and behavior.
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Key Takeaway
User Research
- Giving behavior is rooted to spend behavior
- Intentionality and planned giving can be benchmarked against budgeting spend patterns
- Users with a budget gave less frequently and give base on available funds
- Users who gave more frequently were less likely to have a budget
- Majority of the participants give when prompted regardless of whether they had a budget or not
- Less than half the participant had a budget
- All participant use online/mobile banking application
- The second most popular financial tool used were investment tools.
- Givers in the sample size are result oriented, keen to understand how financials are spent, and whether the non-profit or organization is in good standing
Market Research
- Three in five adults don’t keep a budget.
- Despite the fact that most are saving at least something for retirement, fewer than 1 in 5 U.S. adults feel very confident – and over 1 in 4 are not confident at all – that they are saving enough
- A majority of U.S. adults, six out of ten, have had credit card debt in the past 12 months, and nearly 2 in 5 indicate their household carries such debt from month to month.
- The study found persisting and widening gaps between those who are struggling and those who are prospering financially — skewing generationally. Those between the ages of 18 to 34 have the highest levels of financial stress (63%) and anxiety (55%).
- 84% of American report using online and mobile banking applications
- 39% of Americans report using websites or apps to help manage their finances
- Vulnerable demographics (e.g., Women, the poor, and lower educated respondents, people of color) are more likely to suffer from gaps in financial knowledge
- The rise of for-profit, social-good driven companies have increased has created competition for non-profit organization
Design Proposition
- Create a banking app and/or financial tools that promote financial literacy and skillset to encourage individuals how to better plan their overall finances.
- Create 'index' charity funds that curate organization and provide financial transparency, as well as promote collective or cooperate giving. In addition, enable individual to give relatively small donation while still being able to make every dollar count.