APPROACH

We started with the initial market research to understand the nonprofit space and younger audience trends. It helped us understand the striking difference between Millenials and Gen Z from baby boomers, who historically played a significant role in philanthropy and nonprofit space. It was clear that the younger audience cares more about the causes and includes them in their day-to-day rather than getting associated with one nonprofit once a year.

As a next step, we decided to prob further and learn some quality insights. We did 10+ discovery interviews to understand our target users' existing behaviors, unmet needs, and appetite for a solution in this space. The more we dug in, the more we realized - the younger generation is inspired to do good but discouraged by the lack of transparency in the fundraising process, fund allocation, and the impact assessments in the nonprofit space.

Having triangulated with our market and their needs, the team explored various solutions to cater to different market segments. We decided to prototype a few of them to achieve our initial goal of user acquisition. Once our initial prototypes were ready, we did another round of feedback interviews with the potential users to understand which solution appeals to them the most or meets their needs in the space. 

We asked the research participants, "What do you think is the offering?", one responded, "It's like a digital billboard for me to find volunteer opportunities, events such as blood drives in my neighborhood." While another explained it as "it is like Google Glass that tells me what gives me points once I step out of the door and anything that I see, but for doing good."

This effort led us to define Do Good Points as a modern solution to help find do-good opportunities and maximize impact by earning Good Points. We launched the initial version of the product based on this research in December 2020. I also worked with the marketing team to create product positioning and marketing strategy to acquire new users based on the updated value proposition.

Meanwhile, I led an effort to create a survey to learn and validate our hypothesis at scale. Based on 110+ survey responses and initial insights from the feedback interviews, we added a few new features and updated the experience of the product in the next iteration, launched in July 2021. We also ran a couple of research sprints during the design and development of this iteration to get user feedback for the usability and clarity of the product positioning.