About the project
The Problem
An educational nonprofit based in Tanzania experienced stagnation in their donations, meaning less financial support for their students.
My Solution
Transform insights on why people donate into new brand guidelines, improved storytelling, and an emphasis on visuals within a redesigned website to increase donations.
Upendo Kwanza saw a decline in donor dollars
This is an issue for any nonprofit, naturally, but especially for one who uses its funding to supply rural Tanzanian students with academic materials and school tuition; the ability for students to attend school was at stake! I worked alongside another UX Designer and UX Writer under a Project Manager to identify and address this concern.
We did not have access to donor's contact information, so we interviewed our personal network. We asked them about their donation habits and preferences. Then we showed them the existing Upendo site and gauged their likelihood to donate.
Upendo's site does not evoke a sense of trust
Here is what users said when viewing the old website:
The colors are too muted. It feels so dreary considering it's a nonprofit for kids.
These all look like stock images. Are these the actual kids?
This is too much text.
Overall, users felt uninspired by the site and were unaware of how their donations would create an impact. Additionally, the site's colors and imagery made it feel untrustworthy. This feedback helped illuminate the stagnation in donations towards Upendo.
Other nonprofit sites informed our designs
Getting individuals to donate is not an easy task. It requires succinct storytelling that describes a clear problem and what someone can do to fix it. I looked at sites that were doing this well, focusing on the colors, imagery, and copywriting to understand how/why they evoked trust.
This exploration allowed us to isolate several patterns in successful nonprofits that we would emulate in our own designs:
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Clear Mission and Impact: let users know the difference the organization is making in the world
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Transparency: provide information on what happens to the money once it's received
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Testimonials: highlight stories about beneficiaries, volunteers, and donors to demonstrate the real-world impact of the organization's work
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Visuals: use high-quality photos and videos to showcase the work in action. This both engages users and makes the organization feel more credible
Updated colors, copywriting, and campaigns
Thus, the design team created a new design system with hierarchical fonts to maintain visual consistency, updated brand colors that evoked a sense of happiness and peace, and asked our on-the-ground volunteers in Tanzania to take photos of our programs in action.
A UX Writer was brought on to maintain brand tone, communicate our mission and values, and galvanize users to donate. I created the component library of buttons, banners, and cards to maintain visual consistency and quicken our workflow.
Usability testing showed that our designs addressed Upendo's central problem
Our team completed a set of Hi-fi wireframes and had users walk through the different pages to share their thoughts. We put the site in front of old and new testers to get both comparative and fresh data. Here are a few quotes:
"This site tells a story with data about the issue what you're doing to solve it."
"The layout is very clean. I love seeing the actual kids I'd be supporting and what they'd receive from my donation."
"This section makes the site feel legit - I know my money will actually go towards the right people."
"I'd be ready to donate by this point."
Qualitative Metrics
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🫡 Percentage of users that selected "I would trust this nonprofit with my money" increased by 82%
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⚡️ Consolidated 6 navigation tabs to 3 to streamline website flows and tighten IA
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📝 Amount of text on each page decreased by 30%
What I Learned
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Cross-functional collaboration requires transparent communication
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Since our UX Writer joined the team later on, we had to work extra hard to catch them up to speed on the intent behind our current copywriting and content layout while still giving her space to create and weigh in on our designs. As time went on, I became more proficient in collaborating with our writer.
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Establishing an MVP is necessary to hit target goals
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Initially, we wanted to create pages for brand ambassadors and company sponsors as well. Regrettably, nobody in our personal network had experience with this, so there was a lack of primary research to support designs and the other logistics that these programs would entail (outreach, promotional materials, compensation, etc.) We realized that the majority of Upendo's money comes from individual donors anyways, so this became our MVP user flow.
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This was a qualitative project, and that's okay!
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Our intent was not to measure the speed through which a user donated to the site or the number of clicks per visit, but to see how user understood the mission and goals of Upendo Kwanza, and how they felt while navigating the site. Ultimately, we were highly pleased with the results.
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