How might we reinvent the way UK millennials engage with overseas aid? – introducing «the golden circle of engagement»
In collaboration with our industry leader Matt Cooper-Wright from IDEO we took upon the challenge set by a UK charity to tackle the «how might we…»-question in order to reinvent the way UK millennials engage with overseas aid.
As part of Hyper Island s Digital Experience Design master’s programme, finding and exploring opportunity areas to this question through design thinking and corresponding research methods were our main goals and final deliverables.
The result: «The Golden Circle of Engagement»
Our core findings from research in amalgamation with Simon Sinek’s «Golden Circle» led to the «golden circle of engagement». A double-layered strategic instrument for charities, proposing an approach on how to market to their target group.
First layer — The circular approach
The circular layers represent an adaption of Sinek’s «Golden Circle»:
- Centre circle — The WHY is the core element and to be defined by the charity stating their inner beliefs and thus why they are doing what they are doing.
- Middle circle —Based on our research the HOW represents the four core cultural values and how the charity is to behave and communicate: Authentic, honest, transparent and simple
- Outer circle — The WHAT represents the four pillars of opportunity or opportunity areas that have been deduced from research.
Second layer—Four pillars of opportunities
Four opportunity areas — four pillars of opportunites — have been defined. These opportunities are interconnected and create a circular flow starting with creating awareness, involving through engagement, triggering activation and thus leading to donations back to those on the ground.
- REAL VOICES, REAL STORIES > Awareness
Connecting the charity ground staff with donors.
Insights lead to believe that there is an opportunity to educate and inform millennials about what happens on the ground by enabling charity workers and volunteers to tell their real stories to the world. - LOCAL ENGAGEMENT, GLOBAL IMPACT > Engagement
Local community is a powerful starting point for millennials to engage with overseas aid.
Interview insights reveal an opportunity to tap into local communities in the UK to spread awareness of overseas charity work. All conducted interviews show a consistent tendency among the target group to engage with local charities, where the impact is visible and they are directly involved in making a difference. - ENGAGING CROSS — MEDIUM EXPERIENCES > Activation
Millennials can be reached through a variety of mediums and these should not be exclusively digital.
It is evident that social media is mostly used out of habit rather than particular affection. Number one expenditure was on offline socialising and experiences, which the interviewed millennials tend to then share online. - LIFESTYLE INTEGRATION > Donations
Integrate a variety of donation opportunities into millennials’ lifestyles.
Our findings point to the need for a variety of ways to donate. Our insights led us to discover that there is an opportunity for the charity to engage with millennials by finding ways to integrate donation and involvement into their existing lifestyle patterns.
Millennials
The Golden Circle of Engagement is a coherent model that may be applyed to a larger target group. Nevertheless a limitation of the research that led to this report was that the target group «millennials» lacks a specifc defnition. The term is broadly used to encompass an entire generation born between 1981 - 2000, however, within this age group there is a plethora of sub- groups that are difficult to target with one-size-fits- all solution.
Understanding the target group is key in order to target communication, services, solutions, products, and experiences.
Conclusion & Disclaimer
The lack of transparency and clarity in communication was identified as a key hindrance in the monetary contribution to overseas aid. From the research, a few solutions for each of the opportunity areas are presented within the final report.
The findings from research inspired the creation of «The Golden Circle of Engagement» model.
In the scope of future studies, further investigation should be conducted in order to validate this strategic instrument and the findings of the related research paper.
The process that led to these findings and further details may be found in the final report below and might be covered in a later medium post.
Report
Due to the client’s request the link to the actual PDF report has been removed for now.
Credits
This report, all research, findings, ideas, models, concepts etc. within were carried out, developed and created by Laura Morley, Manish KC, Shirley Sarker, Rada Rey myself Dan Nessler under supervision of Matt Cooper-Wright, Kate Burn, Katie Wakely and Jenny Winfield all with @ideo as part of Hyper Island’s Digital Experience Design master’s programme, Manchester, UK, 2016.
Stay tuned, provide feedback, follow me on medium–Dan Nessler — if you would like to hear more or check my website for further information about myself.
Cheers. Dan.
