Designing Impactful Programmes for your NGO

‘Design is the intermediary between information and understanding.’ — Hans Hoffman
This June, the Atma Network invited Saahil Sood, founder of Sangha, to share his insights on creating effective programme designs for NGOs. In the webinar, Sood explored the NGO design canvas, challenging assumptions, and monitoring the programme. Watch the webinar hosted by the Atma Network here. Here are some of the key highlights of the webinar.
Why create a programme design?
Design thinking is a human-centered process for innovation. It comprises of a set of methods and strategies for interviewing and observing users, synthesising insights, building prototypes, and testing and iterating on solutions. (Source: NTEN)
What is a design canvas?
The design canvas is a methodology that enables the organisation to think strategically about the programme and guides the activity of designing it. It helps the NGO apply design thinking to their outlook.
Using the design canvas

The sections are as follows:
Canvas Section 1: We want to achieve
People often start out with a pre-decided solution for their programme needs. While this approach may simplify tasks, it may have a negative impact on the quality and impact of the programme in the long run. The NGO should start out by defining the following three aspects:
Define 1- Who is the user?
Define 2- What are the user’s jobs?
Define 3- What are the user’s pains?
The NGO can identify these aspects through interviews, experiences, or field days where they shadow the user and see what a day looks like in her/ his life.
Example: Who is the user?
According to a sample organisation, the user will be:
- An entrepreneur who is starting out or has a year of experience under her/ his belt.
- An existing incubator that works with entrepreneurs.
Defining the user for the programme helps create the foundation for an effective programme design.
Example: What pains does the user have?
According to a sample organisation, the user’s pains are as follows:
- They have only a basic understanding of the market, competitors, and customer preferences.
- They often struggle to understand what value their innovation brings to the market.
- They lack a tailored process and adopt a “just do it” approach that avoids all forms of systematic management.
- They use poor problem-solution mapping.
- They require professionals from a background in education who can provide more frequent support.
Canvas Section 2: My Solution
The solution stage provides a series of steps that, when implemented, will solve the user’s pain.
The NGO should create two columns to assess the user’s pains against the solution. The first column should incorporate the user and her/his jobs and pains. The second column will consist of the service/product or solution provided by the NGO and how it will help relieve the user’s pain.
The solutions that the NGO has designed should holistically solve the user’s problems mentioned in the left.
If the NGO is able to do so, it is on the right track. Otherwise it must go back to the drawing board and design the solution until it perfectly aligns with and solves the problems mentioned in the left column.
There are a few good filters to have at this stage as you think about the solution.

Although these filters are not essential, it helps you trust the final solution. This is not a required step as innovation can stem from new solutions.
Example: The service provided by a sample organisation is as follows:

The organisation will then assess the solution as follows:

Canvas Section 3: My Assumptions
All solutions have certain assumptions embedded within them. A good programme design is one where these assumptions are identified and tested at an early stage.
The NGO could this (if it has programme design experience) or it can surface assumptions through the following process:

Choose the top 3–4 assumptions that are critical to the programme.
Example: Two assumptions that became clear for the sample organisation’s solution are as follows:

Canvas Section 4: Hypothesis
Creating a hypothesis can help NGOs validate or negate the assumptions.
Example: The sample organisation can send out a well- designed emailer and articulate their services. If this email hits 1,000 people and they receive ten expressions of interest, it is on the right track.


Canvas Section 5: Implementation and Strategy
Now, the NGO can create clusters such as business development, curriculum, impact, etc. and add actionable items and timelines. This helps create systematic goals with deadlines and provides a roadmap for the organisation’s actions in the near future.


Canvas Section 6: Monitoring
The NGO should articulate clear milestones, track results, and consistently learn from the process.
One methodology used in achieving this is setting SMART milestones.

Another methodology that helps us is the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) philosophy that has been adopted by many organisations with success.
In the OKR philosophy, the objective is an ambitious statement that reflects priority. The key result is a quantifiable statement that makes the objective measurable.
The team OKRs are the team priorities for the time period set by the team leader. The company OKRs are set by the CEO or the head.



Further, the OKRs are graded between 0 and 1.
1 stands for the achievement of a goal while 0 signifies no progress.


As the NGOs goals are fairly ambitious, 0.6 would be the perfect score. If it hits 1s consistently, the goals are not ambitious enough. If there is a trend or consistently low results, the NGO needs to reflect or think as a team on ways of improvement.

Essentially that’s how goals are set for a programme.
The NGO should use this design canvas and see the correlations and interconnectedness of the aspects of its programme design to create more effective programmes for its beneficiaries. The design canvas can also enable the NGO to create impactful solutions and build better implementation and monitoring strategies. To learn more on creating the design canvas, organisations can access the webinar by Saahil Sood here.
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About Saahil Sood: Saahil Sood is an engineer by qualification, a banker by profession and an educator at heart. He spent the following five years working on staff at Teach For India as the City Director for Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. This experience provided him with insights on effective program design.
