Designing Community Impact
What if you were a nonprofit with 1.5 million dollars to spend on community impact over the next five years, and had to decide how to spend it?
Community based organizations are tasked with this regularly. Maybe not with $1.5 Million, but certainly with creating long term impact and innovative programs. In doing so, community organizations must prioritize needs, cater to end-users, and problem solve just like a design agency might.
The Sharks Foundation and SAP, led by AppHaus Palo Alto, used design thinking to approach this exact situation. Here are a few reasons why design thinking can be useful for nonprofits and other community organizations, based on our observations from this collaboration.
Design thinking aligns priorities
Before devising a plan, nonprofits and their partners must share a common objective. Diverse opinions, priorities, and ideas need to be shared and transformed into one goal. Design thinking helps do that in a constructive way, to ensure that ideating is a fruitful and positive experience.
What it forces the group to do is come together in a collective way and thoughtfully listen to one another. You can’t do everything. You don’t have the time, and you don’t have the resources. No one does. Ideating is the fun part…priorities are harder to agree on, and design thinking helps in a very positive way, as everyone’s point of view is equally valued.
Sally Lawler Kennedy, Director Innovation and Design Research at SAP Design AppHaus Palo Alto
The Sharks and SAP first decided who their audience would be, and what impact they wanted to have as partners. They came to an agreement before proposing actual funding ideas. As the partnership continues, priorities may shift, and that’s ok. But establishing an audience and impact sets the foundation.
Warm-ups foster creativity
Design thinking warm-ups are a fun tool many facilitators use to break the ice and foster creativity. However, they serve a greater purpose. Warm-ups are an engaging way to build the group’s confidence in their own creativity, so that they don’t hold back during ideation.
Our warm-ups stemmed from the idea that, even though they seem so small, they really do change an atmosphere.
Esther Wolff, User Experience Designer at SAP Design, AppHaus Palo Alto
Particularly when ideating, many adults do not see themselves as creative. Workshop facilitators can choose warm-ups that best suit the workshop objectives, attendees, timeline, and other variables to heighten productivity and success. Check out some of our favorites, here.
Ideation encourages collaboration
Rather than planning a small meeting of decision makers, ideating as a group fosters a deeper sense of collaboration, and can result in ideas that otherwise would not have surfaced. While there are many activities used for ideation, our 6–3–5 exercise especially encourages building on one another’s ideas, which can be particularly useful when unifying different groups.
6–3–5 gets people building on one another’s ideas better than any other ideation methods I’ve seen, which is why I really like it. Particularly in a setting like this, when we have two different parties coming together, we want to harness that.
Sally Lawler Kennedy, Director Innovation and Design Research at SAP Design AppHaus Palo Alto
Collaborative ideation not only establishes a positive group dynamic, but it also brings people of all different experiences together in one room. The saying goes, two minds are greater than one. And, in this situation, it’s true!
Workshops foster commitment
In contrast to a top-down initiative, design thinking naturally fosters commitment from those involved. After devoting an entire day to the process, sharing ideas and perspectives, as a group, participants feel a responsibility for the outcome of the workshop.
At the end, about 60% said they would personally contribute to making sure these ideas are executed on, whether that means supporting or volunteering. People are personally committed to ensuring these ideas will become a reality.
Sally Lawler Kennedy, Director Innovation and Design Research at SAP Design AppHaus Palo Alto
Design thinking offers the opportunity to involve many individuals from organizations and professional levels into one workshop. In doing so, there is greater personal commitment to the execution of an idea.
Design thinking helps make ideas actionable
While the agreement between The Sharks Foundation and SAP ultimately ensures follow through in this situation, design thinking truly helps organizations make ideas actionable, by ending the same way workshops begin: aligning priorities- but this time, in regards to final ideas.
The Sharks Foundation and SAP shared over twelve final ideas at the end of their workshop. Through these, and the amalgamation of other ideas from the day, SAP and Sharks Foundation formulated a final plan, thanks to the teamwork.
Ultimately, design thinking can be particularly useful for organizations who have a history of working together, or an active partnership, as it intentionally facilitates a positive collaboration process.
We knew that we were not just sitting around coming up with ideas that wouldn’t materialize. We knew that the stuff we came up with, or the subset of what we selected would, indeed, be executed.
Sally Lawler Kennedy, Director Innovation and Design Research at SAP Design AppHaus Palo Alto
Regardless of an individual or organization’s role, design thinking successfully brings diverse people together, and unites them toward a common goal. We think design thinking should be more widely used across all organizations, especially nonprofits, who have the opportunity to harness real impact.
Learn more about our project with the Sharks foundation, here.
