Design for social enterprise: everything you need to know to start
The world is falling apart and you know your social enterprise can save it. But, how do you convince customers to switch their trade from someone else, to you? How do you stand out successfully, win funding, and ensure long-term sustainability? How much does design matter to your social enterprise?
[Hint: “The alternative to good design is always bad design. There is no such thing as no design.” — Adam Judge]
We work with a lot of social enterprises and purpose-led business, and these are often the concerns they have. As digital strategists and designers, we wanted to share some of our top tips and advice we’ve received, loved, and learned from, to help you on your journey to greater sustainability, impact and engagement.
Start with the problem
“People ignore designs that ignore people” — Frank Chimero
Have you ever had the temptation to jump to a solution before you fully understood the problem? Stop right there! The first step to any good design is to get clear on your problem, and ask yourself, exactly what issue are you trying to solve? Often, our problems can look a little bit like this:
Clunky, old or otherwise ineffective website =
- Lack of visitors / customers / general awareness
- Lack of sustained engagement onsite
- Issues convincing an engaged audience to take the next step and ‘buy’
- Problem retaining customers / clients after sale
- Reputation damage
But, to just replace the old with the new doesn’t automatically mean you solve some of those issues you were experiencing. Why? Because often a bad website (or other element of design) is a symptom of a greater problem — for instance, a lack of strategy around who you are trying to engage, how you are trying to engage them, and whether that platform/method/plan is the best way to get on their level and speak their language in the first place.
Understanding the root cause of your problems and your customers’ problems is the first step to good design for social enterprise. Only then can you think about solutions. In other words, you need to know your enemy before you know how to vanquish them.
This leads you to the second step in solving your problems: don’t seek to develop a solution, but a strategy.
What makes a good design strategy and how do I get one?
“The best way to predict the future is to create it” –Abraham Lincoln
Understanding your goals and your challenges are the first steps to creating a good strategy. Where do you want to go? What is blocking you from getting there? And given what we know about your aims and your challenges, how can we use the design tools at our disposal to achieve your dreams?
Here’s three good steps to get you started:
1. Run a health-check on your social enterprise: what are your strong points and what are your sore points?
2. Revisit your mission, vision and values: how are you currently meeting or missing these?
3. Given what you know about your current status and how it measures up to your dreams, get specific, realistic and measurable: what goals do you need to achieve to meet your vision and mission?
Having a designer on board at each of these points is not completely necessary, although it can be enormously beneficial. However, the next step is definitely where you want to get your creative folk involved.
Given your vision and your challenges, the next step is to create a clear a plan of action to achieve these goals. This includes where, what, how and when to use design tools such as your website, social media, and overall branding to achieve your goals. Do you need a landing page or a full-on eCommerce site? What messages does your brand currently communicate to your audience? What’s the first step in implementing your strategy, in order to solve your problems?
Through doing so, as a social enterprise this might lead you to ask:
What do I highlight more: my product/service or the social impact I am trying to make?
“We need an equal measurement of social and commercial returns: we can’t sacrifice one or the other” — Royston Braganza, Grameen Capital
If you are a social enterprise, then there are two elements to what you do: making social impact and making money (that allows you to make social impact). Without one, you don’t have the other. Therefore, when you communicate who you are and what you do to your audience, what is most important for you to focus on?
We could do a whole article on this because there is so much to consider. However to keep it simple, it’s worth thinking about the following:
- Forget what you are selling for a moment, and ask yourself: what are your customers buying? Are they buying an end to child poverty or are they buying a new jumper? Chances are, they’re buying the jumper, and the end to child poverty is just a bonus.
In almost every social enterprise, this will be the case. Even though your social impact is important, what is most important is that you are financially viable (i.e. selling your product/service) and not just promoting your social impact (because this is much harder to buy or sell). In almost every case, your product/service comes first, impact second in the way you communicate with your audience.
What does design for social enterprise cost?
“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design” — Dr Ralf Speth
Whether you need help getting together your strategy, building a new website, or refreshing your entire branding, business needs have a business cost. Whether you get your services for free (i.e. through some volunteer or pro-bono help) or whether you pay for your services, remember: even free things have a cost.
Free design often comes with the downside of being limited in scope, functionality and professionalism, which more often than not ends up being a band-aid solution that doesn’t get to the core of your challenges and goals. In the short term, this is not a big deal, but in the long term it can have major effects on determining your future trajectory, sustainability, impact and engagement.
Paid design on the other hand requires financial investment, which can be a barrier when you are starting up. While you’re more likely to get what you need, you also get what you pay for — so choosing the right designer for you will be an important choice. If they’re the right team for you, they will often push you and challenge you to be, do and think more than you anticipated. But the outcome? Gold. In addition, in the long-run, your social enterprise will still be around to thank you for the initial investment.
At the end of the day we’re with Joel Spolsky on this one: “Design adds value faster than it adds costs.” Whether you’re just starting up, considering a refresh, or in a stage of rapid growth, remember what design can do for you, and don’t be afraid to delve deep into the problem before getting to the strategy and solution.
Still wanting to know more? Follow our Social Good News here on Medium, plus check out www.socialgoodoutpost.com and get in touch for your own design help for social enterprise.
BONUS: Join us at 12.30pm on Monday the 6th of July for a Facebook Live event, when we’ll be hosting a conversation on design for social enterprise with our Creative Director, Lara Stephenson. More details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/557768128248425/
