The Broadbent Institute, a Canadian based non-profit think tank, needed to engage its donors.
The organization had been seeing a steady decline in donor contributions over the past 2 years. Although COVID was in part the reason, the Communications department had previously tracked declining newsletter subscriptions, and noticed that fewer members were signing petitions or participating in letter writing campaigns. This decreased engagement was also translating to a decrease in donations.
We thought that creating a member portal would give members a central place where they could access resources, engage with the institute’s initiatives, as well as manage their account and communications preferences. By encouraging repeat visits from members and giving them access to their donation history, the institute was also looking to create more opportunities for generating revenue.
The Broadbent Institute receives up to 75% of its operational budget from individual donors and the remaining 25% of donations come from grants and other organizations.
I conducted a survey asking members if they would like to become more active and ways in which they preferred to engage.
The survey revealed they had an interest in more webinars and also wanted the institute to offer more than just a newsletter and petitions. They wanted to be more engaged and were looking for a more active role and opportunities for direct participation.
The survey’s findings helped us better understand our users’ needs and identify which features should be prioritized.
The organization was limited to a small budget. In addition, their contract with their web development vendor was ending soon.
Therefore time for ideation and testing was very limited and wireframing had to be completed within a few weeks.
As their in-house UX designer I set out to design a portal including a dashboard, an online e-learning portal, a donations area, and an account management section.
I quickly designed the user flow and created low fidelity wireframes for each key area.
I presented them to the management team and solicited their feedback
After incorporating suggestions from internal stakeholders, I created the high fidelity designs for each screen.
I met with the developer to confirm feasibility within the constraints of our existing CRM system and made adjustments before finalizing the designs for desktop and mobile.
I worked closely with our vendor over the development phase, testing to ensure layouts matched the provided designs.
The first version of the member portal was launched in July 2022.
An unexpected but welcome benefit of this portal is that members are now updating their own data, therefore freeing the Fundraising team from having to re-verify contact information. The open rates for newsletter and participation in webinars have increased over the last months.
The project was considered a success and the organization has started to see a steady increase in engagement. Additional features, which couldn’t be included in scope for the first version, are being planned for a future release.
