GUEST POST // User Experience Design: What It Is + Why Nonprofits Need It
By Karin Tracy of Fíonta
As a nonprofit professional, you’re likely well aware of the importance of having a compelling marketing strategy, a visually appealing website, and a streamlined donation page. Without one of these crucial elements, your organization could be missing out on essential funding.
However, many nonprofits overlook a key component of effective fundraising and donor communications. User experience design is necessary to shape positive, straightforward donor experiences that inspire them to continuously support your mission.
In this guide, we’ll explore the basics of user experience design, why you should budget for this crucial step, and what it looks like in practice.
What is user experience design?
While the terms “user experience” and “user experience design” are often used interchangeably, they refer to different concepts:
User experience (UX) refers to the journey supporters take when interacting with your organization online.
User experience design encompasses all of the processes needed to create products, services, websites, and other products that offer positive experiences to supporters. UX design should promote increased adoption of technology, encourage ongoing usage, and make the technology more effective and functional.
Users’ experiences should play a central role in your UX design processes. To optimize the user experience effectively, you’ll first need to understand it and your supporters’ preferences.
What is human-centered design?
Human-centered design (HCD) is an approach to UX design that puts human users ahead of the technology they’ll be interacting with. From the start, the technology is developed for humans to use.
This approach starts with in-depth research about what users need and want from the technology and the practical ways in which they’ll use it. Some of the core principles of HCD include:
A focus on people. Your technology—including the software staff use, your website, donation page, and more—will be used by real humans. Ensure that the technology considers and prioritizes this audience and how they’ll use it.
In-depth problem-solving. Identifying the right problem is crucial to effective HCD. This involves uncovering the root cause or fundamental problem that is causing other issues within the system. Addressing this issue will then prevent additional symptoms from appearing.
Big-picture, systematic thinking. The end user’s journey should remain the most important aspect of the HCD project. While granular details are important, it’s key to zoom out and ensure that optimization efforts have a positive impact on the system as a whole.
An iterative approach. Rather than rushing into large, ambitious design solutions, begin with small or simple updates. Then, learn from and iterate on those changes to significantly impact the end user’s experience.
For example, a team of developers creating a customized Nonprofit Cloud instance for an organization would start by uncovering any reasons the system may be difficult to use or adopt. Then, the team would identify what end users need from the platform, make improvements to support those needs, and streamline tasks. While human needs and workflows are considered first and foremost, the system will still function to grow revenue, enhance productivity, and deepen supporter relationships.
What does nonprofit user experience design look like?
UX design for nonprofits can take many forms. Some examples include:
Conducting UX research activities such as developing an information architecture (IA), building wireframes and prototypes, and performing system audits.
Implementing community self-service forums, account portals, and a virtual help desk using specialized tools like Salesforce Experience Cloud, as suggested by Fíonta’s guide.
Creating an optimized, user-friendly website with easy navigation, mobile responsiveness, and an emphasis on accessibility.
Generating intuitive, streamlined donation forms users can quickly and easily complete from any device.
Implementing feedback mechanisms like surveys that make it simple for supporters and staff to provide suggestions or report problems.
Bellwether Education Partners (BEP), a nonprofit focused on helping systemically marginalized young people achieve their desired educational outcomes, provides an excellent example of HCD for nonprofits. A major part of BEP’s mission is to deliver helpful resources to young students, but these materials were not easily accessible.
BEP worked with a team of UX design experts to create a visually appealing, navigable website that centered on its helpful content. The user-centric design ensures that materials are simple to browse, read, and download, allowing young students to take advantage of tools like checklists, interview guides, and process maps.
What are the benefits of prioritizing user experience design for nonprofits?
UX design can have a significant, positive impact on your operations, fundraisers, supporter engagement, and more. Here are some of the key reasons to allocate part of your budget to UX design:
Increased donor engagement and retention. As Getting Attention highlights, retaining existing donors is more cost-effective than soliciting donations from first-time supporters. Well-designed user experiences can encourage supporters to engage with your nonprofit more often and at a deeper level. This, combined with the sense of trust and satisfaction stemming from these positive experiences, can increase the likelihood of continued support from existing donors.
Streamlined processes. Effective UX design simplifies navigation and processes for both staff and supporters. This increases staff productivity and efficiency and increases the chances of supporters taking action on behalf of your nonprofit. By saving time and driving more supporter engagement, UX design can help make your operations more cost-effective and allocate more resources to your mission.
Enhanced accessibility. Prioritizing UX design paves the way for digital tools and experiences that are accessible to a variety of audiences. Start by adhering to web accessibility guidelines such as using alternative text, providing sufficient contrast between text and background color, and ensuring users can interact with pages using just their keyboard. This can broaden your reach and welcome supporters of varying abilities and lifestyles.
The 2024 Giving USA report found that giving was down by 2.1% in 2023, continuing the negative trend from the previous year. While factors like inflation are outside of nonprofits’ control, UX design can stave off other issues, like donor fatigue. For example, effective UX design offers simple and convenient donation processes, personalization features that tailor donor experiences, regular communications, and smooth, positive interactions.
Effective UX design can bring many key benefits to your nonprofit, from enhancing donor engagement to driving more revenue to offering more accurate data analytics. Investing in this crucial process is key to reaching your ambitious funding goals, deepening supporter relationships, and maximizing efficiency so your nonprofit can focus its full attention on furthering its mission.
This guest post was written by Karin Tracy.
Karin Tracy, VP of Marketing at Fíonta, is a seasoned designer and marketer with a passion for serving nonprofit organizations and being a small part of bettering the world. She is a certified Pardot Consultant and Marketing Cloud Email Specialist, a fan of automation and reporting, a lover of animals, and devourer of popcorn.
At Fíonta, Karin drives marketing efforts for all internal and external projects. Her direct service work is focused primarily on marketing strategy and automation for Fíonta’s MCAE (Pardot) clients.
