I’ve always had an interest in the organizational structure of nonprofits and how to scale nonprofits’ efficiency up to the standard of their for-profit counterparts. Through my work with Stanford Nonprofits, I’ve noticed a few general deficiencies which could be ameliorated through tech solutions or better interface design, i.e. an interface for assigning and managing a volunteer workforce more effectively (see talentpath.org exec summary for a two-page business plan summary written with two fellow students).
To me, one glaring issue always stands out when a nonprofit–or any organization really–wants you to invest time or money in them: lack of transparency. Many nonprofits try to solicit donations through their website, but nonprofits need to craft a better user experience so that potential donors know where their money is going and how much impact their donations are making.
I’ve been thinking about these issues for a long time, and I have worked on a few light prototypes for improving transparency in this context at Stanford’s d.school and there definitely needs to be more work done in this area if nonprofits want to get more money in online donations.
Jakob Nielsen just made a post on his site on this very issue. He seems to have conducted a thorough test of 23 nonprofits’ user experience as it pertains to donations. He found that once potential donors found the “donate” button the workflow for actually making donations was fine; however, user’s want to know how their money is being used and the nonprofit’s mission or goals. Amazingly this stuff isn’t too apparent yet…
I hope that in the future young leaders out of college will want to work for nonprofits, especially technically-minded students who could work on these issues. The challenge is in creating a culture where working at a nonprofit out of college is more accepted.
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