At UWATX, the main fundraising vehicle is Employee Giving Campaigns, which rely on fundraisers attending in-person staff meetings to pitch why  donors should give back and why UWATX is the best option. With the rise of smartphones, our fundraisers had a problem: people were on their phones and not paying attention to the pitch.

Goal:

Create a second screen experience for fundraisers to use in meetings when donors are on their smartphones.

Strategy:

Leverage existing high-value content and extend it to a mobile experience through a mobile version of the Impact Calculator. Allow donors to take easily action by filling out a form and receiving an email reminder to donate.

Desktop experience:

Key Insights:

• Distractions are here to stay: Increasingly, research shows people engage in multiple experiences at once and take tasks from one platform to another. Fundraisers – our front-lines in identifying how prospects were engaging with us – were already seeing this trends, and we knew it was here to stay.
• Impact drives giving: Over and over, donors say they are motivated to give by seeing the specific impact that their dollars can make. Our existing Impact Calculator made this connection direct by literally allowing users to input the amount of their gift and see how that investment through UWATX could impact our community. We could improve on the experience (adding more giving options for flexibility, playing with the design) to create an even higher-quality experience.
• People don’t like to give via mobile websites: While mobile transactions and giving are becoming more common, UWATX internal research shows it has not yet achieved widespread adoption as the process remains clunky – it can be difficult to enter so much detailed data on such a small screen. Additionally, UWATX believes strongly in the power of Employee Campaigns, and creating a second screen experience had the risk of moving donors from campaign giving to online. We needed to move donors from the mobile experience to their desktops to give.

Mobile experience:

Results:

The new Impact Calculator generated 1000 views from Jan. to June 2014, a 57 percent increase over previous year, showing widespread adoption in meetings. This included approx. 25 percent mobile views, a 5x increase over previous year. To date, approx. 10 other United Ways have requested further information to duplicate the Impact Calculator for their own communities.

Lessons learned:

While the Impact Calculator did increase engagement, it did not successfully drive individuals to fill out the form and take action. Future iterations should focus on improve the conversion rate of the tool.

Partners: Design – Creative Suitcase | Development – igray consulting