I love design. Design is all around us. Every part of our built environment is an act of design, an act of creation—and an act of human expression. Design is an act of giving—it is done to be of service to others. This is because it is through design that we navigate and make sense of our world. There are reasons, benefits and consequences in every design decision that we must consider. Who are we designing for and why? What outcomes do we want to achieve? Should we prioritize immediate needs or do we focus on long-term thinking? What are the trade-offs? These questions are at the heart of human-centered design, which is at the center of Constructive’s strategic design practice.
For nonprofits, foundations, and social impact organizations, their implications go far beyond how something looks, how it can be interacted with, or how it’s experienced. They are fundamental questions about how an organization can be of greater service to its mission and to the people that it serves. And when designers think about how to approach the problem solving that is design, we create more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable design when we include diverse perspectives throughout our human-centered design process. And in doing so, we attempt to answer not only the question of how should I design? But rather, how should I be as a designer? This is our Higher Purpose.
Because it is all around us, design is, of course, multifaceted. And that’s what makes it so exciting—and an endless pursuit of human experience. As a designer, I love all of it! I love typography, industrial design, user experience, and visual design. I love sound design, landscape design, architecture, service design, information design, organizational design, ikebana, interaction design, trail design. The list goes on and on. And it’s my belief that every designer owes it to themselves and to the people they design for to explore understanding (if not performing) multiple design practices as possible. The more, the better.
Why? Because all of the designed world—and this means literally everything but the natural world—makes up a tapestry of products, services, and experiences that become our lives. They are the things that we use every day. Design is about living our values. What does their design tell you about the designer and how they thought of you when designing these things? Is there great care and attention, or does the design feel like an afterthought? What does their design help you understand about society, the zeitgeist, or the attitude and outlook of business, government, NGOs? What about the state of the world? What does a designer’s work tell you about yourself? How does it make you feel? These are more of the fundamental questions that human-centered designers must continuously ask themselves.
The Responsibility of Human-Centered Design for Social Impact
Being a designer is an awesome responsibility. The designer’s perspectives, agendas, blind spots, and biases are directly reflected in everything we see around us. This is why a focus on learning, perspective, and understanding of the lived experience of others is so important. Look closely and you can see the painstaking lengths to which the devoted designer will go in order to create a thing of wonder—a thing that makes a true difference in your life in some way. They have accepted their role and responsibility as the creator of that experience. They will bring something into this world, where, before there was nothing. It is these painstaking lengths—and the perspectives and influences on design—that interest me the most. It’s the deep and perpetual work that excites me about design—no matter what it is that’s being designed. Design is both a verb and a noun, and this work is the design behind the design.
And so it’s these perspectives that inspire me to further examine what drives design decisions, their place in the greater ecosystem, and the designer’s ability to go beyond simply what they’re asked to do and to instead create what is needed. Because, when our goal is social impact—to design for change and to design for a better world, then we owe it to everyone in this world to bring our best in creating what the world needs right now. Whenever that now is.
John O’Donohue, quoting the thirteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart in an interview said: “So many people come to me asking how I should pray, how I should think, what I should do. And the whole time, they neglect the most important question, which is, ‘how should I be?’”
If we were to explore one question about design, it would be exactly this: As designers, how can we be? It’s an important question because, just as society does, design firms can emphasize short-term design processes: Thinking in general terms, building quickly, testing, learning, and iterating. It’s a practice that I use all of the time as well, but I’m mindful to always keep one eye always on the long-term and its impact on the wider system. The perspective is by no means foolproof. The more perspectives you can have guiding the outcome the better. Design processes that prioritize short-term, isolated thinking prevent designers from anticipating the larger impacts of their work. They simply produce work. They’re kept on the surface.
But excellence in human-centered design is only partially a product of talent and training. Today, it’s much more of an exercise in thinking, listening, confronting biases, exploring perspectives, and nurturing a growth mindset. Again, in social design—in the work of designing experiences that help nonprofits, foundations, and social impact organizations truly move the needle on important things—maintaining this mindset is essential. I’d say it’s non-negotiable. This is especially important when we look at the democratization of the technology used in design and how much of these decisions can be made for us by that software. Soon it will soon enough be able to do much of the work for us. So where does that leave the designer?
Going Deeper into Human-Centric Design for Nonprofits
The real magic happens when we go deeper as designers. A passionate designer will be able to split their thinking into the short- and long-term in order to design better products, better brands, better experiences, and better relationships. A better world. They are able to pull in perspectives from all over. They are able to see both the whole and its parts—and act accordingly. This is why exploring so many design practices is so important. That’s what makes it possible to put holistic, heuristic , human-centric thinking at the center of our work. Every designer of every kind needs their own methods and perspectives if they intend to make a greater impact on the world through their work. They need to study those things that captivate them—whether it’s art, baking, architecture, music, history, philosophy, religion, justice, or the like. This kind of study allows us to open the lenses through which we can experience, interpret, and create the world around us. When we consciously choose to add competing perspectives into the mix of our understanding, we challenge ourselves to question what we think we know. The 16th century philosopher Michel de Montaigne had a motto: “What do I really know?”
One perspective I’ve found as an inspiration is that of Sōetsu Yanagi. Writing about Mingei in Japan—a folk craft movement similar to Arts & Crafts—he believed that the ordinary craftsperson should be able to produce large quantities of simple, useful, everyday objects. Objects that were local to the region in which they were produced, affordable to most, useful, and durable. No amount of blind and selfless repetition was too much in the creation process. Interestingly, this was exactly what the industrial revolution and machines and factory workers were doing around the exact same time: Mass production of useful, durable goods, with adequate levels of craftsmanship to satisfy the consumer. We’re also faced with a similar philosophical dilemma as designers.
Before joining Constructive, I worked on an internet-connected washroom technology product for high-traffic public spaces, the majority of my field research was centered around reducing waste, providing clean and ready facilities for patrons, and helping custodians spend less time in the washroom. In most instances, that’s enough to be considered a success. But in all of my reports and analysis, I included notes on additional value that the technology could provide. In the process of observing custodians throughout their shifts, I noticed they would help travelers find their gate, translate English into Spanish to help someone find an exhibit hall, or really get excited by the technology. It became apparent that opportunities existed for custodians to contribute to higher value work and explore their own unique contributions. The technology would tell them when something needed to be addressed in a washroom, and outside of that, the sky was the limit.
Understanding Human-Centered Design’s Role in Breakout Social Innovation
In doing this important work, I was reminded of a Stanford Social Innovation Review article titled “Creating Breakout Innovation” very beautifully describes one of its core principles for perspective building: “Legitimizing all ways of knowing.” The author could have easily made this point in a less philosophical way, but they decided to go all-in. They could have simply said, “Include different viewpoints.” And that may have been sufficient. But to legitimize all ways of knowing is a different thing entirely. It means suspending judgment and taking in everything as it is—not how we believe it should be. Similar to meditative practice, it means approaching problem solving with the child’s mind so that we are truly listening, learning, and understanding how our design will make a difference for the people for whom we create it. In the case of my public washroom project, maintaining this mindset gave me insights into how custodians could further benefit from the technology we were working on by taking in as much of their lived experience so that I could understand, reflect upon, and respond to it.
Empathy, compassion, flexibility, and self-discovery can be developed over time and contribute to the meaningfulness of a designer’s work. This is a durability that never goes away. Designers can learn to practice silence and deep listening. They should spend time reflecting. They should debate the role of the rational mind being the only source of their observation of the world. They should question their intent, and ultimately their own design work. They should explore their craft in greater detail, their processes, and the mindsets that move them as creators and makers of wonder. This emphasis on mindsets—how we determine what to put into our work—will drive the future of design. This is what will separate the designer from the producer.
Marketing’s emphasis on storytelling gets consumers to the point of trust or purchase, but it doesn’t do much to remind them of the bigger picture. And that’s where the designer’s perspective comes into play. Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and religious scholar said that “We are in trouble just now because we are in between stories.” The old stories—mythology, one of my many fascinations—helped people understand the meaning of life, their place in it, and it’s purpose even in spite of life’s trauma and suffering. These stories sustained cultures for hundreds of years. Today’s stories, however, have a much shorter shelf life. And our design methods may be contributing to this phenomena. For example, digital projects are rarely complete. They are fluid and always evolving. We don’t design for digital experiences in the same ways that we produced things in the past. We live in a short attention span world. And the impact of this transience of design has the potential to make our connection to our world and to each other more shallow. So, as human-centered social impact designers, we must always resist this and design for deeper meaning. We must also adhere to the principles of ethical storytelling if we are to design for an ethical world.
Embracing Our Role as Human-Centered Designers for Social Change
In reflecting on design and why I love it so much, I’m reminded of my grandfather. He had peripheral vision loss with advanced glaucoma later in life. He described what he could see as if he were always looking through a straw. He had to sit right up next to the screen when he watched boxing on cable, and he’d scan the television for the action. But he could still point out where we were whenever we’d drive around town—even though he couldn’t see anything past the hood of the car. If we can only see, experience, and interpret the world through a narrow opening, then our work will be limited to that as well. So, as designers with an awesome responsibility to the world, we have a duty to open these lenses wide. We have a duty to take the time to see through the eyes and experiences of others. Because, only then can we design a world that lives up to our values and our most lofty ambitions.
Last year, during our 20th anniversary, I reflected on how Constructive’s values have guided who we are, what we do, and why we do it. As a purpose-driven, social impact agency, values are woven into our culture. They’re expressions of who we are and who we want to be that can be seen and experienced in everything we do. In reflecting on how to better focus our brand and add even greater meaning to our purpose, we sought to go higher. Literally. As part of our strategic planning work this year, Constructive’s leadership team worked with our advisor to add a Higher Purpose to our brand strategy that’s deepened our commitment to each other and to our work. Which, of course, got me thinking about nonprofit brand strategy and how we can help social impact organizations elevate the purpose in their own missions.
Why Add a Higher Purpose to Your Nonprofit’s Brand?
When we first started discussing a Higher Purpose, I wasn’t sure—it sounded a bit too “woo woo” spiritual for me. But as we explored the idea further, I quickly became one of the converted. The idea of adding a Higher Purpose to your brand is to define a single word or short phrase that encapsulates the biggest why for what it is you do. One idea that’s at the core of everything you do and why you do it—both for yourself and for the world. The key is to make it very simple, unlike a mission statement, which is usually wordy. That’s what makes it so powerful and expansive.
When thinking about your nonprofit’s brand and brand strategy, it’s important to remember the importance it plays in strengthening organizational capacity and cohesion to increas impact. The simplicity and loftiness of a Higher Purpose complements mission and vision work extremely well (so much so that we’ll likely be adding it to Constructive’s brand strategy process). Once you identify your nonprofit brand’s Higher Purpose, it’s a little bit of magic. The ideas just start flowing. All of a sudden, your Higher Purpose is seemingly everything. For me, it gave my rational, creative, and ethical mind so much room to roam.
For Constructive, our Higher Purpose, “Engagement,” is both how we want to be and how we’d like the world to be. Engagement is the through-line that connects our mission and our values. It’s at the core of both the thing we’re in pursuit of and the beliefs that guide us in that pursuit. It contains multitudes—both a North Star and a universe unto itself.
The process of establishing a Higher Purpose for your nonprofit brand is dead-simple:
1) Collectively define a word or short phrase that embodies as much of the what, why, how, and who of your mission.
2) Riff!
The results really are magic. Whether you’re a nonprofit, a foundation, a government agency, or a social impact enterprise, establishing your Higher Purpose will quickly become clarifying and offer so many avenues for shaping your work, your culture, and your impact. It effortlessly creates focus and expands possibilities at the same time—a powerful combination. Talk about crystallizing the purpose of your purpose-driven brand!
What’s this look like?
After exploring different ideas and concepts, Constructive’s team settled on “Engagement” for our brand’s higher purpose. And once we did, here’s how we defined what engagement means for the world and for ourselves.
Why Engagement Matters for the World We Want to Live In
Engagement is essential to an equitable society. As our engagement widens, our social impact increases. It’s a dynamic series of concentric, virtuous, widening circles: an engaged person can become an engaged citizen, which can create an engaged community, which can create an engaged society.
Engagement is the antidote for apathy. A world with apathy is the greatest threat to progress. When we are engaged, we instantly recognize the importance of the people and issues that we care about—and by sustaining that engagement, it’s impossible not to care.
Engagement is a sign of respect. It requires us to care, tune in, and pay attention with great intent. The deeper our level of engagement, the more we demonstrate our commitment and how much we value the people and things that we engage with.
Engagement is essential to collaboration. Co-creating solutions and designing new ways forward for people and the planet requires us to collaborate. The greater our engagement with our collaborators in that process, the bigger the space we create for meaningful contributions.
Engagement is a commitment to learning. To be engaged is to accept an invitation to greater understanding, appreciation, and contribution. It’s the essence of getting better every day in whatever it is we do—and who we want to be.
Engagement is the foundation of partnership. Whether between individuals, groups, or communities, being engaged is to cultivate an appreciation for everyone’s value and interests, and for what we have to offer. As a result, everyone contributes and everyone receives something meaningful in return.
Engagement cultivates awareness, understanding, and empathy. By paying attention with purpose we can better place the things in which we’re engaged in context and capture the essence of their direct and indirect impact on people and the planet.
Engagement generates action. Whether our engagement is mental, emotional, or physical, the greater our engagement, the more likely it is that our actions will create the results that we are looking for.
What Engagement Means for Constructive’s Brand
Whether it’s in our work or the world in which we live, being deeply engaged in what we are doing, who we are doing it for, and why we are doing it is the foundation for being deeply fulfilled.
As a collaborative, consultative strategy and design firm that works with social impact organizations to solve complex problems, we must be deeply engaged— with the work that we are doing, how we are doing it, the people we are doing it with, and those that we are doing it for.
Our clients in the social impact space are profoundly engaged in the issues on which they work. To be the type of partner they need and deserve—and to be our best at helping them achieve our shared goals, we must be equally engaged.
Advancing social change takes time and requires partners and allies. The success of Constructive’s clients in realizing the change they seek depends on how well we help them engage their audiences to join in the effort.
The more deeply we engage in understanding the people we design for, the more effective we will be in designing experiences that engage them—that connect with meaning to who they are, their needs, and their aspirations.
Engaging with goals in mind is the essence of effective design: committing oneself to fully understanding an existing situation and then problem solving to make it better.
Producing great work requires deep focus and great attention to detail—both hallmarks of being deeply engaged. This is particularly true in collaborative, complex work, where our strategic, creative, and technical choices impact the work of others.
Our work and our success are based on partnership with our clients, our partners, and each other. The quality of these relationships depends on how deeply engaged we are in our partnerships.
To sustain long-term relationships we must remain engaged, paying close attention to their needs and aspirations, and being proactive about how we can help fulfill them.
Our commitment to our craft and to our clients is demonstrated by how deeply engaged we are in producing great work—and the results speak for themselves when others experience it.
When the going gets tough, we must stay engaged. The difference between success and failure often hinges on how we handle situations when they aren’t easy or aren’t going our way. Our level of engagement reflects our level of focus, care, and commitment—all essential to delivering great results.
Maybe I’m drinking my own Kool Aid here, but this feels like pretty powerful stuff! And even better, it feels like we’ve only just begun. That’s the hidden beauty of a Higher Purpose for your brand. Unlike brand values (which are absolutely essential), a Higher Purpose provides a singular focus that can be deeply explored—and focus is one of the most important things to a successful brand.
Moving forward, not only will defining a Higher Purpose be integrated into Constructive’s brand strategy process, it will also be reflected in who we are, what we do, and why it matters—the very essence of our own brand. And for social impact organizations thinking about how internal branding unites their people, I’d say give adding a Higher Purpose to your nonprofit’s brand strategy a try—you’re likely to be amazed by the ideas and energy it unlocks.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has been a fixture of my Sunday nights for years now—helping me cope with, or at the very least, hold space for laughter throughout the collective trauma of the 2016 election, mass shootings, Trump presidency, police brutality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it’s not just the jokes that keep me coming back for more. It’s the series’ expert handling of storytelling that’s kept me a regular viewer for eight seasons. Its use of systems stories, data, humor, and audience engagement provides a praiseworthy framework that all storytellers, particularly those in the nonprofit storytelling space, can put to use in their own communications.
Before I dive into that framework, here’s a quick rundown of what Last Week Tonight is all about in case you’re unfamiliar. The series host, John Oliver, begins each episode with a short monologue about the most recent or relevant news of the week. After a lighthearted break for the “And Now, This” segment, he moves into the meat of the episode: “the Main Story.” This is where my analysis of the show’s storytelling chops begins and it’s where, every week, I’m impressed with the show’s use of the following storytelling strategies:
Systems act as the main characters
If you were to look at the Last Week Tonight Youtube page you’d notice that almost every “Main Story” is about a system—with the exception of a few episodes dedicated to people who have done some exceptionally horrible things. This fact points to the show’s knowing or unknowing commitment to “systems storytelling,” which is the technique of making a system one of the main characters in a story. Police raids, long-term care, the national debt, and bankruptcy are some of the most recent systems John Oliver and his team have interrogated for the benefit of its viewers. And while these systems act as the main character in each episode’s story, they are not the only characters.
Personal stories play a supportive, but essential role in Last Week Tonight. During any given episode, multiple personal stories are highlighted to demonstrate the ways in which a system impacts peoples’ lives and as a method of advancing the overall narrative. In the clip below (at the 3:12 timestamp), a couple shares that they “can’t afford to go bankrupt.” This personal anecdote enables John Oliver to move into a deeper conversation about the costs of filing for bankruptcy and the systemic causes for those costs.
Social impact storytellers, take note. Centering a story around a system as well as the people it impacts is one of the most effective strategies for building support for systemic solutions. A personal story without a system implicated doesn’t just miss an opportunity to inform about systems change–it can also advance the harmful narrative that individuals are responsible for solving entrenched, systemic inequities.
Data plays a supportive and contextual role
Last Week Tonight also employs data and statistics to tell a compelling story. “Main Stories” never lead with statistics; rather, they’re incorporated into the narrative much like personal stories are—to support and demonstrate the urgency of the point being made. While that might seem like a small detail, this use of data points to a bigger principle of narrative framing that this article on SSIR explains: ”Countering misinformation with fact-based rebuttals rarely works. In fact, a good deal of research into the psychology of persuasion finds that yelling louder from an entrenched position doesn’t just fall flat, it can actually be counterproductive.”
When social impact storytellers lead with data—usually with the best of intentions—audiences who might be unfamiliar with, or skeptical about, the issue at hand can become defensive, looking for explanations of the data that fit their existing belief systems. But when it’s incorporated contextually within a narrative, audiences can better grasp the concepts the numbers relate to. In short, they aren’t given the chance to explain away the data presented.
Humor disrupts hopelessness
The systemic issues John Oliver covers, and those that social impact organizations are working to solve, are urgent issues that in many cases are highly emotional. As a result, it can be tempting to frame these issues as crises inflicting immeasurable harm on people and the planet. And while this might be true, an overreliance on crisis-framing in storytelling actually depresses support for issues. It forces audiences to assume that their efforts to support issues would be hopeless in the face of such an enduring crisis. A story intended to be inspiring becomes, well, exhausting.
Last Week Tonight avoids the trap of crisis-framing by incorporating humor into its storytelling. Well-timed jokes break up the heavy emotional appeal of the show’s stories, helping hold viewers’ attention without overwhelming them. When paired with suggesting solutions—which I’ll detail next— this strategy turns a hopeless problem into one that’s possible to solve.
For most social impact organizations, humor isn’t an effective communications strategy. But there are other ways they can break up heavy content, particularly on social impact websites. Peppering in success stories, data that shows what’s possible, or video content can also disrupt the overwhelming nature of the issue being communicated about.
Actions end the story with a sense of what’s possible
Finally, one of the most unique and effective elements of Last Week Tonight’s storytelling is its commitment to solutions. Every “Main Story” segment ends with tangible actions viewers can take to support the topic issue. These actions range from individual actions like buying John Oliver-branded stamps to support the USPS, to systemic actions like supporting proposed policies. Sometimes, Last Week Tonight even facilitates a more organic movement for change on social media, by suggesting viewers tweet about the issue with a unique, and usually witty, hashtag. Whatever the method, ending a story with potential actions and a vision of what success looks like helps turn passive audiences into active advocates for change. Even if viewers don’t take the suggested action, awareness that solutions exist is a win in itself—further dismantling the view that change is hopeless.
By ending a narrative with concrete actions or systemic solutions, social impact storytellers ensure that their audiences feel inspired to take action. And since social impact organizations often create or advocate for the solutions proposed, this practice also provides an organic opportunity to promote the organization’s work and ask for support.
Final thoughts
Social impact storytelling is now ubiquitous. But that doesn’t mean everyone’s getting it right all the time. Heck, it’s still a work in progress for our team! From ethical storytelling to weekly TV series, I’m certainly finding inspiration all around me. I hope the ideas Last Week Tonight incorporates, from systems storytelling and data to crisis-framing and solutions, help advance your organization’s perceptions of what makes a story “good.”
Nonprofit annual reports are a cornerstone of many organizations’ communications strategies and there are a lot of ways to approach designing an annual report—especially if your considering designing an interactive nonprofit annual report. In nonprofit annual report design, each year brings a new opportunity to create something that shares your organization’s impact—and tells the stories that bring this impact to life. Staying on top of trends helps make sure that your nonprofit’s annual report stands out and engages your most important audiences.
One of those trends is whether creating a digital annual report is worth the time and investment for your nonprofit over designing a PDF annual report. Digital publishing for reports is hardly new, but living through 2020, with many of us working from home, has elevated the value of a digital annual report for nonprofits who need to engage their most important audiences—particularly for fundraising. Because, when you can’t easily hand an annual report to someone in a personal meeting and you’re also not sure if you can mail it to their office, the value of a digital annual report starts to make a lot more sense.
This year, we channeled our energy into designing an interactive digital annual report for The Legal Aid Society. We’ve created annual reports for them in the past. However, print annual reports were always their priority. But Covid pushed us and The Legal Aid Society to take a different approach. So, we shifted gears and prioritized designing an interactive annual report—with the PDF version taking a back seat.
A New Vision for Nonprofit Annual Report Design
As the pandemic brought most in-person interactions to a halt in New York City, The Legal Aid Society’s typical strategy for distributing their annual reports shifted. Instead of distributing them primarily in-person during their Annual Meeting, this year they would need to distribute their annual reports digitally. Instead of moving the static annual report to a digital format where it would appear as a single-page, scrolling document, we decided to use this as an opportunity to provide The Legal Aid Society’s clients and stakeholders with a more interactive experience.
We pitched a multi-page, interactive annual report to The Legal Aid Society that would be more user-friendly and provide readers with an immersive digital experience. And for the print-inclined, the digital report also includes a downloadable PDF report.
Nonprofit Digital Annual Report Design with a Content-First Approach
Since we were creating a multi-page digital annual report, we approached things a little differently than usual. Instead of presenting The Legal Aid Society with a site map and walk-through of how the navigation would be structured, we took a content-first approach. We went a level deeper to think about what content would be hosted on each page of the site and how we envisioned these pages being interrelated. Our wireframes, then, grew organically out of these content selection and layout phases.
UX Design That Caters to Audiences’ Mental Models
We created an HTML-based site to host The Legal Aid Society’s digital annual report. The main question that guided our design was, “how would a user flow through this information?” Since the annual report was a multi-page experience, we knew a user wouldn’t be going through it in a linear fashion, as one does when reading a static annual report, from beginning to end. Even so, we wanted to make sure that we kept users’ mental models front and center when designing this annual report so that they would still be able to progress through the content from page to page, in a logical, even if not linear, manner.
We also enhanced readability through user interface elements. For example, the annual report included letters from executive staff, but instead of just presenting them in a static format, we loaded them in elements that slid out from the side of the report. This created the experience of reading a letter on the screen for the user rather than simply reading it in-line on a page.
Interactive Annual Report Design that Drives Engagment
Since we previously worked with The Legal Aid Society to design the nonprofit law firm’s branding and website, as well as multiple annual report designs, we already had a design system in place. To keep brand continuity intact, we drew on the same design elements, including typography, photo treatment, and color palettes.
For typography, we used type overlaid on photos with a box, picking up on design cues from the main site. Additionally, we used bolder and larger numbers for statistics to immediately draw the reader’s attention to them, a design practice we implemented both on the main site and in previous annual reports for The Legal Aid Society.
For the digital annual report, while we continued to use the same color palette we used for the rest of The Legal Aid Society brand, we incorporated larger color fields to break things up a little and create better pacing as one goes through the report. While in one way, our use of color aligned the annual report with The Legal Aid Society brand, in another, readers also got the sense that they weren’t on their main site and were partaking of a distinct experience.
An Annual Report That Leverages the Main Website
Designing a more robust nonprofit digital annual report also expanded our opportunities to design for engagement. With more stories and information to explore—and more content to engage with—we had more places to engage audiences to learn about The Legal Aid Society. And because they have invested significantly in making sure that The Legal Aid Society website is filled with useful and actionable information—and countless opportunities to support campaigns, volunteer, and donate—we were able to piggyback on that work without having to reinvent the wheel when designing nonprofit’s annual report, which has a fraction of the budget.
In addition to driving engagement by directing audiences to the main website to explore further, we made sure to create immediate action by emphasizing how visitors could “Donate for Justice” as they learned about the amazing things that The Legal Aid Society accomplished over the year. A ubiquitous donate call-to-action at the bottom of every page turns the annual report from a simple recounting of the year in review to an opportunity to support their work. The call-to-action then gives audiences information on different sponsorship opportunities, from individual donations to corporate sponsorships.
Delivering Results
Since releasing this nonprofit digital annual report, The Legal Aid Society’s team has undergone a strategic shift, recently adding Directors for corporate giving and foundation giving. As their team shared with us, having a digital annual report has empowered these new members of their fundraising and development team to make adjustments that would be impossible in a print annual report—and easily connect with new fundraising audiences.
Moreover, the email The Legal Aid Society sent out to all their donors and supporters sharing the annual report was viewed 22% more, compared to average communications sent out by their team, and showed a 63% increase in engagement. Want to see for yourself? Have a look at The Legal Aid Society’s 2020 Annual Report.
At the end of a year, nonprofits publish annual reports. They release statistics about the lives they impacted and tell stories that remind them of the importance of their mission. As for agencies—well our success each year is demonstrated by the success of our partners. Normally, we reflect on their work and on the projects we collaborated on with them. We go into each new year with a collection of design, technology, and content related insights that make us better at our jobs. And normally, that’s enough.
But this year brought lessons that went deeper than the projects we worked on. Despite the chaos and grief of 2020, a lot of personal and professional growth happened. Our team became fully-remote. We welcomed new colleagues from across the country—and Canada! And some of us made the switch from city to mountain-dwellers.
Even though we’re eager to put 2020 behind us, we don’t want to lose sight of the lessons this year offered. We asked everyone on our team to reflect on the biggest personal and professional lessons they learned this year. And since we don’t make ourselves an annual report, we felt compelled to document these lessons somehow.
So consider this insight a mini-annual report. Though it looks different than an average annual report – we know, we’ve designed dozens! — we hope this insight provides similar guidance for our team in the years to come.
Connection and Empathy Reign Supreme
Personally, the shared global pandemic experience has reinforced to me how connected we all are. 2020 has made the globe feel smaller. It also has elevated the social inequities that make this traumatic experience more difficult for many of us, so helps maintain a healthy perspective when I, who have so much, feel worn down.
Professionally, my biggest lesson this year was the importance of being mindful of how people’s personal lives are a big part of what they bring to a working relationship—and to work with greater empathy for the impact that situations beyond our control impact our performance. — Matt Schwartz
Focus on the Future and the Forest
Personally, I’ve learned the immense benefits of Shinrin Yoku (Forest Bathing). And how reconnecting with the energy of a forest may just be the key to survival – our survival and the planet’s survival. At work, I’ve learned (or have been reminded) that you should never rely on past success to guarantee future success. That is, even if you’ve been rocking the socks off of life for the past number of years, you’ve got to keep pushing, learning, and executing to continue the success! It sounds kind of obvious, but I’m grateful to have been reminded of that this year. – Corey Pomkoski
Appreciate Quality Time and Question Convention
While I can’t sugarcoat the experience of canceling your own honeymoon to quarantine with your partner for the better part of 9 months, we’ve genuinely enjoyed the opportunity to spend so much time together. This year has been all about adapting. Something Constructive has done well this year is thrown convention and norms out the window. As a creature of habit, I’m looking forward to trying to stay flexible, question the conventions of my post, and continue to experiment. — Tom Anesta
Technology Tethers Us — Even When We’re Miles Apart
The importance of connection and relationships, regardless of distance or medium. As the pandemic has forced us all to avoid social interactions in some capacity, I’ve personally experienced the ups and downs of loneliness, isolation, and boredom. Through it all, I’ve gained a newfound appreciation for those closest to me, both friends and family. Even though I made a difficult decision to move to a new city by myself amidst a global crisis, I’ve managed to maintain a good handle on my mental and emotional health, largely due to the wonders of modern technology (shoutout to Zoom) and the determination (on both sides) required to stay in touch with my most cherished loved ones. — Abel Thomas
Stay Flexible and Focus on Team Culture
Remain flexible and spend time in nature to stay sane. 2020 has been a year filled with grief and hardship for so many people, and those two principles have helped me remain positive. Professionally, focusing on team culture is more important than ever now that everyone is working remotely. Finding the right way to stay connected to co-workers, for the projects we’re working on, and socially, is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. – Lily Moaba
Boundaries are Important, and So are Dogs
Remote work is great, but boundaries are necessary. I love the flexibility that working from home provides, but it can also be a slippery slope. Without firm boundaries between work and life, they blur together. It took me a few weeks to realize how unhealthy that can be for my work and personal life!
This year, I also brought home a “pandemic puppy.” And though I’m far from the first person to make this observation, my dog Harley has taught me a lot about presence and perspective. Now 9 months old, she still amazes me every morning with her happy-go-lucky attitude — despite having no idea what’s in store for the day. Maybe a long walk in the park, maybe a trip to the vet, or maybe some unexpected emergency. Regardless, she’s happy to be here and go along for the ride. In a year of such uncertainty, she’s taught me that sometimes—actually, most times—it’s better to focus on the details of the present, not the possibilities of tomorrow. PS: Get a dog. — Allison Murphy
Develop a Positive Outlook and a Solid Process
It’s easy to spot negativity and get really down when looking through a narrow lens. You need to zoom out: like, way out! With that perspective, it’s even easier to see that people are good, the world is good, and life is all good. During these unanticipated times, work has been fraught with logistical challenges and constant inconsistencies. I’ve found it so important to have a great mission, process, and team in place to help guide you through it. I’m so honored to have experienced this chapter with my friends at Constructive. — Frank Lakatos
Growth Can Happen in Any Environment
I learned that you can grow even in the midst of a pandemic. Your growth will be greater because of the challenges you’ve faced. Professionally, I learned that even when we’re busy working on projects we can still take initiative on issues that we struggle with as a company and work even just a little bit towards it. — Leah Suter
Details are Everything
Details are everything. What can be seen as subtle differences, for example, in the words we use or the way we define concepts can actually be chasmic in their impact once you explore their differences—especially how they’re felt and understood. I’ve always valued and enjoyed learning, and 2020 has both humbled me and reminded me that there is no shortage of things to explore and learn and ways to change your thinking. From racism to my own privilege, to learning the Indigenous names of mountains that overlook the forests where I love to hike and their stories. There is no shortage of details or viewpoints.
We each have a different way of processing how the pandemic, isolation, and abrupt changes have affected our ability to show up in a professional capacity. I’m grateful to be working for brands and organizations that are directly supporting front-line workers and the millions of Americans currently unemployed. I’ve learned to give people generous amounts of grace and expect their best simply where they are today—not where they were six months prior. And that includes giving yourself some grace, too. Creating psychological safety on teams has always been an important aspect of good leadership, and 2020 has brought psychological safety back to the forefront for me—especially when asking for help, letting others know that you’re just not able to focus at the moment, asking for feedback, asking to hop on a zoom call to co-work with another human being, or expressing different viewpoints. — Paul Sternberg
Change Your Space, Change Your Mind
This year I learned that I actually like working remotely. I’m a bit of an introvert, so it has been nice to be able to work in a more controlled environment with the benefits of still having my coworkers a slack message away. Being able to adapt my working habits has made me more productive and creative. When life goes back to normal, I think we all have to take a serious look at advocating for what works best for us and not just going with the flow.
Similarly, I’ve personally found joy in reinventing my apartment. I’ve always been a practical person when it comes to interior design. My partner is more aesthetic-minded, so it’s been a collaboration. Consider painting a wall a new color or finally get rid of a piece of furniture that’s always in the way. Craigslist has been a great resource for quickly finding new homes for furniture. You will feel the weight lifted knowing your space accurately reflects who you are as a person. — Doug Knapton
Maintain Relationships with Friends and Colleagues
One personal thing I learned in this whirlwind year is the importance of staying connected to people, even while isolating. You need to take care of your own mental health, as well as reach out to people to make sure that they are okay. Professionally, I’ve refined my client presentation skills and learned how to get clients really excited about the work we are doing! — Kevin Ng
Action is the Antidote to Fear
I read recently about how action is the antidote to fear, and I think that summarizes a lot of the lessons I’ve learned this year both personally and professionally. If I’m afraid of something or feeling anxious about something, I have to remember to acknowledge it and then do something with it—do the task I’ve been putting off because it scares me; direct my anxious feeling into an activity that’s stimulating or soothing (an activity that’s just distracting works too). For me, that has been cooking or baking, reading, or finding something small to work on around my apartment. It takes work, especially if like me, your brain’s default state is anxious. But the uncertainty and chaos of 2020 really emphasized behaviors and reactions that weren’t helping me live the life I wanted, and I’m grateful for the space and support systems I have that allowed me to learn this kind of lesson. — Kate Styer
It’s hard for me to believe, but October marks Constructive’s 20th anniversary. It’s a significant milestone and one we’re really proud of. And, in reflecting on who we are, what we’ve accomplished, and why it matters, we’ve come a long way!
I believe that a company’s tagline is the most succinct expression of its reason for being. For probably 15 of our 20 years, Constructive’s has been “Designing a New Way Forward.” It is as much about designing solutions for clients as it is designing ones that contribute to creating a world more like the one we’d like to live in.
I think this speaks well to who we are. Constructive is a culture built by people who know that the work we do is important and that we are fortunate to be able to do it—both with each other and with our clients. To me, that’s special.
So, looking back on 20 years since I started up shop in my living room with one computer, a bunch of ambition, and a lot to learn, we’ve been using this moment both for reflection and to help design our own new way forward. After all, isn’t that what anniversaries are for?
We’ve seen a lot of changes over the years. We’ve learned, grown, and gotten better. While a lot of this has to do with continuously challenging ourselves to be better and learning from our mistakes, it’s Constructive’s clients that are perhaps our single greatest source of personal and professional growth. The people we partner with raise our level of awareness and understanding every day, sending us on pathways of discovery as we work together to help make the world a better place. And because of our clients’ expertise and dedication to social impact—and because of our shared values—we’re more informed citizens and, I believe, better people.
That’s not fluff. Every person who joins Constructive does so because they want to do this work. Had we spent 20 years developing strategy and design for consumer products, financial services, or hospitality brands, not only would what we do be very different, the way we think about the world would also be immeasurably more narrow. And, speaking for myself, the actions I take, including how Constructive is run, would probably be different as well.
Our work is the opportunity to live our values every day. Not everyone gets to say this and it’s something we never take for granted. So, in reflecting on 20 years in business, one thing is clear—we owe a debt of gratitude to our clients for providing us with opportunities to learn about issues we care deeply about and live our values by helping them be more effective in the vital work that they do.
The opportunity to understand the world through a richer diversity of perspectives and expertise is one of the greatest rewards I could have ever imagined when starting a design firm. A culture of continuous learning is a core value at Constructive, and we are incredibly fortunate to learn from inspiring experts who are hard at work addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges. We also get to build on what we learn from them through exciting research and ideation.
Of course, being in true partnership is a two-way street and, when it comes to raising awareness and understanding, I believe we also bring a lot to the table. As much as we love learning from our clients, we equally enjoy sharing our ideas and teaching them what we know. Our people are passionate and they bring a pretty deep reservoir of expertise that makes a difference for the organizations who choose to partner with us.
We named our company Constructive for a reason. It’s about these ideas of working with shared values, a mutual commitment to active listening and learning, and a collaborative approach to problem-solving—whether this means a simple solution that improves the work we produce, or something far more significant in society that our clients are at the forefront of advancing. Our ability to live our values is directly connected to the passion and commitment of our clients—organizations filled with people from whom we’ve learned so much over the years and who have allowed us to live more meaningful lives as a result. And I’d like to think that, along the way, Constructive’s people have taught a few clients a thing or two about the power of their brands and how to use it to engage and acticate audiences.
So on our 20th anniversary, from everyone at Constructive, I’d like to extend deep and heartfelt “thank you” to our clients, both past and present, to our colleagues who’ve helped us along the way, and to everyone who’s found interest or inspiration in our agency. There’s a lot of work to be done in this world, and we’re even more excited about what’s ahead than anything we’ve accomplished so far.
October marks Constructive’s 20th anniversary, and if there’s one thing that’s been a constant in Constructive’s culture throughout the years, it’s a commitment to learning. Learning comes in many forms. Lived experience. Listening. Mentors. Practice. And in Constructive’s case, books. A whole lot of books! So, as we reflect on 20 years as a design agency for nonprofits, we asked ourselves: “What have been the best nonprofit communications strategy books we’ve read over the years? Which books have really stayed with us? Which books have we returned to as we seek to do our best design for social impact? What best practices in nonprofit brand strategy, design, and storytelling have we learned from the wisdom of others?
As we’ve spent 20 years living our values, the work of others inspired us to be the best we can be at our work. The perspective and expertise our team has cultivated is only possible because of the innovative ideas of experts in our fields who thankfully put in the hard work of sharing their thoughts in these many books. So, in honor of those who have helped shape how we think about and approach our work, we’ve selected 20 of our favorites (no easy task!) that have been the best books on strategy, design, communications, and digital for nonprofits. They’re some of the greatest sources inspiration to our team and are most influential to how we show up to be present for our clients and work with them to advance their missions. We hope you find them just as inspirational as we do!
Constructive’s Top 20 of the Best Nonprofit Communications Strategy Books
“Marty Neumeier’s legendary books inspired me to build Constructive’s brand strategy practice 15 years ago and contain thinking and best practices that continue to inform how we think about the intersection of brand strategy and design. “The Brand Gap” and “Zag” are designed for simplicity—quick reads that are clear and to the point, and that provide foundational thinking and practical exercises for brand building.”
“In spring of 2012, Nathalie Laidler-Kylander and Christopher Stone wrote “The Role of Brand in the Nonprofit Sector” for Stanford Social Innovation Review—in my humble opinion, one of the most influential moments in nonprofit brand strategy. The subsequent book that Kylander wrote with Julia Shephard Stenzel changed how nonprofit leaders and branding experts alike understood the value of social impact brands, and how to cultivate them within a framework that reflects their values.”
“Tim Brown’s company, IDEO has been an inspiration for me since I started Constructive. Their innovative work has paved the way for the design thinking revolution, and Brown’s visionary book from 2009 is the definitive text on the subject. It’s a wonderful and inspirational call-to-action for designers and social change agents alike—providing the methods and motivation to bring us together, using human-centric design and creative leadership to make the world a better place.”
“Trust is everything. Client relationships are the basis of our existence in a service business. David Maister’s “Trust Equation” is: Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) ÷ Self-orientation. It’s simple, and I love how it emphasizes a focus on others, building rapport, and always doing what you say you’re going to do every single time.”
“As my colleagues at Constructive know well, I like to challenge norms and conventions. I’ve always found that it helps me both confirm my convictions and expand my perspectives. Even though it came out in 2010, I find myself constantly revisiting “Rework” for its short-form opinions and unconventional ways to reimagine success at work.”
“For me, Kim Starkey’s and Bill Meehan’s book is one of the most essential books over the last decade on effective nonprofit leadership and philanthropy. Drawing on research, lived experience, and classroom teachings, “Engine of Impact” provides a clear roadmap to building high-achieving, high-impact social impact organizations—powerful ideas that our team applies to brand building and experience design.”
“The Japanese folk art movement—mingei—and experience design philosophy are (in my mind) inextricably linked. The author emphasizes the work of anonymous people, producing simple and high-quality objects with honesty and integrity for daily use.”
“This book by the founders of design agency, Method, opened my eyes to how design translates and creates brand value—and how to unlock greater audience engagement. Many of Constructive’s experience-centric design principles and brand strategies are based on the framework and tools in this incredible text. And there are countless lessons from the world of business and customers that nonprofits can apply to designing effective social impact brand experiences.”
“Long before there were responsive design grids measured in pixels and design systems were all the rage, master Swiss designer Josef Müeller Brockman, who created IBM’s global design system in the 1960’s wrote “Grid Systems in Graphic Design.” It’s one of most influential books on communications design, was a catalyst for the modern graphic design movement, and has been indispensable in Constructive’s approach to information design.”
“This book is a classic when it comes to understanding how to market and sell technology products. Understanding the buyer archetypes for technology products can help us better plan their strategy, development, deployment, and marketing in order to gain traction and “cross the chasm” from early adopters to the early majority.”
“There are so many subconscious decisions we as designers make that need to reevaluate. This book unpacks the political context for visual concepts like how color can signify different meanings across multiple cultures. By knowing these cultural sensitivities, designers will be more aware of the impact of their work in today’s connected world.”
“When this legendary book on usability design was published in 2000, I had just launched Constructive after years as an interactive designer. Since then, Steve Krug’s text has become one of the most respected and recommended books in the field. “Don’t Make Me Think” opened my eyes as a young designer to the importance of designing for usability—and paved the way for future years of study into information architecture.”
“In 2018, I lead copywriting for The Legal Aid Society’s new website. Little-known fact: this sizable site was one of my first website content projects. To get up to speed, I needed a rundown on content strategy—and fast. Sarah Richards’ short and sweet “Content Design” taught me all I needed to know about UX writing, grounded in the ways people actually read online. Its principles and witty one-liners continue to guide my work and Constructive’s content strategy practice.”
“If there’s a Bible of typography, this has to be it. Reading renowned poet and typographer, Robert Bringhurst’s book is what ignited my deep love and appreciation for typography. Updated for its 20th anniversary in 2013, “The Elements of Typographic Style” is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to really understand how type works and how to work with type—and is required reading for every designer on Constructive’s team.”
“A case study on the pioneering Aravind Eye Hospital, “Infinite Vision” does more than tell the story of its founder. It makes the business case for compassion, demonstrating the ways kindness can be a powerful force of innovation. The Aravind story has inspired me to place compassion at the heart of problem-solving in and out of the office.”
“I’m a big believer in karma and energy as the ultimate source of currency in this world. This book helped me realize the ways people valued me, how I valued others, and how we all knowingly or unknowingly control the impact of that value. I’ve loaned this book out countless times to colleagues, and I find myself returning to it as a resource to help recharge my soul and re-engage at work with enthusiasm.”
“Constructive’s tagline is “Designing a New Way Forward,” and when it comes to strategic design, few books explore the topic better than David Holston’s. It’s packed with tools and techniques that cultivate a more collaborative design process and better partnerships for problem-solving. At the heart “The Strategic Designer” is one of Constructive’s core principles for solving social challenges—designing in context, which is why I’ve made it required reading for every designer on our team.”
The more we understand our world, the better we’ll be at designing products, services, and experiences that are kinder, more impactful, and fueled by empathy. Dr. Kimmerer’s essays on ecology remind us of the hidden super-connectedness of the natural world and our place within it. They also beautifully weave Indigenous wisdom and nature together in stories that are captivating and inspiring.
“Spanning marketing and editorial strategy to information architecture and design, content strategy is a unique discipline. In “The Elements of Content Strategy,” Erin Kissane defines content strategy in all its complexity, outlines principles of “good” content, and provides techniques anyone can incorporate into their approach.”
“When it comes to designing with complex data, Edward Tufte’s first book in his trilogy is probably the most important and revolutionary text on the topic. Written in 1990, “Envisioning Information” established storytelling with data as a thing before it was a thing. It’s a gorgeous book that breaks down countless types of data visualizations and information-heavy design, providing designers with critical analysis on how to effectively present complex data visually and tell narratives that engage and educate audiences.”
The last several months have been a wake-up call for those of us who want to see justice for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. It’s no longer enough to voice support for these communities, we need to take action to overhaul the racist systems and policies around us. Like many others, we’ve been exploring the specific actions we can take, internally and externally, to be proactively antiracist in what we do and how we do it.
As designers, storytellers, and strategists, we believe communications can play a powerful role in moving towards becoming antiracist. In this piece, we’re sharing ideas, strategies, and perspectives that help communicators and designers advance more productive conversations about racism and social inequality. While the policies and actions organizations take to be definitively antiracist may look different for all of us, we hope these ideas will help your own efforts to chart a new path forward.
Organizations working to fight inequality and injustice need to describe the communities they serve. But framing these groups with the challenges they face rather than the assets they possess can reinforce harmful stereotypes and undermine an organization’s actual mission. The practice of doing this well is known as “asset framing.” Trabian Shorters, founder of BMe Community, explains the what and why.
Speaking of framing, stories rely on characters to help readers relate to a topic. Typically, we think of these characters as individuals who demonstrate the impact of a nonprofit’s work or the nature of a problem. But when we make systems a primary character in social impact stories, they become a more powerful tool for challenging assumptions and inspiring action. Susan Nall Bales, founder of the FrameWorks Institute, makes the case for explanatory storytelling. to help tell a more complete story that helps us understand complex systems and the roles they play in shaping social issues.
For nonprofit communicators, words matter—especially for organizations working across cultures, ethnicities, or any other groups requiring inclusive language. Drawing from research about the cultural, political and linguistic meanings of words, the Diversity Style Guide offers guidance and context for how to use them.
Experiences are just as important as language for building an inclusive nonprofit brand. A new feature on LinkedIn offers a great example of a change that better serves their growing multicultural audience: users will soon be able to add a recording of the pronunciation of their names to their profiles.
Companies like Microsoft have a responsibility to stay at the forefront of progressive design and technology, especially when their products and services are used across cultures and borders. Microsoft’s Inclusive Design Guide offers insights, toolkits, and activities that anyone can use to make their work more inclusive.
Acknowledging the need for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is an important first step, but affecting real change in your organization can often feel daunting at best. These 7 practical ideas published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review can help make equality at your nonprofit a practice—not just a conversation.
The world around us is filled with products and experiences that have been designed with certain needs in mind. And while design impacts everyone, design decisions are often made without considering the diverse needs and perspectives of the people they affect. Design Justice Network seeks to rethink the design process with a set of principles that place people who have been marginalized by design directly at its center.
The internet is connecting more people in more places than ever before—and yet many nonprofits focus their design efforts on WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) audiences. However, that doesn’t do justice to the dazzling variety of languages, perspectives, and expectations that true audiences bring. If nonprofits want to create effective design and communications for these modern, multicultural audiences, it means changing the usual ways they plan, research, and execute those projects.
But what are cross-cultural design projects when it comes to nonprofits and foundations? They are digital design or strategy projects that have a focus on communicating to an audience not your own, one that has a different culture, language, or geographic location. The project may be a small targeted messaging campaign, such as awareness around legal services for non-english speakers. It may be a larger website containing resources for volunteers working overseas, or in a culturally diverse city. It may even be redesigning a foundation’s intranet to be more usable for a large distributed team that spans cultures and languages. The possibilities are endless.
Once a communications team determines, through strategic research or audience feedback, that a digital project requires cultural knowledge or sensitivity, they will need to take active steps to ensure the project is successful. Deep cultural dives are not always necessary, however. Here are a few straightforward ways to take a cross-cultural design approach.
Technique 1: Embrace Cultural Immersion
When starting a cross-cultural design project, it’s important to surround yourself with the culture you are designing for. With many countries and cities dealing with social-distancing and severely restricted movement right now, that may sound difficult.. However, it’s entirely possible to conduct cultural immersion digitally.
Start by looking at digital media like movies, radio, and TV shows. Signing up for newsletters and other hyper-focused publications is also a great way to immerse yourself in a culture, and one that builds over time. For instance, for a project focused on building technical capacity and digital communities in West Africa, signing up for the Tech Cabal newsletter will offer a very focused view of the startup and venture capital world there, and as it is a daily newsletter, will offer a very nuanced picture the longer you read it.
There are also vibrant design communities in every part of the world, each one addressing unique, culturally relevant design problems. Cultural immersion can mean tapping into and working with these communities, to gain deeper insight into the design challenges we face.
But how to do this? Well, see what creative practitioners from your target culture are working on. Do filtered searches on sites such as Behance, or Twitter, to see what other communities are doing, and what they are talking about. This has the added benefit of giving you a list of potential expert contacts, should you ever need them for a project!
This digital immersion should not be treated as a substitute for actual research, but when current events, budgets, or timelines mean you can’t travel or conduct ethnographic field work, it’s a low-cost, immediate way to learn about a culture. Keep in mind that you are first and foremost an observer, not an expert. Be humble and introspective, and embrace the immersion.
Technique 2: Question Your Assumptions
Our biases and assumptions, when left unaddressed, are a huge risk to design projects. Ignoring how they creep into our work unconsciously is how we get work filled with incorrect ideas, and digital experiences that gloss over what our audiences actually need. The second cross-cultural technique means examining those assumptions.
In my new book Cross-Cultural Design, I laid out a straightforward methodology for how to push back against your biases. It starts with being clear and as honest as possible about your assumptions—to yourself, to your team, and to your clients or stakeholders:
Start by documenting your assumptions about your project and the audience it is for. Do this by yourself first, and then again in a larger team, if you are part of one. Put it in a strategy document. But what gets documented as an assumption, and what stays as a statement of fact? Here’s an example: when working on a design project for users in an emerging market, someone on your team might say “We know this audience is going to access our site from cheaper feature phones…” That sentence is an assumption, and you should determine later, through research, if it is true or not.
Next, share your assumptions with all your stakeholders, however uncomfortable it might make you. So it is not too awkward or confrontational, explain that you want to review some assumptions with leaders and subject matter experts as part of the strategy phase. As you share, be clear about what outcome you want: Do you want an open discussion? A focus for your brand research?
Lastly, turn those assumptions into a list of questions to guide your team on the upcoming project. Our example assumption was, “We know this audience is going to access our site from cheaper feature phones.” We can refashion that into a question- “What devices do our audience use most often?” Put all the questions up in a Google doc or other accessible place, so your research and strategy phases can be directed by inquiry, instead of error-prone assumptions.
Don’t forget— it’s a good thing to speak with team members and experts who disagree with parts of your ideas and questions. Skeptical voices provide a crucial check on our impulse to go along with a popular viewpoint. That dissent, especially coming from people who know all about the culture we are designing for, can tell us a lot about how a project will be received in a different culture.
Technique 3: Prioritize Flexibility
As you begin to work on communications and design artifacts such as templates, content, icons, and color systems, you want to make sure they are designed in an open, collaborative way. But what does that really look like? Well, a flexible, shareable artifact will be something that can be iterated on, tested, and discussed by your team and your nonprofit’s audience. Here are some suggestions for getting there:
Start by documenting the thinking behind your design choices, whether it’s happening quietly at your desk or in the field! Communicate your intent with members of your team, by describing what you are creating and why. There’s an added benefit—in the future, you can use this to explain your work, in presentations and marketing. It can help as you build relationships with new funders, partners and audience members who appreciate and seek out your expertise delivering cross-cultural communications.
Next, begin with some small, low-stakes prototypes. You need time to work through cultural blind-spots. Any components we design, from the simplest paper experiments to complex interactive systems, are based on aesthetic rules and cultural ideas we’ve picked up through our lives. That means they are culturally constructed. Lets say you are doing rough sketches during a wireframing workshop. Native English speakers will tend to indicate blocks of text by drawing lines from left to right, in the same direction the language flows. However, prioritizing flexibility means identifying and challenging these (often subconscious) habits. If our design work will also be used for an Arabic-speaking audience, we should also sketch those blocks of text right-to-left, as that is the way Arabic flows.
Finally, make sure to document design variants or options. It’s not uncommon for branding systems to have slightly different color palettes for different markets or cultures. If this is what you are working on, make sure you explain how your team should correctly use your brand colors in those cultures, and why.
For nonprofits, often widely different audiences mean that flexibility and adaptability is critical in designed communications, products, and strategies. By keeping the cultural needs of our audiences in mind with a malleable design process, we can ensure a more culturally responsive digital experience, one audiences will support and understand.
Conclusion
Getting started with cross-cultural design might feel a bit nerve-wracking, and teams might wonder if they are doing it ‘right’, or being accidentally insensitive. These actions won’t give you all the answers, or tell you exactly how to design for your multicultural audiences. But I do hope they make you feel more confident in your decision-making.
Use these ideas as a place to begin designing culturally adaptable products and experiences. I hope they help you think through how culture and design intersect. The wonderful thing about design is the power we have to decide how information is presented, how it is shared with the world, and what we empower our audiences to do with it. Nonprofits and foundations have a huge responsibility to be thoughtful and ethical about those design decisions, especially when they span culture, language, and national borders.
The scale of systemic problems that the coronavirus pandemic has exposed and exploited is staggering and unprecedented. America’s federal government has failed to marshal and coordinate the necessary resources and hundreds of thousands of nonprofits have, once again, stepped in to meet the challenge. Faced with serious social needs across so many different sectors of society, 24/7 pandemic coverage on every channel, and the fatigue that’s now setting in, many nonprofits are wondering how they can attract attention and draw the support they need during this crisis? Adding to this challenge is that in a time of social distancing, things like community-based events and providing direct service are needed more than ever but are harder than ever to do. It’s a perfect storm that can make it very hard for nonprofits to deliver on their missions and demonstrate why they are so relevant during this crisis.
But, there’s a silver lining in all of this. In times of crisis, people reassess what really matters to them. We rethink and reorder our priorities. One thing that usually gets renewed attention during a crisis is how we feel about the nonprofits we support and are a part of—whether that’s our local shelter or a global health organization. Another positive development is that in times of crisis new heroes emerge. And right now, people are finding their heroes on the frontlines helping people in need and behind-the-scenes reforming the policies and systems that contributed to this crisis. Speaking of systems, a pandemic is also pretty clarifying when it comes to understanding how interconnected our social and economic systems are and deciding what we want to make them properly function for us.
This intersection of American values, social systems, and service is exactly where nonprofits thrive. But to thrive, nonprofits need support. And when the need is so great, they need even more support, whether that’s people’s time, donations, or energy. This is the connected opportunity and challenge for nonprofit brands that the coronavirus crisis has created. People are rethinking, reassessing, and coming to grips with what this all means while living in isolation with great pain and anxiety. There’s an urgent need for action, both to meet immediate needs and solve serious long-term problems. I’d also like to think that all of our shelter-in-place, pent-up energy and anger means that people are highly motivated to change the course in which we are headed as a nation—tilting the nation towards the values that many of America’s best nonprofits have always embodied.
So, how can nonprofits rise to the moment and attract support during the coronavirus pandemic? How can they continue to do their important work while America is practicing social distancing? And, with approximately 1.6 million nonprofits in America, what lessons can the coronavirus pandemic teach us about what it means for a nonprofit’s brand to remain relevant—both to those who support it and to those it supports?
Strong Nonprofit Brands Always Remain Relevant
“Strong brand” may feel vague or like a communications buzzword. So, what is it? After years of describing what it means to have a strong brand in different ways, I’ve come down to this simple description: a brand’s strength is determined by how relevant it is. Because for anyone to care about something, it has to be relevant to them. What do I care about? What do I value? Which nonprofits best embody these things? Which ones offer me the best opportunities to live my values through a relationship with them, whether I’m a donor, volunteer, or strategic partner? For a nonprofit to be relevant, the answers to these questions must, at a minimum, make me support the mission, feel aligned on values, and believe the organization delivers the impact I’m hoping for.
To answer these kinds of questions and navigate choices in a world filled with them, humans created brands. Brands are a kind of shorthand for our brains that help us identify, categorize, and associate with organizations, products, and even people that matter to us. And in the case of nonprofit brands, whose impact is often indirect to those who support it, these relationships give us the opportunity we seek to contribute to a better world and, as a result, a better us. And so long as our connection to, and belief in a nonprofit’s brand remains strong, then that nonprofit remain relevant to us.
This pandemic, if it favors anything, favors nonprofits with strong brands that stand for something and can demonstrate their ability to deliver on it. Society needs nonprofits right now in a major way. Millions of people are looking for reasons and ways to contribute. They are looking for partners to build capacity and amplify their efforts. They are looking for help in their time of need. And the nonprofits with strong, relevant brands are very likely the ones having the greatest success, both in attracting support and delivering on their promises.
The reasons are fairly simple. Nonprofits with strong internal brands have a strong identity. Their people are more aligned with a common vision. They are more cohesive and have greater capacity—critical during this crisis when speed and coordination are required. Externally, strong nonprofit brands naturally attract attention because it’s clear who they are, what they stand for, and how they make a difference. Their message is focused, making it easier to appeal to donors with a refreshed reason for support. And whether their efforts are focused on the grassroots or grasstops, strong nonprofit brands have earned the trust and credibility needed to mobilize people, make decisions, and lead the effort.
Nonprofit Engagement Online During Social Distancing
If it wasn’t clear already, social distancing has shined a spotlight on how vital an effective digital strategy is to a nonprofit’s success. So many of our normal out-of-the-house activities and interactions are being conducted online during this crisis. While this situation may change as states open up, the process will be slow and there’s a good chance that many of us will be revisiting social distancing in the fall. It’s also not as if this trend online is a new development, so a strong digital strategy will increase in importance no matter how this crisis is resolved.
When it comes to online engagement, while social media is important to many organizations, the hub of almost every nonprofit’s digital efforts is its website. It’s a primary way that many people engage with a nonprofit. For some people, it may be the only direct experience they have. And a nonprofit’s website serves as a single source of truth for who they are, what they do, and why it matters. It’s a powerful brand ambassador that’s can share every facet of a nonprofit’s story, that facilitates communication, and that’s always ready to help anyone who visits.
People may visit to learn about an organization’s mission or do a deep dive into program strategies. They may visit to access resources to support their own work. They may need to access benefits, services, or important information. Whatever the reason, a website is the thing that facilitates this relationship and makes a nonprofit relevant to audiences in every moment the engagement takes place.
The stakes are always high when people visit a nonprofit’s website. People form an opinion about your brand very quickly and there’s no one there to directly interact with them. This means that the kind of experience they have ultimately comes down to how well you know your audiences, how well you know yourself, and how well you understand how meaningful value is created in the relationships between you. So, during a time of pandemic, social distancing, and significantly increased digital engagement, it’s safe to say that having a great website that’s aligned with a great brand strategy is more important than ever for nonprofits looking to rise above the din of this crisis, increase their relevance, and achieve their goals.
In my next article, I’ll be providing ideas and examples for how different types of nonprofits can increase their brand’s relevance to audiences by delivering more valuable experiences for their audience. In the meantime, I hope you and your loved ones are healthy and cared for in this really challenging time.
