- An online forum where fathers can exchange information on topics related to fatherhood.
- Young Digital Natives coach older people on a voluntary basis in dealing with digital media.
- A Business Incubator for founders, who live newly in Germany.
We need innovations like these in the social sector in order to meet the small and big challenges of our time. New approaches that enable us, for example, to protect the climate even more effectively, provide people with no shelter, or strengthen local authorities in their integration work. Such ideas can be found in many NGOs; it is particularly difficult to turn them into concrete products. That's why Google has sponsored a total of 62 projects this year with the Google.org Impact Challenge that use technology to exert a positive influence on society. However, many more had applied. To ensure that their ideas are put into practice, we organized a workshop on behalf of Google with the finalists of the Google.org Impact Challenge.
On the agenda were three focal points: user-centered design, fundraising and Google Ad Grants.
1. increase user friendliness
We do not want innovations for the sake of innovation. On the contrary, social innovations solve concrete problems for and by people. But what do we know about the people (our target group) we want to help with our idea? Ideally, we are in constant contact with them anyway and can involve them directly in the conception. In any case, we should make sure that we don't develop anything that fails to meet their needs and requirements. In the workshop we discussed two different methods to get closer to the target group:
PERSONA (Design Thinking): A persona is a kind of prototype for a person from the target group. You give this persona very concrete (but purely fictitious) characteristics and attributes: Name, age, profession, income, motivation and experiences. This makes it tangible and can be used to check the idea.
SEGMENTS OF ONE: Instead of a typical segmentation, the interview technique is used to look for connecting characteristics in as diverse a group as possible in order to avoid stereotyping and to determine the core of the idea with manageable effort.
Once we have found out who our target group is, we want to ask them directly about our idea.
For this we use prototypes, which not only manifest the idea and make it discussable, but also present the first features of the idea to the target group for testing. And that doesn't always have to be expensive.
PAPER PROTOTYPING: Using pen and paper, the idea is quickly and roughly visualized (e.g. in the form of a website or app) and is then available to a test person for feedback.
Further information on prototyping can be found in the "10-Minute Practical Guide".
2. financing an idea
In this way we can check whether the idea really helps our target group. Next, we need the necessary financial resources to put it into practice. Cross-financing from business operations, cooperations, sponsoring, competitions, foundations or public funding are possible revenue channels that need to be considered. More and more NGOs are also making targeted use of the Internet to address supporters independently and to acquire donations. In particular, an innovative (and thus exciting) idea can be financed in the form of a fundraising campaign.
In the workshop we immediately started planning the campaign and concentrated on the five core questions:
CAMPAIGN GoAL: What do I want to achieve with my campaign? Is the goal SMART (specific, measurable, accepted, realistic and deadlineable)?
CAMPAIGN OFFER: What is the one message I want to convey to my target group through all measures?
TARGET GROUPS: Who can and should support me? (See also the methods under "Increase user-friendliness".)
DISTRIBUTION: Which channels do we use to reach these target groups (newsletter, social media, flyers, Google Ads, etc.)?
MEDIA PLANNING: Which material do we want to use in the campaign (text, image, video...)? What is the landing page of the campaign to which we want to draw the target group?
Further information on fundraising campaigns can be found in the "Online Fundraising Practical Guide".
3. increase range
Reach is essential for NGOs in a number of ways - whether they want to raise awareness, find donors, recruit volunteers or increase registrations (e.g. for their events). Considering that Google handles 100 billion searches a month, it's clear that it's a great opportunity for NGOs to appear in search hits on their topics. That's exactly what Google Ad Grants can give them, where Google.org provides a $10,000 budget for free Google ads per month to non-profit organizations.
Keywords (words or phrases) describing the NGO's offering determine when and where the ad can be placed in search hits. In the workshop we worked on the keyword lists for the participants.
Further information about Google Grants and how to register can be found on "Google for Nonprofits".
If these and other topics related to digital skills are of interest to you and your organization, we recommend that you take a look at what the Google Future Workshop has to offer. There you will find both online trainings and the dates for on-site workshops. All free of charge. Everything under: https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/zukunftswerkstatt.