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My Guests:
Cindy Gibson: The Logic Model
Cindy Gibson, our grants fundraising contributor and principal of Cynthesis Consulting, goes into detail on this visual depiction of your outcomes and why funders are increasingly asking for it. And what’s the Theory of Change got to do with it? These annoy many grantseekers, but we’ll put your mind to rest. df
Debra Sharp: User Personas
What is a persona? Why are these fictitious people important to your website? How do you build them? Debra Sharp is digital director at Manifest Communications and we talked at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC).
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Oppcoll hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent you know me, i’m your aptly named host and i’m very glad you’re with me. I’d suffer ankle oh, sing sponder leitess! If i learned that you had missed today’s show the logic model cindy gibson, our grants fund-raising contributor goes into detail on this visual depiction of your outcomes and why funders are increasingly asking for it. It annoys many grantspace occurs but well put your mind to rest and user personas. What is a persona? Why are these fictitious people important to your website? And how do you build them? Deborah sharpe is digital director at manifest communications, and we talked at the non-profit technology conference and tc on tony’s take to have you been paying attention to your state registrations in each state where you solicit donations responsive by generosity. Siri’s hosting multi charity five k runs and walks. I’m very glad that cindy gibson is back. She’s our practice. Temic, she has a phd. Yes, you’re our practice. Temic. She has a phd and over twenty six years of experience with non-profits, she has led leader she has had. Leadership roles in several national foundations and non-profits. She was a non-profit times top fifty power and influence, sir she’s principle of synthesis consulting that c y en th e s i s and you’ll find her on twitter as at single bh si n g i b welcome cindy gibson. Hi, tony, glad to have you back. What’s this, so be here. Thank you, what’s, this logic model all about. Well, it’s, do you want me to say what it is we’re talking about? Well, tell us what it is, and we’ll get into what it’s about, i guess, okay, what is so logic model is basically just a visual depiction of what a non-profit or a foundation or any kind of organization is doing, why they’re doing it to what end? And then also outlines and stipulates a set of outcomes or out puts that the organization wants to see from those activities. It’s, it’s almost like a flow chart of hey, okay, a flow chart and why here? Why is this? Ah, well, yeah. Okay. Wireframe ders asking for it. Well, funders have been asking for logic models for a while. Um, and it’s it’s. You know, i can’t pinpoint the exact time, but it was about ten years ago. It really sort of first on the scene, this whole notion of a logic model. And then along with that came the phrase theory of change and sometimes those two things air used interchangeably. Um, for good reason. But for some reason the jargon, um, was unsettling to a lot of grant acres and looking at if you look at one of these flow charts, it can be very intimidating, and it can look very complicated, ah, and daunting and a lot of non-profits just didn’t see the value and spending time putting together this kind of this kind of structure, so there was a lot of pushback about it, and there still is some eye rolling, but i think gradually a lot of non-profits the ones i’ve worked with, most of the ones i worked with and for that i know of have actually found the exercise to be pretty helpful. Okay, now we’re in an increasingly visual society, so that could be a part of me were certainly on the web in social networks visual is ruling video is ruling, so that could be a part of what’s happening what’s happening here as well? Um, yeah, go ahead. Well, it’s also, you know, i think that it’s also that some of this workers we now in the sector and particularly lansbury’s, become a little bit more technocratic. Um and we know that the technocratic sort of they like their charts in the and there, you know, i had to say personally, when i see these kinds of charts. Sometimes my eyes glaze over a little bit because i don’t resonate with that. And i know that that’s a different kind of learning sometimes some people like that stuff, they learn from it very quickly when they see something diagrammed and deconstruct a bit others down. So again, that’s that can be very daunting to people still a lot of information in the one moflow chart, but some people it does really resonate. Yeah, and i actually i have actually a different reaction to it. You showed me an example of one, and we’ll have links will put links on the on the takeaways in the facebook page so people will be able to see these but the one you showed me, but i have a background in it, my back to my college days with information systems, and we usedto chart logical processes through ah, you know, ah, proposed information system like a sales system or an inventory control systems like that. So to me, it it actually helped a lot, but i could understand why somebody who’s not used to the visualization and the arrow’s pointing from one to the next could be a little off put by it so i can understand that. Yeah, all right, can i say that? You know, i think people what i do with ease and i think why i totally agree with you? I i think logically, and i like deconstructing things like that in my head. I think that you can do that in a way that doesn’t have to be, you know, into a chart necessarily you could do it in a narrative, but the concept behind it is the same, which is, you know, sitting there for forces organisations to sit there and be very clear, a doubt, their goals, and then what they’re going to do to reach those goals, what their strategies are going to be, and then how they’re going to measure that and very, very quantifiable in some ways and quantitative terms that really important and it’s it’s a really useful exercise because it really, really again pushes non-profits to be very clear about why they’re doing what they’re doing, and it can actually help them down the road, look at what they stipulated and figure out whether they’re on the right track as they go along, and if not you know how to tweet that it’s very, very clearly stated, okay, so so so it’s got value with your outcome is visualisation ah, visual model or a narrative there’s still value in it, but your point is, more funders are looking for the usual the visualization that’s sort of the flow chart. Yeah, and, you know, as a former funder and someone who works with a lot of funders, i still, um i think it’s a valuable exercise. And i should say, as an aside, i think it’s important to emphasize that this is not, you know, an exercise that non-profits just sit down one day and dio it’s something that takes time. It should take time. Um and it usually does, because once you get a group of people who worked for a nonprofit who are very different in some ways the board, the some of the stakeholders, whoever you want to have in this process, they’re all going to have different ideas and so getting consensus around that and then clarity in terms of what everyone wants to do and what they see is important and getting that down and nailing that down in a very structured way. Is not an easy or overnight task, so you could oh, i think when you send when i was a funder and a again, i it’s very helpful for me to see and know what that organization is doing, that everyone’s behind it, and then that’s going to be there sort of framework going for it’s just a very helpful tool for both the thunder and the organization. I think from a strategic planning perspective to perhaps sounds exactly on i was just going to say that a lot. It’s not a coincidence that, you know, this exercise has become almost during er and strategic planning. Now, i should say the flipside of that that’s not to say that non-profits have to spend, you know, five hundred thousand dollars hiring, you know, big consulting firm to do these kinds of there. There are people who make money on this. Um, well, i think it’s helpful, definitely toe have somebody help walk you through this and challenge your assumptions and put this together with you? On the other hand, i don’t think it has to be something that lasts for a year and costs a lot of money. A lot of this work and i can talk about this. I can send this to you and put the put these up in the length. There’s a lot of tools out there to help non-profits do a lot of this themselves, okay, we’re going to go out for a break a couple minutes and then send you and i are going toe talk in more detail about what the pieces of this are s so we’re not just talking about the the abstract, but already, okay, so stay with us. You didn’t even think that shooting getting, thinking, you’re listening to the talking alternative network, get in. E-giving good this’s, the cook said, wear hosting part of my french new york city, or guests come from all over the world, from mali to new caledonia, from paris to keep back. French is a common language, yet they all come from different cultures, background or countries, and it common desires to make new york they’re home. Listen to them, shed their story, join us, pardon my french new york city every monday from one to two p, m. Oppcoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Oppcoll dahna hi there. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Sorry, i can’t do live listener love today. We are pre recorded today, a couple of weeks early, but of course i send the live love. I just can’t do it explicitly. City by state, city, by city and state by state and country by country but live love live listener love to everybody who is listening live. And, of course, those pod class pleasantries always go out to the nine thousand people listening, wherever you are. Car treadmill, subway airplane pleasantries out to the podcast, listeners. All right, cindy gibson, let’s, get into this damn thing! Well enough abstraction. Now, andi let’s, let’s, hold off on the theory of change, which you mention because that’s a bigger that’s, a biggest little bigger subject. But aside from theory of change, which we’ll get to what? What belongs in our logic model. So this is important to this. Preface this and say again ah, sometimes it’s easy to get wigged out when you look at centre’s, funders have their own templates of logic model that they want non-profits to fill in so there might be they might. Ask for elements that you don’t necessarily have or have thought of if, for example, fill a couple years ago, i scanned about twelve or fifteen ah funders request for logic models for their grantmaker and then i also looked at different templates that were available to help non-profits do this, and they were all different, that there was really no standard. So so what i did was i actually just sat there and distilled some core components of logic model that i think everyone can use, and then you have that core and so that whenever anybody asks you for something different, at least you have that basis to work from, and the core is pretty straightforward and your goals long term goals, mid term goals, short term girls, sometimes people break those out that way. Other times people don’t ah, a theory of change, which you mentioned, which is something we can talk about later we will, which is what briefly it’s, just a series of if then statements about how your organization believes change is going to occur. Then there are objectives that you will stipulate that the, you know, basically what you want to accomplish through your work and how those will help you reach your goals. Um, the strategies that your organization will use and by strategies that can be anything from doing research teo. Advocacy to community learning to technical assistance. Those air strategies on ben. Finally, you get down to the activities, the specific things that your organization is going to do on the ground. You should also include a target population. Who are you targeting to either work with or work on behalf of who’s going to benefit from your work? Um, and then the the outcomes that you hope to see now i should say that a lot of funders discern make a designation distinction between outcomes and output. And there is a difference. Go home. Outputs are quantifiable numbers. Um, and outcomes are usually, uh, something that that results from those outputs, for example and output would be we got, you know, fifty children immunized in our community andan outcome of that would be that the rates of children contracting the disease decreased because the result thank you. That’s helpful example. Thank you, let’s. Go back to the to the goals you mentioned it’s. Sometimes done. You say long term. Medium and sorry, short term, long term in medium goals. What kinds of terms are we talking about? What’s, short, what’s short, mid and long. Well, you know, again, this is it varies. You know, some organizations are very explicit. Um, about and i think it’s easier for organizations that do provide pretty concrete services because they can say, you know, in ten years we’re going to be serving this many people it’s much clearer than it is, perhaps for organisations that doom or advocacy activities. But it really is up to the organization to decide that unless of your being asked by a thunder too, to be very clear about where you think you’ll be in ten years or five years, you know, it varies and short term generally i just sia’s, you know, over the next year ah, mid term is probably over the next three to five years. And then long term is, you know, the next ten to two whenever so that’s generally my rule that i use. But again, it’s very okay, let’s. Go let’s, let’s talk a little more about the strategies because the strategies air sort of the general leading to the specific activities. Is that right? Is that right? Yep. Okay, um, and you mentioned a couple strategies like research and community learning and, um, advocacy things like that. Um, do you do you break those out into each bye bye. Each goal. Do you have to do that by each goal? And instead of goals and objectives, or you don’t have to? Well, you know, again, it depends. I mean, i as my way of doing it is i actually start with goals. And then for each goal, i tried to have at least one objective, if not more. Ah, and then once you clarify those it’s pretty clear what you’re going to do in terms of strategies. Buy-in strategies don’t have to match up with each goal or objective, but it’s usually gonna work that way. You know, if my objective is to ensure that my state legislature, pat you know, passes x number of of provides funds for x number of programs over the next five years, what are my strategies than that i’m going to use to get to that objective? So, that’s why the flow chart is so helpful because it makes you start with the end? Goal in mind, which any strategic planning expert will tell you is the heart of a good strategic planning, and then go walk yourself down back into it. How are you going to get to that point on? So your strategies, we’ll help you do that, and then those strategies lead you to, you know, if i’m gonna work on a legislative issue, are you encouraging public policy makers to allocate more funds for something? Clearly? You know, one of my activities is going to be meeting with state policymakers differ from your briefings with them. Yeah, so that’s sort of just workflows down one, okay, so so it sounds like it would help to start from from the end increase in creating the whole logic model starts from start from the end on dh working backwards, absolutely. And and that’s. Why? I think i said on a previous show that i did with you, it actually brings together the two big pieces that a lot of non-profits tend to fall into two camps, you know, again, there’s this one camp that are very good at talking about the big goals in the vision and the problem and the theory of change and you know, but they’re not particularly good at saying how they’re going, what they’re going to do to get tobacco hole and then there’s this other group of non-profits they’re very good at saying, well, we’re going toe, you know, do a bunch of of activities are community here they are, but there’s no connection with those activities to larger goal. So this exercise is a really good one toe help bring all of coherence to everything this organization does and why it’s doing it? The theory of change. You you had mentioned that it can stand alone, or it could be a part of your logic model let’s dive into that. Now what? What is the theory of change? These if then statements? Yeah, the theory of change is is basically, as they said, a syriza if then statements that explain how your organization believes change is going to occur. We believe, for example, we believe that if x success is in place than accept sexual occur, so an example is, if you know, your organization works on homelessness. Um, you might. Your theory of change might be that, you know, homelessness is going to be resolved when we have more affordable housing for people versus an organization who actually believe that change is going to occur by insuring public policies that prevent poverty that leads to homelessness. So those air two different theories of how these organizations see change is gonna happen. There’s no right or wrong it’s just being very clear about how you think that you’re going to get changed around a particular issue, our effort that you’re doing and so so how do you get to that? So that’s your that’s your goal? If you believe that homeless is going to be resolved with more affordable housing than start with that, and then what are your assumptions behind that? Well, you know, our assumptions are that people need housing and they don’t have it or they don’t have access to it. So if we build more housing, then people will have access to low income housing. So you start with this again and goal and then talk about so what am i assuming when i say that it’s going to be resolved this way and everything that we say that we’re going to dio or we thinks gonna happen has a siri’s. Of assumptions behind it, whether their political, whether their ideological, whether there is something you believe or your organization believes. Those are assumptions about how you’re going to get changed. And you want to know that a theory of changes and you want to be explicit about what those assumptions are exactly. I mean, i can give you an example. Please think examples are very helpful here. Okay. So let’s say that your goal is to reduce the number of young adults who use ah, methamphetamines or drugs. Assumptions about the problems could be something like reducing availability of methamphetamines is an effective strategy to combat it’s you. Another assumption might be delaying initiation of meth use. We’ll decrease the demand for those drugs in the community. Another might be a community can change access to meth. Um, as a precursor to other chemicals and drugs. So then the theory of change become something like, um if if my organization invests time and money in decreasing the mass production in my community by inhibiting access to it, um then local meth production is likely to decrease. Then you go on to the next one. If then that is decreased if access to mathos decreased than the use of that drug is likely to decrease. And then the next step is if i use prevention efforts or advocate for those to include matthews in those prevention, drug prevention outreach efforts than young adults are likely to delay that youth. So the theory of changes dahna when a community comes together and implements multiple strategies to address young adult use of meth in a comprehensive way, young adults will use left that’s, your theory of change. Okay, um, and in that you’re identifying the people, we’re going to be involved in this populations, a friend and what what they’re what the outcome’s gonna be and how you’re going to achieve them. So it’s. Like who, what and how krauz where i’m looking exactly? It’s, it’s, pretty much the three components, populations, outcomes and strategies. Okay, okay, onda geun. We’ll have links on the facebook page, so i think that will. That will help a lot. Let’s, talk about this as sort of a za broader look a little more into the the strategic planning value of this. I mean, it’s starting to become pretty clear as we’re talking about it, that that a lot of constituencies should be involved in developing your theory of change in your and your and your your logic model home. Yeah, i think you mentioned the board. What about getting people? What about getting the actual people who are benefiting from the services? Is that is that a possibility? I think that’s critical, i mean, my personal opinion because i do a lot of work on civic and reg resident engagement in buy-in non-profit work, so i feel very strongly, personally that you should have, um, stakeholders, whatever they are, whoever they are, whether they’re organizations that you work within the community to do your work, or whether they’re people that you who’s who benefits from or use your services or programs should be at the table when you have these conversations, i think they could be invaluable in helping organizations construct realistic outcomes and output because they’re on the ground and they base, they know how things work in reality? Um, well, i’ve seen organizations invest a lot of money in time and doing very, very strong logic models have had very, very seemingly clear outcomes that they’re going to use to assess private progress, but then when they start implementing their programs and they they haven’t involved people who are participating, those programs there they find pretty quickly that the outcomes they thought were goingto happen or that were important are either not happening or not very important to the people involved who who may see outcomes very differently from somebody not directly involved in those programs. So the more you can bring in, um, you know, some of those people tto have these discussions in in a strategic planning discussion as well. I just personally think you’re you’re goingto come out stronger in the end, particularly in terms of what you’re you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going to measure it. Those those same problems could also come from having a faulty set of assumptions at the beginning, and the people who are on the street on the ground are goingto challenge your faulty assumptions. Great point, i think that’s absolutely true, and that does happen. Um, and again, if you’re not clear about the assumptions at the beginning or your, which of course, than feed into your whole theory of how you’re going make something happen of your you’re not goingto your you’re pretty much screwed. Yeah, that’s i mean, that’s the beginning here, if your assumptions or faulty everything flows from those that’s right, that’s, right? So the more checks and balances you can have built in the stronger your model’s going to be okay, you gotta ask some difficult questions and be willing to teo even defend or change your aled different stages, including the assumptions, yeah, and that’s, why again, there’s no right or wrong and a lot of these, i mean, different organizations clearly work on similar issues have very different ways of seeing that issue, you know, conservative non-profit it’s working on, um, an issue of teen pregnancy is going to have a very different theory of change than a more progressive organization working on the same issue, and they’re going to have a very different set of assumptions. That doesn’t mean those assumptions were wrong or right. It’s just about making sure that everyone you’re working with in your organization and outside of it that you’re working with and targeting is all on the same page about those assumptions. Cindy, you gave me a sample logic model to look at could because that’s something that i could put on my blogged associated with this post or with show post for this show, probably not, but i can send. I will give you links, teo. A whole number of resource is that do have examples of them included. You know, the caliph foundation, for example, has a really terrific logic model workbook. Okay, it’s pretty thorough. And it walks you through the process, and there are examples in there. Um, internet has one as well. Again, there are a lot of templates out there that include ah, really? Good example. Okay, we have to leave it there, but we’ll put the will put the links on the facebook page and the under my posted a cz part of my posted takeaways. Cindy, thank you very, very much. Oh, you’re welcome, it’s great. Thank you. You’ll find cindy on twitter at caen, gibb and she’s principle of synthesis consulting. We are sponsored by generosity. Siri’s you know these folks, you know. Dave lynn cielo they host multi charity peer-to-peer runs and walks. If you’re thinking about including something like that in your fund-raising mix, then i asked you to check them out. They do all the back end work so that you can focus on getting participants and fund-raising which is the whole purpose, right? They so they cover these the things that you might not have thought of until you blew it on the first one, and then you realize it on the second one, like portable restrooms and fluid stations and licenses and permits and race bibs and medals and photographs and professional chip timing. Yeah, there’s a lot that goes into this that’s, the back end stuff that they take care of. They have events coming up in new jersey, miami, atlanta, new york city, philadelphia, toronto, talk to them. If you’re thinking about a run or walk and please tell them that you heard about them on non-profit radio, you can get dave lynn at seven one eight five o six nine triple seven seven one eight five o six, nine triple seven or on the web. They are generosity siri’s dot com charity registration you’re supposed to be registered with state authorities in each state where you solicit donations are you? You may ask, what is a solicitation any of these email, postal mail a donate now button on your website and the channels that drive people to that donate now button there’s a lot more about charity registration on my blogged because it’s a part of my practice and the blogger is tony martignetti dot com just search the phrase charity registration that is tony’s take two for friday, twentieth of june twenty fifth show of the year now my interview with deborah sharp on user personas i want you to know that a scheduling conflict forced debra and i off the stage osili debra and me, right? Debra and me forced debra and me off the stage at at ntc, we worked, we worked things out where we reconvened, but we had to move twice, so you’re going to hear a couple of breaks in the audio is going to sound a little different because we’re standing. We’re sitting in a different place than where we started, but we persevered. So that’s, some of the some of the brakes that you’ll hear here’s that interview welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc non-profit technology conference two thousand fourteen use that hashtag it’s fourteen and t c with me now is debra sharp, she’s digital director, manifest communications and her workshop topic is user personas it’s not about you it’s about them. Deborah sharp, welcome to the show. Thanks, tony. Pleasure to have you on dh just come a little closer to the mike, would you please so that everybody can hear you? Thank you, user personas i know very little about them, so i’m not gonna even try. Why don’t you explain what they are and why they’re so critical? Sure, well, there are they are really essential part of web development and you’re only going to get as good a website is thie kind of strategy and thinking that you put into it at the front and and part of that fun end is creating these user personas, which are really fictitious people there people you make up, but they’re based on very real segments. There’s supposed to be able to help you understand who were the users coming to your website and what do they need? What their motivations? What? Their goals when they get there because what’s really deadly, especially working with with non-profits but it happens with all kinds of organizations and companies is that you get website development by committee from the people who work inside an organization was all about what they want to say to people, what they have, what they think is important, what they want to put out there, and often what happens is they just don’t have a good understanding of who’s actually going to come to the website and why they’re coming and what’s most important to those users. So that’s, what user personas will help you do? So we need to be thinking about who the people are that’s come that air coming versus what we want to say and put out as sort of a bulletin board for them all to read right and be able tio create a hierarchy, even of information and of users as well, because there’s a lot that goes into thinking about what what a user is, and when they come to your site, you might think that let’s take a non-profit you might think you’ve got your your clients with people, use the services of the organization, you may have volunteers, you may have donors and all of those may then segment into teo different groups themselves and what happened sometimes i’m sure everybody’s been to a website like this where you have no idea where what you’re looking for is it’s like, how do i get there? And i’m clicking and i’m going here and i’m going there and about three or four kliks later, i’m still getting frustrated and guess what? I’m out there leaving, you know? Yeah, and not all of those users may be of the same priority of the importance, for example, just gonna give you an example that we worked on. We’re going so many, but one of the things i shared yesterday was a thiss was a consortium of healthcare organizations who came to us, and they wanted to get a very public conversation started about the expected tsunami that’s coming and health care with our aging population something like in twenty years, there’s going to be something like have two times as many people over the age of eighty and four times as many people over the age of sixteen that’s going to be quite a dent in how we care for people and many of them with chronic health care conditions. So this consorting with all kinds of health care organizations really wanted to be able to put some african scene policy for conversations that there they thought they came to us and they said, okay, we have to reach those people, those people who are going to be over sixty. We did our research, we did some homework, we started put looking at user personas who were the people involved in this conversation, and we did what was really revealing with some social media listening we did and what we found out and this in social media listen, i’m a great advocate of that because it’s very, very natural setting in which to be able to get information surveys are great focus groups could be helpful, but they are artificially set up context so that people are very aware of what they’re answering their very where, what they’re saying, where in social media you’re actually being able to judge in evaluate what people are saying when they’re not being observed, when they’re just commenting on blog’s and when they’re talking to each other. And what they’re sharing, what their concerns are and what their challenges are, what they’re pissed off about and what we found out about out with that is that it wasn’t the direct users, it wasn’t these people over sixty was their children, so we’re talking people in their forties, so the other ones who were talking people in their fifties, those are the people who are worried about what’s happening. So when we created the website that’s who we had in mind, okay, uh, we are we’re going tow pause for second america’s the is the the team here to do a demo? Okay? We’re going to pause for a second. These user personas then are really quite critical. How do we get started in the process of creating one? Well, and we’re going to create many right, all representative of constituents, different groups, exactly so there’s its research and in a number of different ways. First thing to look at this historical data so you want to be able to look at your your website analytics, and everybody should have google analytics it’s free it’s one of the best ways to be able to measure what’s happening on your website who’s coming what they’re doing there and that’s what you really want to dig down into sea what are people doing right now on the website that’s? One of the biggest ways that you have to learn the second thing you want, teo does that? Does that include knowing where they’re coming from, where the good referral sites are? Sure, okay, i mean, it might just be from google itself or i mean now the referral traffic isn’t necessarily gonna help you in determining how you’re developing your website. I mean that’s more about marketing and how you’re reaching people driving traffic to the website. But all of that is gonna be helpful. A cz you plan to make any kind of a redesign start any webb’s not start a new one? Obviously because you won’t have extended in the redesign. Then you’re gonna wanna survey people that’s always helpful. So you haven’t existing website. Put a survey up, ask people questions about what they’re finding about the website right now, what’s most important to them what the information they’re looking for. Are they able to find what they’re looking for? You just ask the more full denture. Things about, uh, that’s going to give you information and understanding how they’re approaching your website right now, then you’re gonna want to talk to you, major stakeholders and you’re gonna want to do one on one interviews and that’s gonna be really that’s to me the most helpful in some ways because you’re really then starting to say, okay, lets get some donors to this organizations that want to talk about what’s important let’s get the people who used the services and talk to them about what’s important, etcetera, etcetera and even internal stakeholders. You want to talk to people within the organization? Start getting a sense of what’s working what’s not and even blue sky. What, if anything that you would like to see here could there be here? But then, once you start doing that, then you have to get the information on who these people are and how they interact with the web and that’s one difference that’s. Very important. We worked with some amazing clients, and most of them have truckloads of audience research. They know who their audiences are, but the kind of research that you have, a kind of data you have on people in the offline world doesn’t necessarily translate to online by that, i mean, so tony, if i were to talk to you and i’m trying to figure out what kind of an online user are you? A two point, oh, user, do you like to share things? Do you like to talk with people? You like to have a community? Do you like to be able to know? Read stories about somebody else and what’s happening in their life? Are you a lean and hurling back person? What i mean by that is way called someone a lean in experience and more of an immersive experience. So you’re somebody, if you’re all lean in person, you want to have your hand on the mouse, you want to be doing stuff and clicking stuff, using tools, getting it, being able to make your way around something in a much more sort of game like immersive way or you lean back where you want clinton served up to, and you want a video to watch or you want cem really compelling copy to be able to read that packages things really nice, so if i don’t know what kind of used ru ru time strapped even. Are you the kind of person who? Okay, i need to read three headlines here scan and if i don’t get it, i’m out of here. Are you that kind of a person? So for example, if we’re talking to potential, uh, major donors, most of them are time strapped, so you need to be able to know if that’s a really major consideration a limitation for them. How did you build your user experience? So you’re gonna satisfy their needs and expectations. So if i don’t know that stuff about you and i let’s say, i think that because i have so much important information to say, i’m going to put it all up here, i’m not gonna prioritize that i’m not gonna make a hierarchy. Meanwhile, you have about forty five seconds to teo give to my website, i’ve lost, yeah, yeah, i’m not gonna find what i’m there for. I had a goal when i arrived and i have not met it and i gave you a minute before, whatever the i mean, the stats were probably even shorter than that on i’m departing and i’ve only looked at i wasn’t deep. It all i looked at one, maybe two pages or something, and i can’t find the beginning of what i’m looking for. Okay, so we need to know all these different constituents so well, because we’re going to start to build a fictitious person, right persona. Exactly. Okay, wait there yet can we start with that process yet? Or is there more to do yet? Well, you have tio no, then you start to give you want to understand who they are, their cycle graphics and what their relationship to the issue is. You want to be able to map out what there falik what their needs are on the website with their expectations or what they’re coming there with, and then what their goals are. What is it that they actually want to get out of the website? And once you start to do that, you start to get a blueprint of these individual users and what they’re going to do. One of the things thie examples i shared in the workshop pompel wass klein it’s not actually also health related, this was for a client in the area of cancer screening, and if you go into a google search. Right now, i i challenge you. Just put in cancer screening in google, and you’ll see what comes up with a top ranking websites and their deadly. I think it’s, just an avalanche of coffee and information on text to making your way through, i think of the average site web, md, or ah, or even cancer dot org’s. Yeah, there’s, just there’s. So they millions of pages. It seems like and it’s all very text intensive, and i’m not sure how well it’s, uh, how well it’s organized. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Lively conversation, top trends and sound advice. That’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m lawrence paige nani, author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. Debra and i have been interrupted twice, now way. We’re doing our best. We were when you’re non-profit radio and you’re not bloomberg or cnn sometimes have to share the stage on dh that’s what’s happening at ntcdinosaur, wearing stage with the one of the generous sponsors of ntc bm they have the stage now, so deborah and i are behind the stage and that’s what happened the first time, and now it’s happened a second time because i had to help the help the sponsors start their program, but were unrelenting. Deb and i are not, we’re not. We’re not giving up it all that’s. Why it sounds a lot different, but the substance is still here. Thank you for your patients, deborah way. Will person twice thank you very much. So where we were at stage, where i’m getting lost in millions of pages, seemingly millions of pages of cancer data from my search, andi, i’m frustrated and leaving, right? So, uh, our client came to us with a problem, and that was, uh it was actually a particular province and candidate was albert, the health services, the agency that’s responsible for delivering health care there, and cancer rates were going down, and they wanted us to put up a website about screening so that people could understand what they have to do and why it’s important, all the details and how do you prepare for it and all of the questions? Sametz all these other sites, so we started to dig in a little bit more about who we’re the users who were the people who are going to come and use this site, and something started to really emerge for us and that especially in that age category of women between forty and sixty, and these are the people, especially your time about breast cancer. We’re really, really confused. I don’t know what it’s like in america, exactly, but in canada there are different guidelines depending where you live. So the provinces have their own individual guidelines for wednesday. Appropriate time to get screened for various things on then there are national guidelines. And, uh, the national guidelines changed about a year and a half two years ago, and this kind of created a lot of confusion and and there’s a lot of information being put out, a lot of media reports and it’s just normal human behavior when you have a lot more information on a lot of confusion, what do you do? You don’t you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You throw your hands up in frustration and hope for the best, right? How most people stop getting screened in the same numbers. So that was the problem. So recognizing that was the problem. Sort of talking to women like this understanding who they were. Thiss forty. And this became our bull’s eye. This woman forty to sixty and who? She wass how she interacted online, what she needed. They did not want a lot of information. They just wanted simple, clear answers. Please, will someone tell us what to do? Does it? Forty. I get screened is a fifty. I get screen, we don’t know. So we set out to make a website that really fulfilled those needs and the website welcome to go to it. It’s screening for life dot c a and it’s very simple for is the number four no it’s not spelled out fo r okay, so what we did is we created a little tool that greets me when you arrive at the website there’s there’s. Just a big question that says not sure if you need to be screened for cancer and it asked you just click on the right figure and find out and there’s two silhouettes of a man and a woman there, and you picked the right one for you. Oh, and as soon as you click on it, you get this slider where you can just now slide your age and as the slider changes, the silhouettes changed shape, so it looks if you go down for anyone who’s going to look like a twenty one year old, you’re going a little bulge in the ways to get into the fifty exactly so kind of a little neat. We gave some buddies people something to interact with right away, so it kind of gets you engage gets you a little bit closer the website, but right away as soon as you say okay, female slide fifty for whom you have your answer, and then it gives you just very, very basic information about what you need to know. And if you go no further than that on the website and that visit, we’re totally happy we don’t need you to go anywhere else. We know that you have the very basic information if you want to keep going there’s a lot of information, if you want to figure out howto prepare for oscar, you can do that way need to relate this back to use their personas, right? But because we had done our homework way up front in terms of figuring out this was the problem there a bunch of users, for example, that cervical affects young women from the wallet sex, women from the time they’re sexually active. Colorectal cancer affects both men and women, but we understood from doing we did prove sonus for all of those people. We even did persona because the client wanted us to for the boyfriend of the the young one. Excellent. So because of that, how hiv affects that but what i’m saying is because we did all these personas and we understood what the problem was. We understood that the most important user was this forty to sixty year old women that’s who was coming that’s, who were those that’s who was seeking the information most that’s whose expectations we needed to fill right away. And we knew that we had to do it in a very simple way without having to make them dig because they didn’t want all that information. They wanted a simple, clear answer, and we didn’t have to make them look for it. The process of the persona you had said earlier, they get to the point, they even have they have names? Wey? No, because we don’t our research, we know their online behavior gets to the point of we know what? What sites they get their news from regular. That sites they go to regularly. What kind of detail in these fictitious people? Okay, that’s. A little bit more of the media profile. When you talk about how they consume good times. That’s it important for these particular women? What we what we drill down into were things like where? They lived professionally what their relationship was, for example, way have different personas when we’ve got to our primary one. So we had one where she was kind of a professional woman in that she’s familiar with, uh, online et cetera her motivations to start taking better care of herself. She’s had a friend who’s died from breast cancer. We fill in all these these things and her motivations because she has had a wake up call and she wants us to start taking better care of herself and that’s. How she’s going to come to be investigating cancer screening way had another persona she’s more of a rural person who lives in alberta not really taking care of herself very much kind of is like that stop broke don’t fix it sort of thing. I don’t run to the doctor and everything, but her children are the ones who have been after her. They’ve been reminding they’ve seen the news they’ve been watching it so the influences in life so this sixty year old person lives on a farm and who’s who’s like this, stoick, the staunch stoic who really doesn’t have a lot of, you know, time for doctors, but it’s at the urge of her daughters, who are making her pay a little bit more attention and start to take care of herself and get scream. So those that that’s the kind of information, then once we have that what air there needs online, what did they do? How does that what is this woman he’s, very two different people knowed how do they interact in the online world? Oh, and again, that comes into the speed at which we want to serve up information, the tool which we wanted to do not make people read a lot because we had our rural women in mind. I didn’t want to give it that sort of very text, you know, dense copy information. So those air, how those pieces start to unfold and then the goals, of course, what do they want out of it? That may be a little bit different as you go in, like our professional woman. She may want a little bit more deeper information for those of the kinds of things, okay, sense, yeah, yeah, and the that i mean, clearly that the time is considerable for doing the research to create these that goes into creating the personas. But i, you know, i think that if you really want people to achieve their goals on your site and achieved their goals, not your goals for the for them, but achieve their goals on the site dahna it seems it seems very clear, yeah nasco piela yeah takes time, but in terms of time, how long is your site going to be up? No, that would be the ants and don’t you want people to be successful on it every single day? Not just occasionally, when someone has more time to spend than the average right? So if you spend three weeks creating these personas three to four weeks doing that up front, my my suggestion is that it’s a really worth investment of time when you’re gonna have a site that’s up for two to three years, who creates the personas and we want to avoid website by committee when you mentioned earlier who’s actually sitting down and creating the the people in willing up my world because i work at an agency we provide. That service and we do it though in a collaborative way with their clients. So we will talk to them about what we’re going to be doing will inform them of what kind of research tools will employ. We might be talking to them are usually almost always talking to them and talking to some key stakeholders within their organizations in addition to outside users and then once we have started tio get a handle on it will have a meeting will sit down with them and review the research, review the findings with them and then the final personas they have to approve everybody’s got to be and on it. But we do provide that service okay non-profits khun do with themselves you can there are ways to do it. We left in our workshop we had actually a a worksheet that we handed out. We actually asked everybody okay, pick a website that’s near and dear to your heart. Pick one user and now fill this out and we gave them all the areas to fill out. And then we had a couple volunteers come up and you were very brave enough to bring up their website then walk us through the use of ok, so it can’t be done internally, but with time commitment, but obvious value benefit at the at the end of the process, user personas percent okay, something could be a lot of fun, too. It can be actually, i mean, there use. They become your little family. Yeah. You know, you get to know them very well. You did. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. My pleasure. Deborah sharpe is digital director at manifest communications in where we’re in a hurry in ontario in toronto. Thank you. Our excellent. Thank you very much. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of anti season non-profit technology conference and i want to thank debra for being a good sport and two interruptions. Now we’re in the back alley almost of the of the science fair, but the substance is still valuable. So thank you very much, debra. My thanks to everybody at ntc and the non-profit technology network for hosting me there. Next friday is fund-raising day in new york city, hosted by the new york city chapter of the association of fund-raising professionals. I’ll be there getting lots of interviews for the show, but i won’t be doing them live. So what is going to air next friday? I don’t know, but don’t be so nosy, you’ll find out, and you know that it’ll be good. Next friday’s show. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it at tony martignetti dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer show social media is by julia campbell of jake campbell. Social marketing and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico of the new rules. Our music is by scott stein, you’re with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out, that’d be great. E-giving didn’t think dick tooting getting ding, ding, ding ding. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get me anything. Duitz nothing. Cubine are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Hi, i’m lost in a role, and i’m sloan wainwright, where the host of the new thursday morning show the music power hour. Eleven a m we’re gonna have fun, shine the light on all aspects of music and its limitless healing possibilities. We’re gonna invite artists to share their songs and play live will be listening and talking about great music from yesterday to today, so you’re invited to share in our musical conversation. Your ears will be delighted with the sound of music and our voices. Join austin and sloan live thursdays at eleven a. M on talking alternative dot com, you’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Talking calm.
