Social Lab

About

Creating Engaging, Interactive Experiences to Highlight Non-Profit Impact

This project focused on transforming a traditional fundraising event for a non-profit organization by introducing engaging, interactive activities that effectively highlight their impact and success stories. Our goal was to create an event experience that resonated with sponsors and attendees, moving beyond a typical corporate feel to foster a more meaningful connection with the organization's mission.

Through extensive research, testing, and iteration, we developed low-effort, high-impact activities that could deliver the non-profit’s message in an engaging way. By blending storytelling with interactivity, we aimed to create a memorable experience that both communicated the organization's accomplishments and encouraged greater involvement from supporters.

Teammates

Gayatri Tawde
Divyanshi Rajouria
Ford Minton

Client

Teens in Public Service

Capstone Project

Problem

The organization faced challenges in effectively showcasing its impact and telling the stories of its work.

Context

About The Organization

Teens in Public Service

TIPS is a non-profit organization based in Seattle dedicated to empowering high school students through paid summer internships at partner (non-profit) organizations serving diverse communities.

27 Years

of Serving the Community

300+

non-profit partner organizations

1200

alumni living purposeful and impactful lives

Research

Understanding the audience

1:1 Interviews

To understand the best way to communicate the organization’s impact, we conducted interviews with:

11 current and past interns
4 sponsors

Identified places where impact needs can be highlighted

HOW MIGHT WE

Enhance the fundraiser event to better highlight and communicate the impact of the organization’s work to the sponsors?

Process

Observations from past events

Low Engagement Due to Limited Interaction

Previous events lacked interactive elements, leading to less engagement from attendees and missed opportunities for meaningful connections.

Overly Formal Atmosphere

The overall tone of past events felt overly corporate, creating an environment that wasn’t as warm or inviting as it could have been for fostering deeper relationships with the audience.

Key considerations

Target audience: Sponsors

Foster more engagement and convey maximum information without overwhelming the attendees.

Tone of the event

Maintain a professional, corporate atmosphere.

Engagement

The activities need to be low-effort but high-impact.

IDEATION & testing

Crafting Solutions through Iteration

Co-design activities

Conducted codesign activities to collaboratively ideate with the target audience: the sponsors.

1:1 Interviews

Conducted 4 interviews and tested prototypes of the activities with participants to understand

Insights from testing

The mural emerged as the standout idea, resonating the most.

There’s a strong preference for activities that allow multiple people to interact at once.

Low-effort, high-impact activities were favored for their simplicity and effectiveness.

Solution

Timeline of the event

Digital map & Timeline

An interactive display will help people learn about key milestones; start conversations around TIPS showing high schools, NGO’s and local landmarks.

Collaborative Mural

Engaging visitors in a mural project to illustrate TIPS' causes and partnerships, enhancing donor understanding and fostering word-of-mouth support.

Silent Storytelling

Experiencing key moments and locations in TIPS' story through a guided audio journey across the Seattle skyline.

1. Begin by reading the brochure for instructions and an overview of the journey.

2. Get ready to immerse yourself by putting on the provided headphones.

3. As the story unfolds, use the brochure to identify key locations mentioned in the audio.

4. Take in the stunning Seattle skyline as you follow along, matching the view with the landmarks in the story.

5. Spot the specific locations using the numbered guides on the brochure.

6. Listen closely to the narrated story while appreciating the beauty of the Seattle skyline.

1
Begin by reading the brochure for instructions and an overview of the journey.

2
Get ready to immerse yourself by putting on the provided headphones.

3
As the story unfolds, use the brochure to identify key locations mentioned in the audio.

4
Take in the stunning Seattle skyline as you follow along, matching the view with the landmarks in the story.

5
Spot the specific locations using the numbered guides on the brochure.

6
Listen closely to the narrated story while appreciating the beauty of the Seattle skyline.

Ideal journey of the event with all the activities

Event coming up on 8th November 2024.

Future scope

Learnings

Enhancing Storytelling on the Website

Given more time, we would explore how to better showcase TIPS' impact and success stories on their website, focusing on more dynamic and engaging storytelling formats.

Highlighting Intern Experiences

We would also dive deeper into presenting intern experiences through personalized stories, making their journeys more relatable and impactful for the website's audience.

Learnings

Remote design team

During this project, I served as the point of contact, ensuring smooth communication between the remote design team and stakeholders. I effectively designed a physical event remotely, using Figma and Slack to maintain team alignment. We ensured design consistency through shared systems, version control, and structured feedback loops. Proactive problem-solving helped navigate logistical challenges, enabling successful remote collaboration.

Small Changes, Big Impact

Working with a non-profit, I realized that due to limited resources, we couldn’t always implement large-scale changes. However, I learned how small, strategic adjustments, like simplifying the event registration process or adding interactive elements like live polls, could significantly improve participant engagement. These minor tweaks were cost-effective but had a noticeable impact on the overall experience, proving that even incremental improvements can drive meaningful outcomes in resource-constrained environments.