What needs to be true for this to be a good idea for your nonprofit?

photo by Mindy Johnson

​This question helps you uncover the assumptions embedded in an idea.  Often assumptions for programs and services are hidden in three key areas: audience, problem and solution. For the idea to be a good one, you need to have found the right audience, correctly identified an important problem and designed a solution that is viable.

Let me give you an example. Using a design thinking approach to design new offerings for key segments of our organization’s audience, a team I led at my last association was able to design experiments that gave us feedback in each of these three key areas.

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​Audience

In one instance, we had designed a program for one audience segment. After we tested the idea with the target audience and received positive feedback, we proceeded to run a pilot.  After successfully offering the program to one segment the association’s audience, we were able to replicate it for another audience.

​Problem

​Often this area is the most likely to trip you up. Have you identified a problem that is worth solving? Or a problem that is really critical for your target audience? Or is it just something that would be nice to solve? When hard choices are made about time, money and energy, this challenge gets put on the back burner.
 
To test our understanding of the problem, we wrote a problem statement or description of what we thought the problem was. For example: “association professionals often have a clear understanding of the views of their highly engaged volunteers, but are not sure that these reflect their average member.” Through our experiments, we were able to get feedback on how important each issue was.  With feedback we were able to eliminate a number of ideas that addressed problems that were not seen as critical.

​Solution

​When is the last time you got caught up in your idea and created something more elaborate than was really needed? In one case of one program we were testing with members, during the brainstorming stage, the design team had envisioned an executive leadership development program with an extensive online wrap around component. After testing and customer feedback, we learned that members were interested in the in-person aspect of the program. They doubted, however, that they would use the online components. Thus with a short testing period, we were able to eliminate a costly aspect of the program that would have be time consuming and resource intensive to create. It would have also necessitated increasing the program price, yet our research showed it did not provide sufficient value.
 
By testing early, getting feedback from customers we were able to learn and iterate, saving money and staff time by eliminating options that sounded promising at the white board but proved to have faulty assumptions. 

Want to talk about how this might apply to your organization? Request a free coaching session.