Overview
To address rising food insecurity due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Community Loaves, a Seattle-based nonprofit, was founded to leverage volunteer bakers to bake and donate homemade bread to local food pantries. Within a year, the nonprofit has expanded to 800 volunteers and donates nearly 4,000 loaves each month.
For young, nonprofit organizations, it is critical to attract and maintain a dedicated volunteer base. Our team sought to help this young nonprofit expand into new markets nationwide and achieve its 2021 strategic goal of donating 30,000 loaves. Over 6 months, we conducted a mixed-method research study to understand volunteer motivation and engagement, resulting in the design playbook and recipe redesign.
My Role
Service Designer
UX Researcher
Visual Designer
My Team
1 Service Designer
4 UX Researcher
My Tools
Figma
Miro
Otter
Delve
Google Forms
Basecamp
How might we design a volunteer experience for Community Loaves that can scale and maintain volunteer engagement even as the pandemic slows?
Research Questions
01. What are the behaviors and motivations of engaged Community Loaves volunteers?
02. What reasons do volunteers have for disengaging or leaving the organization?
03. What keeps volunteers engaged in the organization?
04. How does the value proposition resonate with volunteers?
Mixed-Method Approach
We used a mixed-method approach to dig deeper into the volunteer experience, understand the current volunteer journey, and identify opportunities for design ideation.
Process
I. Preliminary Research
Literature Review
We first sought to understand volunteer retention and lifecycle management in the nonprofit space. The literature revealed common themes for predicting volunteer attrition and retention across nonprofit organizations, which served as the starting point for our volunteer survey design.
1. Milbourn, et. al., 2019; Yotopoulos, A, n.d. Stanford Center on Longevity - The Sightlines Project; Jurgen, 2012; Allen and Meuller, 2013
2. Milbourn, et. al., 2019; Stukas, et. al. 2014; Hyde, et. al 2016; Cyr, 2018; Jurgen, 2012
Data from IBISWorld (Le, T., 2020) and NonProfit Source 2018 Giving Statistics. Logos from each nonprofit organization’s website; Ashton, A. (2018, December 03); Competitors discovered via Walla, et. al., 2019
Secondary Research
To begin the research process, we prioritized understanding the larger nonprofit industry in which Community Loaves operates, the Community Food Services industry. We then investigated how other programs operate within the Community Food Services space. The team conducted a competitive market analysis across nine organizations with similar or related missions to understand how other food service nonprofit organizations scaled operations.
Preliminary Interviews
By initially speaking with founder, Katherine Kerhli, we set out to understand the structure of the current volunteer lifecycle and the challenges Community loaves faces. We also conducted 3 exploratory interviews with volunteer bakers to identify motivating factors for participation. We used the findings from these interviews to inform the design of our initial volunteer survey.
* To protect participant’s privacy, some participant’s names and photos are not real.
II. Volunteer Survey
Conduct Surveys for “Engaged” & “Disengaged” Volunteers
We used the Engaged Volunteer Survey to understand motivations, engagement, and retention; the Disengaged Volunteer Survey to understand volunteer attrition.
Surveys included Likert scale questions and open-ended questions to provide quantitative and qualitative data. A total of 383 volunteers responded to our engaged volunteer survey, yielding about a 54% completion rate.
Sample survey questions
Visualize Survey Data
The engaged volunteer base is more homogeneous than expected, with the majority of respondents identified as female, over the age of 50, and retired.
Philanthropy was the most important factor for participation, indicating the value proposition resonates with the volunteer base.
III. Direct & Participatory Observation
Experience the New Baker Process
I participated as a baker volunteer, experienced a full volunteer cycle: from attending the info section to drop-off my bread donation at the hub.
Mixing my dough
My bread packaged for donation
Observing volunteers counting delivered flour
Observing volunteers prepping for baker’s supply pickup
Observe & Participate in Supply Delivery
I rode in the organization’s flour delivery truck to observe how the baking supplies got distributed to each hub and then each baker.
Document Observation Data
Team members captured video and images, and leveraged the AEIOU framework to document the key activities, environment, interactions, objects, and users.
AEIOU Framework
Observation videos, and images
IV. In-depth Interviews
Remote In-depth Interviews
We conducted ten in-depth interviews with volunteer bakers to explore their baking routines, rituals, and behaviors and to understand what motivates them to participate in Community Loaves.
Zoom interviews with volunteer bakers
Identified themes and “buckets of opportunity”
Define Emerging Themes
Each team member used the open coding method to define emerging themes across all the interviews. We used the codes to organize our interviewee responses into “buckets of opportunity,” which represent challenges or gaps in the volunteer journey worth addressing.
V. Ideation & Prototyping
Ideation
After defining our design principles, we conducted a series of individual and group ideation sessions.
Team Ideation Board
Team Sketches
Prototyping & Concept Testing
We consolidated recipe features and ideas generated during ideation and prioritized these features using an impact/effort matrix. Then, we drafted recipe components in Figma to create a low-fidelity prototype for concept evaluation.
Recipe Prototype
Concept Testing Insights
Research Artifacts
I. Mindsets
With the understanding of a fairly homogeneous volunteer base according to survey demographic data, we chose mindsets over personas to better demonstrate the diversity of emotions and behaviors exhibited by Community Loaves volunteers.
II. Volunteer Experience Map
A volunteer experience map highlighted the complexity of the entire process for a new and growing organization, helping identify opportunities to improve the volunteer baking and post-donation experience.
Areas of Opportunities
We identified three areas of opportunity in our research that will impact the volunteer experience.
Design Artifacts
I. Design Playbook
To present multiple low fidelity concepts, we created a playbook to highlight designs that supported three areas of opportunity we identified in our research that will impact the volunteer experience.
II. Recipe Redesign
Our prototype aimed to improve the baking experience by reducing pain points and the need for technical support. The new format makes baking more approachable for our novice bakers and helps them evolve into experts.
“I’m so exceptionally grateful for this beautiful work. Thank you for giving your whole heart to this project.”
— Katherine W. Kehrli | Founder and Chief Bread Officer of Community Loaves
Epilogue
Our team recognizes the challenge of our initial research remaining relevant in a rapidly evolving organization founded during a global pandemic. Our hope is that the outcomes of this project will continue to serve as inspiration for the future of Community Loaves.
It was a great experience to work on this meaningful project and produce research insights and design recommendations that can help such an amazing organization that helps people meet their basic needs.
