How would you design a volunteering app for Facebook?

• It’s safe to assume that this would be part of the core experience of FB rather than a separate app, correct? Yes.

• Mission of FB is to connect people; at FB you build tools for ppl to create communities. Volunteerism is one of the characteristics of strong communities, because doing something to help a person within my community brings me closer to them, so it make sense that facebook would invest in a feature like this, certainly from a mission perspective.

• Let's consider the two user groups involved in volunteering and a few different segments:

  • Organizations (non profits)

    • Size of org: small, medium, well established (Red Cross)

    • Topic: eg. animal rights, human rights, environmental

    • Geography: local, statewide, nationwide, international

  • Volunteers (people)

    • Experience: little experience with volunteering, average, a lot of experience

    • Age: child, adult, senior

I'd suggest to focus this future on serving volunteers because if we can serve them well they'll be able to offer their time to non-profits. I'd suggest on focusing on the adult volunteer with little-average experience with volunteering.

• As a potential volunteer, it's difficult to find non profits willing to take volunteers

• As a potential volunteer, it's difficult to find non profits that would need the skills I have

• As a potential volunteer, it's difficult to know the time commitment needed to help and how that fits with my schedule

For the adult working population, I think the biggest problem is finding volunteer opportunities that would fit their schedule.

• When a user likes activist content, serve "similar" organizations pages at the top of their newsfeed “volunteer opportunities near you” that are specific to that "topic"

• Based on users' professional skills section from the profile, expose which orgs are searching for those skills with a tile in newsfeed

• “Volunteer Page" with "call for help" and "ready to help" cards:

  • Non profits could fill out "call for help" card with very clear info: when, what, who, for how long. All events would be in a new page on Facebook called "volunteer opportunities" that the user could filter by date & time available and amount of time.

  • Volunteers could fill out "ready to help" card with clear info: what they were interested in, how long, skills.

I'd prioritize the last solution of the volunteer page with cards offering and requesting help. This is the best solution because it answers to the user needs of time and availability preferences as well as selection of the volunteer topic they care about.

Success metrics

• Mission metrics:

  • Attendance at events: conversion from acceptance of volunteer opportunity to actual attendance"

  • Retention: # of times a person attends an event

  • Quality: satisfaction with the events

• Product health metrics: 

  • Number of new event cards created

  • Number of new event cards accepted

  • Retention: how many cards were accepted by one user in the last month

  • Activity funnel: viewing, engaging, accepting, attending

Clarifications

Goals

Users

• Volunteers - people looking to volunteer somewhere
• Organisations - people searching for volunteers

• Volunteers
  • By expercience
    • First time volunteers - have never volunteered before and have very little knowledge of how volunteering works and what's out there
    • Occasional volunteers - have had some volunteering experience in the past and want to do it again
    • Active volunteers - are experts in volunteering and have done it several times before and are actively doing it now
  • By demographic (age)
    • Children
    • Adults
    • Elderly people
• Organisations
  • By size
    • Small orgs - individuals or very small organisations
    • Medium orgs - medium sized organisations
    • Large orgs - very established eg. Greenpeace 
  • By imact area
    • Local orgs
    • International orgs

Use cases and pain points

1. A volunteer what's to see which organisations are looking for volunteers
2. They want to be able to see all the relevant information about the organisation
3. They want to be able to register their interest and maybe sign up for an informative meeting
4. They want to start volunteering in an organisation of their choosing

Possible solutions

1. Search engine for volunteer opportunities
   1. Quiz to understand user's interests, availability, available locations, etc. that will retrieve best results
   2. List of "top rated", "hot right now", "new opportunities", etc. to explore
2. Organisation "enhanced" page
   1. Topline info showing cause, size of org, areas of opperations
   2. Volunteers experiences section
      1. Showing rating, photos, videos and comments
   3. Calendar with activities for users to book onto

• By focusing on first time and occasional volunteers I am consciously not designing for active volunteers to help them enhance their volunteering experience.
• The design is not especifically made for volunteers of all ages. Eg. children might need more security when browsing and deciding on the organisation.