The State of Connecticut
The Nonprofit Grant is a vital Source of income for the improvement of any nonprofit organization in the state of Connecticut. This was a application research that didn’t had a digital presence. The information acquired was presenting the Non-Profit Grant(NPG) website.
Role: UX Researcher
Goal: To discover research to learn about the applicant’s grantees experiences. Improve the Non profit grant application experience.
Project Overview
The Non Profit Grant Application is a source of helping agencies fund towards assistance of communities.
Outcome
The research team had the best efforts to educate the stakeholders about areas of improvement
Ideation
This is the phase to understand what is the best approach of attack on this Problem?
Stakeholders
The stakeholder for this project were members from Office of Policy and Management
Users
Our Clients were the non-profit organization recipients that were awarded the grant
Tools
The project was a standard user interview with secondary data research to support the evidence.
Skills earned:
Service Design Research
Generative Research
So What did we do?
We chose to conduct the research employed on a 1-on-1 moderated interview with individuals who have past experience either applied, received or benefited from Government grant, especially this NPG Grant.
Why just 1-on-1 moderated interview
The Grant application is all dependent on the applicant’s needs and demands. The experience is to find areas of improvement in the application submission process. We broke the application process into three stages: Pre-submission, Submission, and Post-Submission Stages.
Interview Questionnaire
Pre-submission stage:
Could you tell us more about your organization and what you needed your grant for?
How did you learn about the Grant that you applied for?
How did you know how to apply to a grant?(Previous mentorship, existing templated, training, etc..)
Submission Stage:
How often do you apply for grants?
Whose responsibility in your organization is to apply for grants? If not, then how did you end up with that responsibility? Is it a team work or individual prioritization?
Could you describe to us the overall workflow of completing and applying for a NPG Grant?
Post-Submission Stage:
How did you manage you grant after receiving the award letter?
What advice would you give to someone who is applying for grant for the first time?
11 users
Grant Applicants
10 + output
10 organizations
Majority
Experience Grant writers
Majority Paid
Grants Received users
Interview Participants
There were 11 users with Majority having experience writer, and being received grants.
Overarching Themes
Transparency
Transparency about questionnaire
Transparency about Application going live
Application instruction page
Resources
lack of Point of contact to ask questions.
Lack of documentations and resources to get evidence.
Post - Submission Tracker
When the application decision has been made, after submission
Submission Stage
Challenges that occurs to users includes from educating the user on writing grants, clear instructions, clarity of questions, the numerical value impact.
What is the Major Obstacle in Application?
When Application was live
Questions during Application
Post-Application Submission Tracker
Pre-submission Stage
Here were the Major obstacles that applicants faced before the submission stage
When will the Grant Application be LIVE
Asking questions should be available before and after the Grant application is available
Detailed Instructions
Submission Stage
Here were the Major obstacles that applicants faced during the submission stage
Extending the Q and A section to get confusion cleared.
Majority of the user have a grant writers and educating the user is important
The application is about long term impact, and not human feelings
Post-Submission Stage
Here were the Major obstacles that applicants faced after the submission stage
When will the budget be released?
An Application tracker could give a status updates to give a sense of relief.
Estimate arrival to give contractor update.