Case study · GiveSmart · Nonprofit fundraising · 2024
Designing company purchasing for a nonprofit fundraising suite, on a design system I built.
The problem
GiveSmart runs three platforms for nonprofits: Donor CRM, Events, and Fundraise. All of them were built around individual donors and ticket buyers. But people also buy and give on behalf of their company, and the existing flow couldn't tell the two apart or give admins anyone to follow up with.
I led the research and interviews, designed the UI, and stayed on as the UX point of contact for engineering once the build started. The prototypes ran on GSDS, the design system I built for GiveSmart.
The insight
"Who is first on the phone? Who is going to email and call me back?"
I assumed one contact per organization would be enough. Across about 10 hour-long usability sessions, people kept describing the same problem: their contact left, and fixing that record in the CRM was painful. We added a secondary contact, kept testing, and people still wanted more backup. We landed on three.
Primary
Primary + secondary
Primary + secondary + tertiary
The design
Choosing an option reveals only the fields that apply to it, so nobody faces a form full of inputs meant for someone else. Admins and purchasers each get their own journey, and every organization profile maps to Donor CRM.
Outcome
This was one of the highest-priority features during my time at GiveSmart. The designs got strong feedback, and development had started with me answering engineering questions along the way. I didn't get to see it launch, but the validation we did get makes me confident in the direction.
Capture what every organization needs, and let the rest be optional.
An organization profile is only as useful as the people you can reach.