Clarification questions

1. Volunteering is a “marketplace” where organizations are looking for volunteers, and people look to volunteer? correct
2. Is it a product within the FaceBook app or an external product? Within
3. App Web? For you to decide -> let’s do it in the web app.
4. Is it for specific demographics? For you to decide -> I would like to narrow down the scope to the US.

Structure

I will start with the mission of Facebook and explaining how such a product can promote FB’s mission. Then I’ll set a  goal for the product. I’ll segment the users and will select a segment to focus on. I’ll list their pain points and decide to focus on one or a few, brainstorm solutions, prioritize them, pick one, and describe the initial version and its metrics.

Mission and product

FB’s mission is to make the world closer together and build tools for communities. People who volunteer mostly consider it a meaningful part of their life and are willing to share it with their friends and family. In volunteering, there is a social aspect, where people volunteer with other people serving a cause that matters for them.

The goal

Assist people to volunteer together

Users

1. People that volunteer
   1. All the time
   2. Once in a while
2. People that don’t volunteer
   1. And willing to volunteer
   2. Not willing to volunteer
3. Volunteering Associations (NGOs)
4. Businesses that would like the employees to volunteer

Focus

Our goal is to assist people to volunteer together. To create an initial critical mass of volunteers that will lead to a networking effect and encourage group 2.1. to volunteer (which I assume is the biggest audience), I would like to focus on group 1.1 that volunteers all the time.

Journeys and pain points

1. Find places to volunteer.
2. Evaluate if it fits my wishes
   1. Details – how long? How often? What will I do there? Any pre-requisites?
   2. Consult with real people get feedback ask questions
   3. Understand if someone I know that already volunteers there or would like to
3. Commit sign-up
4. Share the experience with friends

Prioritization

* Depends if the volunteering is for an extended period

Based on the estimations, I would like to focus on pain point #2.3; It is also a unique paint point that Facebook can address better than other competitors.

To address this pain point, we need to think of ways to allow people to share where they volunteer, which also addresses pain point #5.

Solutions Ideations

1. Share a life event – like “Starting a new Job” postshare
   1. From the organization page
   2. Profile (may have multiple events for multiple organizations)
2. Sharing experience
   1. Create templates to share volunteering experiences via post.
   2. Create templates to share volunteering experiences via Stories (imagefilters).
3. Suggestions on the feed
   1. You have friends that volunteer at
   2. Aggregations of places (based location)

Prioritize solutions

Based on the estimations, we will focus on solution #1.

Life events have higher exposure than posts, stories, and recommendations, allowing users to understand where their friends volunteer easily.

Metrics

Primary Metrics

• # of users who volunteer in a quarter

Secondary Metrics

• # of user post a volunteering life event
• Measure the yearly ratio between 1st volunteering & returning users
• # engagement around the posts
• # of new friendships established from common volunteering

Clarify

1. Does volunterring mean signup or volunteer time on the platform
2. Why is FB investing in this?

• Make people happy by making volunteering easy

Connects with fb mission around connecting and expressing on the platform

1. Volunteers – People looking to donate their time/ resources for a cause.
2. Organizations needing volunteers – List events and have people sign up

1. Finding volunteering event. extremely hard to find something local with the people you want to go with
2. Trust – authenticity of the event. you would feel confident signing up and going
3. Privacy – anonymous donation/ help
4. Share – share your experience to motivate others
5. Track – Overtime what you have done

1. Volunteering groups – Search by geo, type and what your friends. Recommendation based on personal profile.
2. Volunteer marketplace – List skills and sign up for skills
3. AR.VR to analyze the event in real life before you.
4. Device – exchange steps walked to volunteering points that you can donate to charity

Pick volunteering markeplace to address finding opportunities easier to meet the goal of making people happier.

Volunteer – Giving time or money  to others for some cause they care about.

Aligns with overall FB mission of bringing the world closer together and forming stronger communities.

Goal: To increase engagement for FB.

Key Stakeholders:

1. Non Profits or Organizations that are seeking volunteers
2. Volunteers – Individuals or corporates that are seeking to contribute their time for a cause.

Choosing to focus on nonprofits and building stronger bong between them and volunteers. Currently there is very little social presence of non profits and have few non profits that a bigger volume of volunteers care about would potentially create an influencer like effect for those who actually want to give their times.

Persona of Non-Profits – Thinking about major non-profits that are in or near major urban cities like SF, NYC, etc. They are often working in traditional old school ways due to lack of technology, lack of investments, seeking time from volunteers, and donation. Want to focus on orgs that are in urban areas cause it will give us access to volunteers that have a high propensity to tech products. If successful here we can expand to other areas.

Problems for NGOs, Not for profit orgs:

1. Digital Connection
2. Organizing events, managing new and existing volunteer lists and out reach efforts
3. Receiving donations
4. Rewarding outstanding volunteers

Order or problem priority 2, 4, 3, 1

FB assets that we can leverage – Groups, events, influencers, stories, messenger, stories

Vision – a FB volunteer widget/app in FB product. A NGO can create a profile for themselves with name, details, address, causes they are associated with and leverage protected groups, messengers, stories, crowdfunding for it members.  For the volunteer, they can discover this widget via newsfeed, choose to be a part of a few volunteering groups and contribute time to it.

Feature ideas:

1. Volunteering widget w/ profile builder for NGO and Individuals.  (Tablestakes)
   1. This will allow them to leverage groups, events, messenger, stories, etc in the appropriate manner
   2. Will also allow them to maintain an easy to manage list of volunteers and promote better interaction.
2. Donation Seeker – NGOs can add this feature to receive donations from individuals or corporates
3. Rewarding volunteers – A story or video that gets shot specifically for a few outstanding volunteers and gets published. Along with a custom profile frame that shows their contribution to their friends and family.
4. Volunteer challenges with influencers – Partner with local or national influencers that can promote a volunteer cause like the ALS challenge and make it popular amongst the individuals.

In order to prioritize this feature, I will measure it along the dimension of impact on goal and eng cost.

The feature that are prioritized are:

1. Table stakes – Volunteering widget. 
2. Rewarding influencers with badges
3. Volunteer challenges with influencer
4. Donation Button

Success Metrics:

1. # of NGOs and volunteers that sign up
2. DAU, WAU, MAU for volunteers and NGOs w.r.t to volunteering efforts
3. Number of events setup
4. Impact on overall FB metrics like DAU, MAU, ARPU.

Risks/Pitfalls – Cannibalization of other FB products, Lack of participation from influencers, fatigue from profile badges.

To make sure we are on the same page, this is a feature in the current FB app that would make it easier for people to volunteer? Or more broadly, the feature would aim to expand the base of volunteers. To start I want to dive deeper on the objective of the feature.

Then we can look at possible users, pick a segment and outline their needs, then look at some solutions. We can then prioritize and see how we might roll something like this out. If I look at FB mission of building community and bringing people together, promoting volunteering fits nicely. I think think we can focus on engagement around volunteer events. So we would want to focus on maximizing how many FB users sign up to volunteer. We can also think about maximizing volunteer opportunities, but I think if we get more people to volunteer, there will be more opporunities that are created.

Also worth considering that FB has features that have similar sentiments (blood donation, charity contribution, mentor program).

USERS

Thinking about volunteering, there are a few categories. I would break it down by demand and supply.

There are parties who need volunteers (demand) and there are people who want to volunteer (supply).

Volunteers >

• People who regularly volunteer
• People who are open to volunteering, but don’t know what they want to volunteer for
• People who have not volunteered and have no interest in doing so

Organizations >

• Large, National well-known entities like the RED Cross or habitat for humanity
• Local Entities that support causes (social, climate)
• Professional Mentorship programs that focus more on individual needs Going back to our objective of maximizing engagement around mentorship and really driving the supply and demand of the volunteer ecosystem…

I would prioritize Volunteers that are open to volunteering, but don’t know where, when, or how. If we address that group, then we can also help serve some of the other users noted.

PAIN POINTS

If I think about the user journey when considering volunteering somewhere

• I need to be made aware of a volunteer opporunity
• I need to find the right opp for me
• I need to make sure I have time to attend
• I may want to bring a friend along
• I need to attend
• I may decide that I enjoyed my time.

Potential problems that arise:

1. Not being able to find a volunteer opp that aligns with my interests
2. Not being able to coordinate my schedule
3. Not understanding the level of commitment required from the opp
4. Being able to find opportunities that are similar to those I have enjoyed in the past
5. Being able to share my volunteer efforts with others

Of these, I would focus on addressing #1 and #4 – these seem to be most impactful for our use case of people that are interested in the idea of volunteering, but dont know where to start. So connecting them to the opp that is right for them is most likely to spur engagement and interest. Possible solutions for the volunteer feature:

Solutions 

1. Recommendations based on the social graph, where users are presented with suggested volunteer opportunities based on things like events they have attended in the past, articles they have read, people they follow, initiatives they have contributed in the past.
2. A personalized configurator that helps create volunteer recommendations – a user can select how much time they have to offer, what causes they are passionate about, what skills they have to offer, etc. Based on those inputs you can get alerts for matching volunteer opps.
3. Share and promote: users that have volunteered can show that they are planning to and/or have volunteered. This can give them a sense of credit and lets others in their network know…which then can turn others onto the volunteering feature.
4. Invite others: People can invite others to join them in volunteering. This would be valuable because it would drive engagement, and also take down some of the fears people may have about going to a volunteer event.

Priorities

Looking at these solutions, I would prioritize based on a 3 part framework (value, effort, surprise, and delight).

1. Recommendations based on the social graph
2. Personalized configurator
3. Invite Others
4. Share and promote

To pilot this we can start by introducing a volunteer feature on the FB events page. We would look at engagement with the feature to start.

To summarize, when designing a volunteer feature on FB, the goal would be to maximize engagement around volunteering events. We would focus on those who are open to volunteering, but dont know where to start. We would then build out a recommendation engine based on their social graph, and also offer the ability to refine further with a personalized configurator.