Giving and Getting Brief;

I will be combining two briefs for this project! This is the first;

Giving and getting

use design to evoke need and inspire generosity

Choose an existing charity and design a means by which it can increase its fundraising and other resources. Make it easier for people to give, or make it easier for charities to ask – or both.

The brief
Choose an existing charity and design a means by which it can increase its fundraising and other resources. Make it easier for people to give, or make it easier for charities to ask – or both.

Scope
For the purpose of illustration, the following would all be viable responses:

– a compelling new donation or collection box

– a powerful graphic display of statistical information

– a well-communicated and ingenious fiscal mechanism (e.g. Gift Aid)

– a persuasive new way of using words and/or images to invoke need

– a service or campaigning system that deploys time, talent and connections in new ways …and many others are possible; clever ways of assisting giving and getting which maintain essential principles of honesty, transparency and fairness.

Judging criteria

Design craft – does your solution look and feel the best it can?

Ingenuity – does it make a conceptual or lateral leap we haven’t seen before?

Insight – what need, gap or opportunity have you discovered and how?

Communication – is it easy to understand and does it inspire people?

Social benefit – how does it help society as a whole?

Finally, the RSA argues that design represents a resourcefulness that is invaluable in today’s climate of austerity. Is your solution resourceful?

Process and presentation
You have 4 A3 presentation boards and a written summary not exceeding 500 words in which to describe your solution. In addition to presenting the finished solution, describe your process:

– what were your observations? Show how your analysis of these observations gave you insight into the design opportunity

– your insights might be research-based or intuitive, or a combination of both: relate the concept clearly to these insights

– make sure the judges know what specific issue or issues you have had to resolve in the process of designing your solution

– tell the story so that we understand the context for your solution and the benefits it delivers

Giving and getting
use design to invoke need and inspire generosity
Giving and getting
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Background

Charities are defined as organisations or institutions set up to provide benefit to those in need. The essential attribute in legal terms is that a charitable activity must seek the public ‘weal’, or prosperity, and is not concerned with the conferment of private advantage. Remember that the charity sector is wide-ranging and includes community and voluntary organisations, schools, hospitals, NGOs, museums, libraries and cultural institutions and groups campaigning for a variety of human and animal rights.

The UK has a long-established history of relatively generous giving, most recently demonstrated in the response to the DEC Pakistan Appeal. Strong giving has continued in spite of the recession, and whilst some areas have lost support (the arts, for example), others have received increased support. Research has shown that individual giving patterns have shifted – some people are giving more to fewer charities, for example. Generally, individuals are becoming much more thoughtful about about why they give and to whom. Corporations, likewise, are being more discerning about how many and what types of charities and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities they are involved with, but are tending to do more with those that they have chosen.

In spite of this well-established system of giving, a survey by the Charity Commission in 2008 showed that four out of ten charities had already been affected by the credit crunch, with a quarter reporting a fall in donations and income predicted to continue its descent. Oxfam and others have said more recently that individual donations are most likely to suffer as widespread redundancies make people eliminate non-essential standing orders from their bank statements. Many businesses and corporations meanwhile continue to trim donations to charitable and community work off their balance sheets to concentrate on core profit-making activities. At the same time, the need for services provided by charities and the third sector is growing, with increased hardship as a result of the recession, widespread and dramatic cuts to public funding predicted in the coming years, and a society that becomes more diverse and complex all the time.

Student Design Awards 2010/11
An innovative programme of awards
RSA
Student Design Awards 2010/11
www.thersa.org/projects/design

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22.09
The last Government placed great emphasis on the value of the third sector, while the Conservatives’ Big Society names “charities, voluntary groups and a new generation of community organisers” as the agents to tackle some of the most stubborn social problems.

Where will the time and money come from?

In these straightened circumstances, how will people be persuaded to give more of the time and money they have to good causes?

Design and behaviour change “H ow selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

It is often said that altruistic principles like these expressed by Adam Smith – ironically, perhaps, the acknowledged father of economics – have gone out of fashion in today’s world of freemarket capitalism. It’s certainly true that antisocial, selfish, unsympathetic behaviour is rarely out of the news, whether exhibited in nuisance neighbours, airplane drunks, or everybody’s current bête noire, greedy bankers. But recent neurological research shows that people are not as selfish as the Enlightenment theory of economic man, driven by rational selfinterest, led us to believe. Often our decisions are surprisingly altruistic. Furthermore, new knowledge from behavioural science clearly indicates the power that social norms – our understanding of how others behave – have on our behaviour: we are not as autonomous and calculating in our decision-making as we thought, either. Finally books like the policy-sensation Nudge, and other theories of “persuasive technology”, demonstrate that the design of the products, services and environments that people interact with can have a marked effect on the way that people behave.

You might consider:
Why do people give? There is extensive evidence that people give (money and time) to organisations and activities that they are passionate about.

How can charities understand this better, and how can they reach those who are passionate about their area?

What stops people giving? Are there subtle barriers as well as the obvious pressures of personal budget, inconvenience and preoccupation with one’s immediate world?

How could the experience of giving be enhanced?

What forms of acknowledgement, feedback or emotional reward could be designed in to the mechanisms of giving and getting? What else enhances the experience of giving.

The second brief will be written between myself, The Sara's Hope Foundation team and Total WSI Solutions.