Dolin founded and is the creative director of “Portraits of Pride” a public art photography exhibit featuring LGBTA+ leaders and advocates. “If you love people, you love ‘Portraits of Pride” because it is a gift to anyone who recognized the humanity in each other,” said Dolin. Hear Dolin’s journey in this podcast and see the public art exhibit in the Metaverse for yourself.

Design Thinking (or Human-centered design) is one tool that can help, but it cannot stand alone. The greatest power in design thinking for social impact is its requirement to bring the beneficiary’s perspective into the design of services or products meant for them. Too often social impact organizations create solutions FOR rather than WITH their beneficiaries. At best, this approach creates solutions that could work better, at worst, solutions can be actively harmful.

Every person who has worked in the social impact sector can probably recall a solution, program, or service that didn’t quite make the impact they hoped. And most can tell stories of well intended solutions that caused more problems than they solved (here’s looking at you Tom’s Shoes, PlayPump, and Voluntourism). Design Thinking mitigates these unintended negative consequences by bringing empathy for beneficiaries to the table. This is a critical first step, but it is not enough.

Beyond empathy, social impact organizations must bring beneficiaries to the decision-making table. Move aside, listen better, be willing to pivot, and don’t stop there. Co-design of solutions with beneficiaries is the beginning, but that should lead directly to Co-implementation and Co-evaluation of solutions. Rethink how solutions can be implemented by not for beneficiaries. And how can evaluation efforts more deeply engage beneficiaries? Deeper, truer partnership between social impact organizations and beneficiaries throughout the lifecycle of a program will lead to more sustainable solutions. Breaking down power dynamics between so called “givers” and “receivers” will not only lead to better solutions, but to a more equitable society.

Check out the free and openly licensed Human-Centered Programming for Sustainable Impact: Overview for Practitioners to get started.

• How will you gain informed consent from participants?
• How can you ensure inclusive representation across different groups (e.g. age, gender, race, status in the community, etc.)?
• Is this volunteer work? Could/should it be paid?
• Will the council stay together through the program lifecycle?
• What will be the structure of meetings? Who will facilitate?
• How can you set up collaborative governance between your organization and participants to mitigate power imbalances?

How might a participant advisory council help your organization accomplish its goals?

A good problem statement is written from the perspective of your audience. It synthesizes findings from your discovery and is likely pretty different from your initial understanding. It provides a clear and concise statement of the challenge your audience is facing. It also includes their emotional experience and feels authentic to your audience. Checking that a problem statement rings true is as easy as sharing it with some of your audience members and seeing what they think!

One thing it doesn’t include is a solution! Embedding solutions into the problem statement will limit your team’s ability to ideate on the problem. This is often difficult and takes real discipline since our instinct is to solve problems. But holding yourself back at this state will truly pay off in the ideation phase of your project.

Below are a couple sample problem statements that share the problem from the perspective of the beneficiary of the program.

Sample problem statement for a food security program

I am struggling to provide enough food for myself and my family. It is hard to make money and get what we need because our community has been hit so hard by COVID. The help we need either isn’t available or is too hard to access. I feel frightened and ashamed that I am failing everyone who depends on me.

Sample problem statement for a workplace diversity and inclusion program

I feel overlooked and frustrated working here. I have a valuable perspective but I
rarely get an opportunity to share it. In meetings the same people get the floor and
talk over me. I’m missing out.

Benefits to Co-Evaluation
Co-evaluating programs provides humanitarian organizations with deep insight into the impact their
programs are making or could make with some adjustment. Check out some benefits to co-evaluation in the list below.

Identify

• Identify strengths and weaknesses within programs that would otherwise be invisible.
• Better understand nuances that impact implementation.
• Identify programs to be revised, replaced, or sunsetted.
• Build trust with local communities, leaders, and beneficiaries as you improve your programming in partnership with them.
• Build confidence with donors that their resources are being used wisely and to create sustainable impact.
• Identify new opportunities to support beneficiaries.

Consider: How might you best create a creative environment for ideation?

Invite multiple perspectives. Bring in people from different backgrounds. Include your audience as co-designers. The more diverse your group, the more creative the ideas!

Review the problem statement and program outcomes. Ask if there are any questions or clarifications. Ask the group, “How might we address this?”

Ideate away! If you are in person, list topics on posters and giving everyone sticky notes to write as many solutions as they can. Virtually, use an online ideation tool, or introduce a topic on the screen and have them add solutions to the chat. Keep it lively and upbeat by highlighting great ideas as they come in.

Go for quantity over quality. There will be time to refine ideas later, for now, your goal is to generate as many ideas as possible. Now is not the time to have a feasibility conversation for any one idea. Gently prompt the team to move forward and generate more ideas.

Surface ideas with the most potential. Once you have exhausted your team’s creativity, have them review each other’s ideas. Give them each 10(ish) votes and have them vote on the solutions they think have the most potential. Explain that their ideas will significantly inform and inspire the prototype.

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” — Albert Einstein

The benefits are real and sustainable as your organization and your audience become co-designers, co-implementers, and co-evaluators of solutions that get at the heart of things.

Benefits

• Foster respect, agency, and dignity. Each person is the expert in their own life; honoring this leads to approaches that beneficiaries are more able and willing to sustain.
• Improve cultural competencies. Staff develop deeper empathy and learn to see challenges from the perspective of their audience.
• Build Capability. Strengthen skills in your audience and your staff as they partner closely.
• Support healthy partnerships. Build a foundation of trust between your organization, beneficiaries, and the communities where you work.

Learn more https://designkindness.org/resources/

Empathy interviews in the social impact space require special preparation. Interviewees may have experienced trauma and need a safe space to share. They may also be incredibly aware of a potential power imbalance in the room, particularly if they see the interviewer as the person who may grant benefits or resources. Below are some tips to help as you conduct empathy interviews.

Interview Structure

• Introduce the purpose of the interview and how it will inform the program
• Gain their consent to participate
• Introduce the purpose of the interview and how it will inform the program
• Ask for stories related to the challenge your program addresses
• Listen carefully, gently asking clarifying questions if necessary
• Explore areas that seem particularly important to them
• Close by warmly thanking them for sharing their perspective

Interview Tips

• Ensure a physically and emotionally safe environment.
• If you find yourself teaching or offering solutions, stop, breathe, and listen. 
• Consider yourself a novice learning from an expert in their own life.
• Gather multiple diverse and representative perspectives.
• Expect some quiet moments while they think. No need to fill the silence.
• Build a relationship of mutual respect and trust.
• Interview with a partner who can take notes.

Interview Administration and Analysis

• There is no magic number of interviews. Interview until themes emerge and you are no longer learning new insights, usually at least 5 interviews.
• Process your insights together with your partner afterwards.
• Keep notes in a consistent format to help you synthesize themes.
• Once you have completed your interviews, agree on themes in partnership with your co-interviewer(s). Place direct quotes into categories based on these themes. Look at the data in multiple ways, looking for overarching insight. Validate themes with your co-designers (interviewees). 

❏ Our audience faces complex challenges

❏ We support vulnerable populations

❏ I think our program could help even more

❏ We have limited resources

❏ Measuring sustainable impact is tricky for us

❏ We are so busy helping it is hard to evolve

❏ Our program has not changed much lately

❏ Burnout is a challenge for us

❏ We have other pain points where this may help

How many did you check? If you checked one or more boxes above, human-centered programming can help. Ask yourself, how might a human-centered approach help with the challenges our organization faces above? Visit the Human-Centered Programming Toolkit from the Center for Design Kindness to get started.

1. Who are you helping?
2. What do you truly know about their goals, their experiences, and their challenges?
3. How do you currently use that knowledge to make decisions?

Answering these questions bring us all back the heart of the work we do: the people. Seeking to truly know them is our best way to help. Find tools that can help you in this journey here. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13GGTIdTJdy-LaR1U6ynBBxNGSXq6T8eS/view?usp=drivesdk