Food Bank Friday

Overview

I capitalized on user insights to spin up an omni-channel experience for a quarter-million employees during Wells Fargo's holiday fundraising campaign. In a short time frame, I discovered, designed, tested, and delivered a roadmap and event hub. In part with the entire effort, we saw an increase in event awareness, volunteer hours tracked more than doubled YOY and positive sentiment towards the company.

Background 

I am proud of the philanthropic programs the company supports and volunteer every year with the Food Bank, which partners nationally with Feeding America to help provide food to people and families in need during the holiday season. Customers, team members, and community members are encouraged to join in the effort to help make more meals possible during the holidays. With an employee pool, the impacts can reach far and wide. The ask that came to us was how to increase team member engagement with the Food Bank campaign?

Understand the problem

Discovery

I ran a team member survey, synthesized previous data, and created user profiles. I organized a brainstorm for activating the campaign and used the outcomes to perform benchmark research to help create a possible feature list. I worked closely with our development team to scope out concepts and determine feasibility in a short timeframe. 

Survey

I initiated a team member survey to paint a picture for my team and craft a persona. 

My survey objectives:

• Uncover team member insights on the topic of philanthropy
• How they might view and engage with philanthropic activities at work
• Their interest in the types of fundraising available through Wells Fargo and views of the Wells Fargo Foodbank
• Apply learnings customer experience for the team member holiday campaign
  

User research

I hunted down additional research from previous years. I found quantitative data that shed light on methods of user awareness (such as the company portal, email, and branches), their primary work environment, the interest levels in the campaign, and more. All of this information helped shape our user profiles. I have found success internally in keeping the profiles simple and to the point. I was able to help guide the team with these profiles along with my research summaries. 

Stakeholder mapping

I partnered with multiple agencies as the holiday campaign spanned branches, tv spots, and influencers. Building a positive insider relationship with agencies is crucial to staying honed in on details and pivots. I met with the larger team regularly and I kept a stakeholder map handy to track the vast number of hands in this project. Networking and building these relationships helped later in gaining traction for our proposal and getting access to assets. 

Data analysis

Survey results show our philanthropic efforts are one of the top areas that makes team members feel proud of their company and improves overall morale. Campaigns like this one also have been proven to help the reputation of Wells Fargo in the marketplace, increase the company's appeal, and demonstrate how the company cares.

Benchmark research

I performed competitive research to set a benchmark based on other event hub-like products. My objective was to look at popular websites and their approaches to events and analyze features such as adding events, displaying events, filtering and sorting, sharing, and profiles.

• What are They doing well that we can emulate?
• What are they doing not so well that we can improve?
• What established conventions should we follow?
• I pulled together a collection of possible features that could support the experience and engage users in creating and participating in fundraising events.

Our strategy and goal

We believe that creating a targeted Food Bank campaign
for team members who value Wells Fargo's philanthropic actions
will increase their awareness of the events
as a result we will see increased food donations and volunteering by team members.

Business goals The business strives to increase donation and volunteer hours and positive sentiment and morale among team members.

Design the solution

Brainstorm

Collaborating with a creative team, we applied my research and recommendations to a brainstorming session to paint a picture of how we might be able to bring this experience to life. We planned to offer multiple ways to participate for our leaders and casual volunteers. We planned to seed leaders to start fundraising events and influence others. With our users being busy, we planned to have a single day each week to focus on the activities to optimize the potential for engagement. From this, the fun Food Bank Fridays catchline was born. We focused our marketing strategy on the channels that offered the highest return. I had the vision to support the activities of an event hub where leaders could post their volunteer events to recruit volunteers in one central location.

Sketches

Quickly getting my ideas on paper to share in an all agency meeting, I mapped out the hub concept and corresponding features based on the research and vision for the experience. One of the iterations involved a robust event product where event users could post, manage and socialize their fundraising activities. Other coworkers could then find and like activities of interest and sign up to volunteer or donate. 

Iterations

Due to a mixture of legal concerns around fundraising and timing, we pivoted. Since this event was new, we pulled together our MVP to articulate how to participate and rally the feel-good joy of giving back. After the first presentation, we noticed that our stakeholders had a hard time responding to low-fidelity wireframes; in turn, we added imagery and text to help explain and sell the proposal. Another challenge is the copy wouldn’t be finalized till after the launch date so I mapped out a flexible structure to account for what was coming.

Omni-experience 

Together with our core creative team, I mapped out a roadmap for how our users would be introduced and engage in the event through marketing placements. 

Validating the solution

Usability test

I built a prototype in InVision, recruited and wrote test scripts for the studies, and ran the in-person interviews independently to gather feedback before launch. 

My objectives included

1. Identify typical Team Member goals, behaviors, and context when visiting an internal microsite after receiving an email from an executive announcement
2. Uncover what is most desired by the Team Member when coming to this site
3. Learn areas that to improve
4. Observe what features align with the Team Member's mental model

Learnings

Some of the top user issues included: 

• Users had a hard time finding a consistent location to sign up for an event
• The about section did not clearly explain the connection of Food Bank Friday to the Food Bank
• Those that are interested in buying a sticker found Wells Wear to be a blocker
• CTA copy for quick links need to be more clear

I simplified access to the volunteer events into one section with these opportunities. I brought the information to the team to help re-write copies to help clarify the activities and calls to action. We found a better way to distribute the marketing material and felt confident from the positive responses from the test.

Development

At Wells Fargo, it takes moving mountains to get programs compliant with the strict reviews by the technology team. This product was one of the first agency projects utilizing InVision, and it was a huge success. Our development team was able to turn around the site fast with all the specs and assets at their fingertips through Inspect.

Testing

I supported the development team through QA'ing the site. With limited tools, we kept it simple with an excel sheet. Without access to cloud-based software but I utilized what was available to collaborate seamlessly to and run QA.

Final

I sourced the assets and designed the final site using Adobe, Sketch, and InVision. The visuals were on brand and aligned to the Food Bank campaign and passed all the legal and compliance hurdles. 

Results and takeaways

The event was a success! Based on a team member survey, the awareness was up from the previous years to 95%. Convenience is essential to our users, and our experience made it easy to engage.

Wells Fargo Volunteer site made it a breeze.

The sentiment data collected about Wells Fargo was very positive. Team Members love that it's a community-driven cause.

It brings joy to my heart to know that people in our communities can rely on Wells Fargo to support them with a Holiday Food Bank to make their holidays brighter.

The team member volunteers and volunteer hours tracked more than doubled YOY. Nearly all (91%) look forward to the program next year because they feel that it's a good cause that helps connect Wells Fargo and their communities.

This is a great event that teams can do together to further our Wells Fargo philanthropy efforts while building team morale and solidarity.

To engage team members and provide ways to get involved with the Holiday Food Bank, our in-house agency conceptualized a team member-focused activation: Food Bank Fridays. A custom team member microsite with information and resources was built. By collaborating with Community Relations and Wells Fargo Volunteer Teams, we set up Enterprise Food Bank Fridays at 24 volunteer events in nine markets over seven weeks.

95% of team members were aware of the Food Bank, thanks largely to the Teamworks site and emails.

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Learnings

• For those aware of volunteer events, the only barriers to volunteering they expressed were scheduling conflicts and a lack of time.
• Timing this time of year makes it hard Some mentioned they would be more inclined to participate if opportunities were earlier in November before things get too busy.
• Team Members want to volunteer and suggest helping them plan with more advanced notice, given this falls at a busy time of year.
• Between Thanksgiving and the New Year, the time is laden with PTO and busy when team members are around. Possibly schedule opportunities that occur before things get hectic.