Scaling the success of events and partnerships

Cal's Angels is a non-profit organization and their mission is granting wishes, raising awareness, and funding research to help kids fighting cancer. 

The goal of the project was to build awareness by strengthening Cal’s Angels current fundraising and event partnerships? 

Collaborators: Brian Donnelly, Nathan Paul, Elvira Feng 

DATA COLLECTION

Conducted a mixed-method research to get a deeper understanding of the organization and define the scope of the project. 

Interviews

Stakeholder interviews to map the journey of organizing and hosting events.

Cal's Angels Staff Members

Learn more about Cal’s Angels donation software and how we could increase engagement and involvement with those platforms.

Parents

Learn more about their family’s journey, perspectives, and overall experience with Cal’s Angels and involvement in their several programs.

High School Partners

"Go Gold" is a program initiated by Cal's Angels that enables high schools and businesses to raise money for pediatric cancer research and awareness. 

The goal was to learn more about the ‘Go Gold’ event partnering experience and how we could potentially help improve the process for both Cal’s Angels staff and current and potential partners.nd potential partners.

Competitor Analysis

Researched several different Cancer organizations to learn more about what they provide/not provide in terms of support for creating events and fundraising with outside partners.

Helped determine how we might integrate some of their tools and strategies for event partnering and fundraising to develop specialized solutions for Cal’s Angels to improve their event partnering experience and fundraising capabilities. 

Website Evaluation

Evaluate event web pages to uncover:

Any issues in the onboarding and sign up process for these events
Find opportunities to increase engagement and involvement from visitors of the site
Improve the content, layout, and overall presentation of these pages
Showcase more of Cal’s Angels events, programs, and fundraising opportunities

How might we help Cal's Angels scale the success of current event partnerships into new fundraising and event opportunities?

INSIGHTS

Identified three areas of opportunities, which helped define the scope of the project. 

1

Improving the ‘Go Gold’ High School Experience

Problem

‘Go Gold’ games provide a large source of community engagement, awareness, and fundraising potential. However, our interviews uncovered that these events are difficult for high schools that do not have previous experience organizing, hosting, and managing these types of events. 

A successful solution will...

Productize the ‘Go Gold’ high school hosting experience by packaging the all the necessary information.
Help Cal’s Angels scale this event to reach a larger number of high schools and communities by providing easier methods for sign up, organizing, and hosting ‘Go Gold’ games.

2

Website Improvement Opportunities

Problem

Cal’s Angels ‘Get Involved’ and ‘Awareness’ web pages currently lack content, information, and calls to action that may lead to less engagement and involvement in their several events, programs, and campaigns.

A successful solution will...

Improve current website onboarding strategy to promote more online signups and engagement in Cal’s Angels several events and programs (e.g. Go Gold games, Team Cal, Just Shave It, Pop Up parties)

Improve content layout to highlight more opportunities to ‘Get Involved’ to increase awareness and engagement in Cal’s Angels events.

Provide more information on ‘Get Involved’ and ‘Awareness’ pages to help newcomers to their site learn about Cal’s Angels events and programs

3

Integrating Donation Software

Problem

Although Cal’s Angels uses several online donation tools (e.g. GiveGab), they are not integrated onto their online platforms in a clear and accessible manner. They may be missing opportunities to increase donations and limiting their fundraising capabilities. 

A successful solution will...

Help Cal’s Angels improve current website strategies to include more information and access to GiveGab to create personal fundraising pages and increase awareness of and donations for pediatric cancer.

Promote more engagement in and awareness of GiveGab campaigns which will lead to more awareness and fundraising opportunities for ‘Just Shave It’, Glow Walk’, and ‘Go Gold’ events.

MAPPING THE "GO GOLD" EXPERIENCE

Based on the research, we mapped the high school “Go Gold” journey to identify opportunities, which led to designing recommendations. 

The columns represent the 6 stages that High school organizers experience when planning, organizing, and hosting 'Go Gold' games for their high schools. 

Each row is comprised of the actions, touch-points, and journey map with associated quotes that High school organizers experience at each stage. 

The last row includes potential opportunities that will help facilitate the 'Go Gold' event hosting process for both High schools and Cal's Angels staff.

RECOMMENDATIONS/SOLUTIONS

Focused on streamlining processes to create efficient workflows for all stakeholders involved.

Improve current website onboarding strategy to promote online sign-ups for ‘Awareness’ event hosting.

Providing information on how to "Get Invovled" 

The "Get Invovled" page on the website gives more relevant information about “Go Gold” and Cal’s Angels mission. 

Streamlining sign-up processes to host events.

To promote more people to host events, we generated mock-ups to have an easier sign process. We focused on the "Go-Gold" experience and hosting other fundraisers such as shave events. 

The Go Gold Sign-up Process for High Schools and Businesses

Creating a Fundraiser

Productizing the Partnering Experience

Productize partnering experience by packaging the hosting experience to provide current and potential event partners with the all the tools and support needed to start and host Go Gold games. 

The goal is to:
Help reduce the overall time investment and micromanagement needed to organize, manage, and host Go Gold games.

Setting expectations for high schools and businesses.

Help Cal’s Angels scale events effectively and increase awareness of and engagement in Go Gold games.

"Go Gold" Toolkit Includes: 

• Example emails and announcements to help promote Go Gold games at their schools.
• Google form/survey templates for sign ups for Go gold games and selling
  T-shirts.
• A Go Gold Tracker which organizes each sport involved with the Go Gold event.
• Inventory spreadsheet to keep track of the athletic gear needed for Go Gold games.
• Flyers examples and templates to promote Going Gold and selling T-shirts. 
• A presentation script that outlines the purpose of the Go Gold event for each of their Go Gold games.

Automating workflows for efficiency

We determined that we could help Cal’s Angels implement an automation tool that would benefit them by automating repetitive and everyday tasks so they can focus on more important aspects of pediatric cancer fundraising.

The diagram below represents steps in the sign-up process that can be automated (portrayed through icons).

Recommendations for future work

Implement mock-ups

Use the prototypes as a guide to redesign your webpages to showcase more opportunities to get involved in Cal’s Angels initiatives. 
Provide more access to and information creating personal fundraisers to increase awareness and donations for pediatric cancer.

Assess the automation tools

Analyze automated tools to decide which is best suited for your organization.
Assess how these tools integrate the online applications you use to increase productivity and help Cal’s Angels staff focus on more important tasks.

Utilize the Tool Kit

Update the ‘Go Gold’ Toolkit with more materials that you may think are necessary for High schools to successfully organize and host Go Gold games.
Compare event organizing tool kits that other Cancer foundations use as a guide to determine what resources would be helpful for High school partners.