Bring On The Spectrum
Our team was privileged with the opportunity to work with Bring On The Spectrum, a nonprofit community space in Albany whose mission is to support both neurodiverse and neurotypical individuals by providing opportunities to achieve their best quality of life as respected members of the Capital Region. They accomplish this through social, recreational, and lifestyle activities for individuals of all ages and abilities.
THE PROBLEM
To learn more about the space and the community it serves, we sat down with founder Lisa Audi and discussed the organizations goals, strengths, challenges and how we can aid in furthering their goals.
In this meeting, Lisa expressed that the organization had troubles with getting volunteers for their main events, called "Friends and Games". These events are meant to allow neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals to meet and find common ground within the activities, developing a stronger sense of community. The organization struggled to be able to find large groups to attend or run these events, which caused them to be unable to expand their event offerings and dates.
Lisa's vision for the organization is to be able to allow for neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals to meet on the same level and develop relationships, which starts with interaction. The lack of volunteers is putting a barrier in between the goal and its realization, so our project is centered around bringing this barrier down.
A video from one of the Friends and Games events. We were participating volunteers to get a feel for how the event is ran. This video was downloaded from @bringonthespectrum on Instagram.
RESEARCH
To start off in identifying how to gain more volunteers, we first looked at their current strategy and marketing materials. Looking at their strengths, getting sports teams to come in to volunteer was most successful, as these teams also have community service requirements, so recruiting them was beneficial to both parties.
When we looked at potential weaknesses of the current recruiting process, we found three main problem areas:
1. Their website did not have adequate information on how to sign up to be a volunteer nor what volunteering would entail.
2. Their marketing materials (flyers, presentations, etc) also lacked proper information including contact information, level of involvement, and outdated logos.
3. They had no database of potential outreach contacts for getting groups to be involved outside of word of mouth from current employees.
Our project developed into a three-pronged strategy of redesigning their website, redesigning their marketing materials, and creating a base outreach sheet.
REDESIGN #1 - WEBSITE PAGE LAYOUT
Throughout the whole website, the only volunteering info available was this section.
Using Figma, I made a mock-up of the website redesign.
Changes Include:
- A clearer description of what the volunteers will do
- An image of volunteers in action
- A video of a “Friends and Games” event
- Two direct and clearly labelled buttons for the sign-up forms, one for individuals and one for groups
- Including more color in the webpage
- A photo carousel of previous BoTS events to create more engagement from potential volunteers with the website
REDESIGN #2 - MARKETING FLYER
Original flyer
Our redesign.
Changes include:
- Brighter and more eye-catching color pallet in line with their brand colors
- Information about the organization as a whole
- Contact information for all platforms they have a presence on, as well as the building address
- Information on the different services they provide
- Updated terminology and logos
OUTREACH DATABASE
We created the beginnings of a sheet with information about major group organizations, such as fraternities and sororities at colleges in the Capital Region area. We chose these two specific groups because each have community service requirements, and similarly to sports teams, could volunteer as a group at BoTS. By linking these two groups, we are able to not only meet the needs of two parties but also create lasting community connections.