Our process
We used tools like Miro (an online whiteboard for remote collaboration), to help with the internal kickoff. We heard from funding teams about user journeys and where they felt the biggest pain points were. We also used this time to set clear parameters, understand constraints, goals and anti-goals: the unshiftable elements of the fund that we could not influence.
After our initial kick off, we held a session with internal stakeholders to further explore a high level journey map of the end to end process. This was key in helping us understand back office processes and staff needs.
From previous research about the funding process, four opportunity areas were identified, that young people could have influence over:
– Outreach and events
– The application process
– Decision-making
– Monitoring and evaluation
These were our ‘pots to play within’ and helped narrow the focus of the workshops.
Our first workshop was with young people aged 20+ and supporting adults who worked in youth organisations.
Most of the participants had experience of applying for a grant before. We heard about their dream funding process and where they felt the most impactful areas for youth-led change were at the fund.
We synthesised user needs across both groups and developed some hypothesis statements to bring into the next workshop.
In our second workshop, we worked in small groups to develop concepts around the application and decision-making parts of the process.
After this, we synthesised insights and were able to create some rough prototypes that were based on key hypotheses.
The four concepts we tested were:
- A funding criteria checklist
- A list of media for young people to share their ideas
- Video guidance on ‘how to apply for funding’
- A young person panel to review applications and decide who gets funding
We shared these early ideas with the Young Start team during a project break. We were keen to give stakeholders an opportunity to contribute to the ideas and understand whether they saw potential in them. This was incredibly helpful. We received comprehensive feedback which we used in preparing for our final workshop, and the development of key concepts and roadmaps.