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Design Thinking for Nonprofits

The Clinton Global Intiative theme for this year is "Designing for Impact" Designs must take account of needs and contraints (infrastructure, money, human resources, et cetera). Don't forget to consider cultural norms, demographics, technology, education levels, laws, and regulations. Designs need to match the social environment as well as being fit for a given natural environment. Technologies obiously need to be designed.

Design thinking should be applied to systems or processes too. Just introducing water purification devices or new software can cause new problems. The rest of the system doesn't really fit what you've done. Do people have the training or experience they need to really use that new software? Feeding hungry people and preserving historic buildings are process that might be designed to work more effectively.

Stanford Social Innovation Review describes the principles and give ss few examples of good and bad design thinking. For example, a water distribution center in India did a brilliant job of producing safe drinking water. But, the system for selling and distributing the water had serious flaws. This is the sort of thing that design thinking can help you avoid. The bulk of the article describes the three "spaces" of design thinking in depth and offers some examples of design thinking applied to social problems.

To get more information on how to use design thinking, you would definitely need more information than that article contains. Most of the books on design thinking focus on business or product design. Howver, The Human-Centered Design Toolkit from design firm IDEO, shows how to apply design thinking to problems in the developing world. The Power of Positive Deviance should help you design workable solutions to social problems. Design for Services should be helpful if your organization provides social services or education.

To convert your design thinking into action you need a different mindset. Implementing designs is really way outside the scope of this blog, but this report from the University of Toronto on Turning Design Thinking into Design Doing http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/about/fraser.pdfshould help. Don't be put off by the focus on businesses that are relatively big. Just read the principles mentioned in the report and take some time to think about how those principles could be put to work in your nonprofit.

Any nonprofit of any size might benefit from studying design thinking. The concepts take a little time to master, of course. Have a look at that Stanford Social Innovation Review and then at one of those books. A quick review of the listings on Amazon.com should help you decide which book to buy and study.

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