Challenge    Broadly speaking, the challenge is raising money for non-profit organizations. More specifically,  I recently joined the boards of two non-profit organizations for which I have or will have a fund  raising role. The first board I joined supports entrepreneurs and start-ups “from founding  through funding,” and I am a mentor to start-up companies as part of this work. The second  board I joined supports a school; starting in September, I will be leading an effort to raise  money for student travel fellowships.     As I joined the board, the entrepreneur support organization had just begun a $1 million fund  raising campaign that was essential to its sustainability. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. I  was asked to solicit my 30 peers in the mentoring group. I would ask them to join me in  donating $5,000 for each of the next three years.     Selection    The tool I chose was storytelling, and this pre-dated my having begun this design thinking class.  I chose storytelling because I would be asking people for money in a frightening economic  environment, and I wanted my peers to understand the “human” story of my commitment to  the organization. In other words, I wanted the ask to be real and relatable.     Application    I wrote each of my peer mentors and told the story of my having been introduced to the  organization through its “pitch day” and then becoming a mentor, donor, and board member.  Following my message, a founder/fellow board member “piled on” with a follow-up email. The  messages also included specifics about all the great work we’ve been doing.    We received some responses right away, and while these typically included an enthusiastic  message about the organization, nearly none included a commitment of money. We followed  up with reminder emails. Responses that came in the next week or two were similar. In two or  three cases, there was no response, even as (a few weeks later) we successfully wound up the  campaign of which my “mentor ask” was a part.    We raised a small amount – not the money we hoped! We suspected that some mentors were  in no position to commit, but we did not leave anyone out. We worried that the message was  off, but we got no feedback to this effect. I spoke to one of the younger mentors whom I knew  was between jobs; she thought my story was effective and the overall messaging strong.    Insight    While the storytelling tool was used effectively, this was inserted into an existing process that  had not been conceived using design thinking. Notwithstanding, our efforts were probably an

example of rapid prototyping. The fund-raising campaign would have benefitted from a design  thinking process that started at the beginning.    Approach    Both this fund-raising campaign and the effort I will lead in September (for the school’s  traveling fellowships) would benefit by starting at the beginning of a design thinking process  with ethnography/journey mapping. Simply, we need to understand our prospective donors  (customers) better. As well, the “What If” part of the process could prove highly valuable for  the school’s campaign. For both organizations I serve, storytelling is essential and potentially  persuasive to donors. In one case, there is rich material in the entrepreneurs’ stories, and in the  other, the student travelers’ stories can potentially make the campaign more relatable.

