Accelerating digital ways of working

Christian Aid, one of the UK’s largest charities, help people globally to stand up for dignity, equality and justice with the aim to create a world where everyone can live a full life, free from poverty.

Manifesto partnered with Christian Aid by working as an extension to their leadership team to help them transform how they make decisions, engage audiences and deliver projects globally.

The team at Manifesto helped deliver a focused and cohesive change programme that’s enabled the organisation to deliver measurable improvements across a number of strategically important areas, including user experience, product management, digital marketing, analytics and insight, and innovation.

Reinvigorating supporter acquisition

To increase income generation, Manifesto helped Christian Aid develop a new supporter acquisition strategy.

Our team delivered a comprehensive UX audit of the website, which uncovered 112 recommendations, one third of which related to donations. This allowed us to recommend improvements from user journeys and design, to remarketing and email marketing strategies, and to build a business case for a new donations platform.

To help Christian Aid prioritise the required changes, Manifesto built a prioritisation matrix and roadmap for the Digital Supporter Engagement team so that they could ensure delivery was focused on high-value outcomes for the charity.

Improvements started with making efficiencies to the existing content and digital marketing infrastructure, including changes to Google Analytics tracking, delivered in just two days, that increased accuracy from 60% to 95%.

Our audience-centred approach brought together six projects to improve content strategy, personas and user journeys, to increase conversion rates and ultimately boost donations. We also established a target operating model for data repository using PowerBI data visualisation tools, with an initial user-friendly dashboard for donations. 

Christian Aid Week 2019 saw the delivery of new features to enhance and support the landing page, donations and Big Brekkie sign-up using a rapid approach to ideation and design.

In tandem to this, the digital strategists at Manifesto worked closely alongside those at Christian Aid with the responsibilities for managing digital marketing. We had weekly drop-in sessions to support and coach the team, implement new processes and strategy, and train and upskill team members in tools which would enable them to effectively implement, report and manage their acquisition and email campaigns going forward.

Prototyping a new platform for volunteer engagement

Future Foundry, Manifesto’s dedicated innovation hub, ran a design sprint to help Christian Aid prototype a new platform for supporters to find and share volunteering opportunities. Engaging a small team of stakeholders over three days, we helped define user needs, map out key journeys, and build a working prototype to test with real users.

Applying service design to internal processes and systems

We worked closely with Christian Aid’s Programme & Innovation Funding team to help them become more efficient with their internal systems, processes and reporting. Through mapping the team’s various processes and tasks, we made recommendations for improving data quality, standardising reporting, integrating systems and document-based processes, and prepared the ground for the automation of repetitive, rules-based tasks.

Gaining project efficiencies with expert coaching

To support recommended improvements resulting from comprehensive audits, Manifesto, as Strategic Delivery Partner, provided coaching and project management training and consultancy to Christian Aid’s Development Team and Digital Leadership, so they could maximise efficiencies and become more effective with the future delivery of projects. To do this, the team collaborated on the creation of a product roadmap, created a prioritisation framework, defined principles around backlog management and redefined the teams roles and responsibilities.

How this helps us support your change journey

We’re able to partner with organisations to deliver strategic and organisational change over long-term projects. We have the ability to evolve with and react to the technological, cultural and political change which is rapidly altering the needs, motivations and behaviours of your key audiences. By gathering and analysing stakeholder and user data, market research, and testing strategy, we derive insights which drive strategic decision making, and recommendations which deliver immediate and long-lasting value.