As a PM on Meta's Social Impact team, build a new product for charitable giving or crisis response

Introduction

As a PM on Meta's Social Impact team, I'm excited to tackle the challenge of building a new product for charitable giving or crisis response. This project aligns perfectly with Meta's mission to bring the world closer together and make a positive impact on society. I'll focus on developing a solution that leverages Meta's vast user base and technological capabilities to address critical social needs.

To approach this product design challenge, I'll follow a structured framework that includes clarifying the problem, analyzing the market opportunity, identifying user segments and pain points, proposing solutions, and defining success metrics. Let's dive in.

Step 1

Clarify Questions

Before we proceed, I'd like to ask a few questions to ensure we're aligned on the project's scope and objectives:

• Is this product intended to be integrated into existing Meta platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram), or should it be a standalone application?

• Why this matters: The integration strategy will significantly impact our approach to user acquisition and feature development.
• Hypothetical answer: Let's assume it will be integrated into existing Meta platforms for maximum reach.
• Impact: This allows us to leverage Meta's existing user base and infrastructure.

• Are we focusing on charitable giving, crisis response, or both?

• Why this matters: Each area has unique challenges and user needs that will shape our product strategy.
• Hypothetical answer: Let's focus on charitable giving, with the potential to expand to crisis response in the future.
• Impact: This narrows our scope and allows us to create a more focused solution.

• Do we have any specific goals or KPIs from Meta's leadership for this project?

• Why this matters: Understanding high-level objectives will help us align our product strategy with company goals.
• Hypothetical answer: Let's assume the goal is to increase charitable donations through Meta platforms by 25% in the first year.
• Impact: This gives us a clear target to work towards and measure our success against.

• Are there any regulatory or compliance considerations we need to be aware of in the charitable giving space?

• Why this matters: Compliance is crucial in financial transactions and nonprofit partnerships.
• Hypothetical answer: Yes, we'll need to comply with financial regulations and nonprofit laws in various countries.
• Impact: This will influence our feature set and partnership strategy.

Propose the Goal

Given Meta's focus on social impact and connecting people, I believe our goal should be to create a seamless, engaging charitable giving experience that empowers users to support causes they care about while fostering a sense of community. Does this align with your vision?

Define the Scope

For this product design challenge, let's focus on developing a feature set that enables users to discover, donate to, and share their support for verified charitable organizations within Meta's existing platforms. We'll prioritize ease of use, transparency, and social engagement to drive adoption and impact.

Based on our discussion, I'll assume the following for the rest of the solution:

1. The product will be integrated into existing Meta platforms.
2. We're focusing primarily on charitable giving.
3. Our target is to increase charitable donations by 25% in the first year.
4. We need to comply with relevant financial and nonprofit regulations.

Step 2

Why build this?

Analyze Macro Trends and Opportunities

Several macro trends support the development of a charitable giving product within Meta's ecosystem:

1. Rise of social consciousness: Younger generations, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are increasingly socially conscious and want to support causes they care about.
2. Digital transformation of philanthropy: The charitable giving sector is rapidly moving online, with digital donations growing faster than traditional methods.
3. Desire for transparency: Donors want to know how their contributions are being used and the impact they're making.
4. Social proof and peer influence: People are more likely to donate when they see their friends and family supporting causes.

These trends present a significant opportunity for Meta to leverage its massive user base and social graph to create a powerful charitable giving platform.

Competitor Analysis

Let's examine some existing solutions in the charitable giving space:

1. GoFundMe:

   • Strengths: Easy to use, social sharing features
   • Weaknesses: Focused on individual fundraising, less emphasis on established charities

2. Charity Navigator:

   • Strengths: Comprehensive charity ratings, transparency
   • Weaknesses: Limited social features, no direct donation capabilities

3. Amazon Smile:

   • Strengths: Seamless integration with shopping experience
   • Weaknesses: Limited user engagement, low donation percentages

Meta's strengths in this space include:

• Massive user base and social graph
• Advanced targeting and recommendation algorithms
• Existing payment infrastructure
• Strong brand recognition and trust

Our main weakness is the lack of a dedicated charitable giving feature, which this product will address.

Value Chain Analysis

In the charitable giving industry, we can identify several key components of the value chain:

1. Donor acquisition and engagement
2. Charity vetting and onboarding
3. Payment processing and fund distribution
4. Impact reporting and transparency
5. Community building and social sharing

Currently, most solutions excel in one or two of these areas, but few address the entire value chain effectively. By leveraging Meta's strengths, we have the opportunity to create a comprehensive solution that addresses all these components, providing a significant competitive advantage.

Step 3

User Segments

For our charitable giving product, we can identify several key stakeholders:

1. Individual donors
2. Charitable organizations
3. Corporate partners
4. Meta platform users (potential donors)

Since we're focusing on increasing charitable donations through Meta platforms, let's concentrate on individual donors as our primary user segment.

Within the individual donors segment, we can identify several sub-segments:

1. Passionate Advocates: Regularly donate to causes they care deeply about
2. Occasional Givers: Donate sporadically, often in response to specific events or appeals
3. Social Influencers: Use their platform to raise awareness and encourage others to donate
4. First-Time Donors: New to charitable giving, looking for guidance and easy entry points

Let's prioritize these segments using a quantitative approach:

Explanation of scores:

• Passionate Advocates: High engagement and monetization potential, but smaller TAM
• Occasional Givers: Large TAM, but lower engagement and moderate monetization
• Social Influencers: Highest engagement, good monetization, but smaller TAM
• First-Time Donors: Largest TAM, moderate engagement, but lower initial monetization

Based on this analysis, we'll focus on the Passionate Advocates segment as our primary user group. They have the highest total score due to their strong engagement and monetization potential, which aligns well with our goal of increasing charitable donations by 25% in the first year.

Step 4

Pain Points

For our Passionate Advocates segment, let's identify key pain points related to charitable giving:

1. Discovery and Trust: Difficulty finding and vetting trustworthy charities aligned with their values

   • User quote: "I want to support new causes, but I'm not sure which organizations are legitimate and effective."
   • Potential metric: Time spent researching charities before donating

2. Impact Visibility: Lack of clear, ongoing information about the impact of their donations

   • User quote: "I donate regularly, but I rarely hear back about how my contributions are making a difference."
   • Potential metric: Percentage of donors who can recall specific impacts of their donations

3. Fragmented Giving Experience: Managing donations across multiple platforms and organizations is cumbersome

   • User quote: "I support several charities, but it's a hassle to keep track of all my donations and tax receipts."
   • Potential metric: Number of different platforms used for charitable giving per user

4. Social Engagement: Difficulty engaging friends and family in causes they care about

   • User quote: "I'm passionate about these issues, but I feel awkward constantly asking my friends to donate."
   • Potential metric: Number of successful referrals or shared donations per user

Step 5

Prioritization of Pain Points

Let's prioritize these pain points based on their severity and frequency:

Based on this analysis, we'll focus on addressing the top two pain points:

1. Discovery and Trust (Score: 72)
2. Impact Visibility (Score: 63)

Reasoning for prioritization: The "Discovery and Trust" pain point is crucial because it directly impacts a user's willingness to donate and their long-term engagement with charitable giving. By addressing this, we can lower the barrier to entry for new donations and increase user confidence in their giving decisions.

"Impact Visibility" is a close second, as it plays a significant role in donor retention and satisfaction. By providing clear, ongoing information about the impact of donations, we can encourage continued giving and deeper engagement with causes.

While "Social Engagement" scored higher than "Fragmented Giving Experience," we've chosen to prioritize Impact Visibility because it aligns more closely with our Passionate Advocates segment's needs and has a more direct impact on our goal of increasing donations.

Long-term impacts of this prioritization:

• Increased user trust in the platform and charitable organizations
• Higher donor retention rates due to better understanding of impact
• Potential for increased donation amounts as users feel more confident in their giving decisions

Trade-offs considered:

• By focusing on Discovery and Trust, we may initially have fewer charities on the platform, but those present will be thoroughly vetted
• Prioritizing Impact Visibility may require more resources from charitable organizations, but will likely lead to stronger donor relationships

Step 6

Solution

Let's develop several creative solutions to address our prioritized pain points, focusing on Discovery and Trust, and Impact Visibility:

1. TrustChain: A blockchain-based verification system for charities, providing transparent tracking of donations and their impact.

   • Leverages blockchain technology to create an immutable record of charitable activities
   • Allows users to see exactly how their donations are used and their real-world impact
   • Provides a trust score for each charity based on their track record and transparency

2. CauseMatch: An AI-powered recommendation engine that suggests charities based on user interests, values, and social connections.

   • Analyzes user behavior, interests, and social graph to recommend relevant charities
   • Provides personalized impact stories and updates from matched charities
   • Allows users to set giving goals and receive tailored suggestions to meet them

3. ImpactLens: An augmented reality feature that visualizes the real-world impact of donations in users' local communities and globally.

   • Uses AR technology to show users how donations affect their community and the world
   • Provides interactive, visual representations of impact data
   • Allows users to share their "impact view" with friends, encouraging social engagement

4. GivingCircles: A social feature that allows users to create and join giving circles with friends, family, or like-minded individuals.

   • Enables users to pool resources and collectively decide on charitable giving
   • Provides a platform for discussion, voting, and impact tracking within circles
   • Gamifies the giving experience with challenges and group goals

5. Moonshot: CharityVerse: A virtual reality platform where users can explore and interact with charitable projects in a immersive 3D environment.

   • Creates virtual representations of charitable projects and their impacts
   • Allows users to "visit" project sites and interact with beneficiaries in VR
   • Provides immersive educational experiences about global issues and solutions

Let's prioritize these solutions based on Reach, Impact, Effort, and alignment with our initial goal:

Explanation of scores:

• TrustChain: High impact and alignment, but moderate reach due to complexity
• CauseMatch: High reach and alignment, good impact, moderate effort
• ImpactLens: High impact and effort, good reach and alignment
• GivingCircles: High reach, lower effort, good alignment but moderate impact
• CharityVerse: Highest impact but lowest reach, highest effort, good alignment

Based on this analysis, let's focus on developing CauseMatch as our primary solution. It offers the best balance of reach, impact, effort, and alignment with our goals.

User flow for CauseMatch:

1. User logs into Meta platform and navigates to the Giving section
2. CauseMatch analyzes user's interests, activity, and social connections
3. User is presented with a personalized list of recommended charities
4. User can explore each charity's profile, including impact stories and trust metrics
5. User selects a charity and chooses a donation amount
6. After donating, user receives a thank you message and impact update
7. User is prompted to share their donation and invite friends to support the cause
8. Over time, user receives personalized impact updates and new charity recommendations

Potential challenges in implementing CauseMatch:

1. Developing an accurate and unbiased AI recommendation system
2. Ensuring data privacy and security while leveraging user information
3. Onboarding and vetting a diverse range of charities to provide comprehensive recommendations

Step 7

Success Metrics

To evaluate the effectiveness of our CauseMatch solution, we'll use the following metrics:

User Metrics:

1. Monthly Active Donors (MAD): Number of unique users who make at least one donation per month
2. Average Donation Frequency: How often users make donations through the platform
3. User Satisfaction Score: Based on surveys and feedback about the donation experience and impact visibility

Product Metrics:

1. Total Donation Volume: The total amount of money donated through the platform
2. Charity Recommendation Accuracy: Percentage of recommended charities that users engage with or donate to
3. Impact Visibility Score: Measure of how well users understand and can articulate the impact of their donations

Leading Indicators:

1. First-time Donor Conversion Rate: Percentage of new users who make their first donation within 30 days
2. Charity Profile View-to-Donation Rate: Percentage of charity profile views that result in a donation
3. Social Sharing Rate: Percentage of donations that are shared with the user's network

These metrics align with our initial goal of increasing charitable donations by 25% in the first year and address the identified pain points of Discovery and Trust and Impact Visibility. By tracking these metrics, we can gauge how well CauseMatch is performing in terms of user engagement, donation facilitation, and impact communication.

Summary

To recap, we've designed a charitable giving product for Meta's Social Impact team, focusing on increasing donations by 25% in the first year. We identified Passionate Advocates as our primary user segment and prioritized addressing the pain points of Discovery and Trust and Impact Visibility.

Our proposed solution, CauseMatch, leverages AI and Meta's vast user data to provide personalized charity recommendations and impact updates. This innovative approach combines Meta's strengths in data analysis and social connectivity with the growing trend of personalized, transparent charitable giving.

Key metrics for measuring success include Monthly Active Donors, Total Donation Volume, and Impact Visibility Score. These will help us track progress towards our goal and ensure we're effectively addressing user needs.

Next steps would include:

1. Developing a prototype of the CauseMatch AI recommendation engine
2. Conducting user testing to refine the recommendation algorithm and user interface
3. Establishing partnerships with a