Hi, I’m the founder of Sacred, a digital design studio specializing in digital product design, website development, and branding for non-profits. I have 9 years of industry experience in design, primarily leading digital product design initiatives for small organizations. I’ve always had a passion for doing good, and particularly resonated with the animal welfare and environmentalism movements. In 2020 I joined Ought, which inspired me to continue on a career path inspired by this passion for altruism. After Ought I led a digital product design initiative for Global Food Partners. I am now engaged in exploring how to maximize global impact for good through design and software.
melissasamworth
Karma: 21
Yep it’s been a good exercise and something I will now question with more scrutiny :)
Quick preface: I am not completely certain on how important design is for EA organizations, so these comments are an exploratory process of figuring this out, and there are definitely some knowledge gaps to fill.
Re conversions: Immediate conversions may not always be important for EA organizations, at least not to the extent they are for most for-profit organizations. The most important part about mentioning conversions is just demonstrating the power of design.
On that topic, re: websites like Open Phil:
Quick preface: I would need to understand more about the organization’s user base and goals to give the best answer here about how design could help them achieve those goals
However, if an organization is trying to influence anyone’s behavior ever, I would argue that good design at least matters–How much it matters is dependent on a few things, such as how large their user base is, and what other channels they could use to communicate or influence anyone’s behavior
The fact that Open Phil has clearly put more than 0$ into their current website means they also believe it matters, to some extent
The real question to ask then is, is a design that is [this] much better worth [this] amount of money (I concede that the answer might be no in some cases)
It’s also worth thinking about the EA movement as a whole. If every single EA website was brilliantly communicated, inspiring, emotionally impactful, highly (and easily) informative, memorable, convey a sense of trust and professionalism… I believe it would do the movement a tremendous amount of good. In a sense, the movement as a whole wants to increase its conversion rates, right?
Quick guess, for fun: Spending 1% of EA funds on design for the next 10 years would increase the total amount donated to EA itself by 20% (using the average conversion rates from above)
Here’s, so here’s my initial pitch:
I’m a designer coming from the for-profit space, in which companies invest heavily in design and marketing. The role of design–particularly skilled, quality design–has grown in the last, say, decade, due to growing evidence in its ROI. For instance, for myself and friends of mine who specialize in web design, a website’s conversion rate will jump 10%–25% from a redesign (typically a more out-of-the-box or low-skill solution, redesigned to a customized and professional solution). Name any successful tech company–Stripe, Slack, Github–they have invested tens to even hundreds of thousands on their marketing website. Many others invest similar amounts in logos and branding.
The EA world has not picked up on this very important “secret” of the for-profit world, and there’s no clear reason why. After all, EA organizations have just as much an incentive to inspire, persuade, and communicate to their audience as do for-profit companies. When I, for instance, look at an amazing for-profit company websites, I:
- Feel a sense of trust–this organization has it together
- Understand quickly what the organization does, why it’s important, and why they are amazing at it–I’m more sold
- If the topic is inspirational, I feel inspired and called to action
- Leave with a more memorable impression of this organization
When I look at even the best EA websites, I don’t feel particularly inspired, nor do I quickly understand what the organization does and why it’s important, nor do I leave with a memorable impression, and so on. And really, these should be the most inspiring websites in the world! Our bar should, if anything, be even higher than non-profits–our work is as important as it gets, isn’t it? If I was a billionaire thinking of getting into Effective Altruism, for example, and taking the first step by looking at an organization’s (or a few organizations’) website(s), I would definitely want to feel more inspired (plus other aforementioned things).
TLDR: I got into marketing and design ten years ago because I believe it is very important for an organization’s success (in whatever terms that means)! I’ve been pleased to see the for-profit world more and more learn of and integrate the power of design. I am a bit saddened that the EA world–the place where the most important things are happening–haven’t yet learned this.
Actually, this is something I’ve been meaning to look into more deeply. I’m going to look up some research and stuff, and then I will come back to you 🙂
That (a pitch) could be a good idea. Curious as to if you have any thoughts about the best format (e.g. PDF, forum post), and in which contexts I could present this generalized “EA organizations need better marketing” pitch.
Of course would deeply appreciate any referrals 💛. You can check out my website if you wish, and I’m always an email away melissasamworth@gmail.com
Thanks for the feedback 🙂
That makes sense. Although it’s hard to state compensation, because it’s so variable! I have a good idea of a fixed price I think is fair (and will try to negotiate for with clients), but varies a lot based on size of project, so maybe $1,200–$2,500. I would prefer fixed pricing and think it is more transparent for the developers, since I plan on charging the client a fixed price. Hourly is even more variable, because I would pay $90 an hour to a developer who is 3x faster than a $30/hour developer!
Yes, I could make that more clear. My intuition is to start with those truly making money this way, as that is the business model from which I am coming from myself.
Regarding “building a custom wordpress theme seems like a bit of an overkill for most org”, James Odene of User Friendly and I are hoping to convince EA orgs that custom solutions are absolutely worth the bit of extra money. So, I believe out-of-the-box is often not better, and this is why I’ve created a studio specializing in custom design! That said, it’s still experimental: we’ll see how many EA orgs out there agree.
All the other links are gold, thanks again!
I agree with previous posters: the primary reason to not have kids is that the resources are better spent elsewhere. I personally think my time is much more effectively spent directly addressing the world’s problems than raising kids that, 30 years from now, might make an impact. Because hey, it’s likely my kids wouldn’t be as brilliant as me, you know? (half kidding)
Also, what about the other many negative impacts of humans besides carbon emissions? E.g. microplastics, destruction of the natural environment for resources, pollution (it might be better than 50 years ago, but it’s far from being completely solved, right?)
I’m also agree that marketing should have more preference in the EA community. Thanks for all the numbers, it helps put a generalized sentiment into tangible data. A few thoughts:
(1) Is more value created by better branding for individual organizations vs. the EA movement as a whole? Better branding for individual organizations is definitely more immediate and tangible. However, this the branding of individual organizations (as well as perhaps generalized EA branding), also has long-term effects to increase awareness of the EA movement as a whole. If you think of the competition for the EA movement as a whole, it’s the non-EA non-profit movement but also just, anything anyone could spend their money or time on! Obviously there is a huge untapped market here, and I imagine better marketing will help us tap into it more.
(2) I’ve had the sentiment for some time that we could utilize emotion much, much more to increase awareness of our causes, our organizations, our donations. Think–for instance–website with full bleed imagery of (gosh, at the risk of sounding offensive, sorry) animals on factory farms vs. animals in their natural, happy, free state. What we see more often is just some text with some data. Anyway, thanks for the study reference regarding emotion here.
To sum it up: If many billionaires were exposed to very well designed emotional EA-promoting content, backed by amazing reasoning as well, imagine how much more traction this movement could gain.