Freemium Donations Platform
Setting up Resilia’s B2B2C strategy, while launching a new revenue stream.
TL;DR
The Opportunity
How might Resilia, a tech-for-good capacity-building platform drive revenue from B2C Customers?
The Outcome
An integrated donations platform resulting in over $100K in revenue and organic adoption from nonprofit customers.
The Problem
Resilia is a venture-backed, "tech for good" startup developing SaaS solutions for nonprofit organizations to become high-performing and enable funder enterprises (corporations, cities, and private foundations) to measure and scale the impact of their grant deployments.
Resilia’s sales strategy focused on enterprise sales to Grantmakers, who then onboarded their cohort of nonprofit customers. Their freemium offering of the nonprofit platform had seen low adoption and conversion to paid tiers.
THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Resilia was experiencing low conversion of the current freemium offering, resulting in a loss per new customer.
Resilia’s revenue was largely generated by enterprise sales, and current monetization pathways for free users lead only to single paid subscriptions.
My Role
As the Lead Product Designer and Design Direcor at Resilia, I focused on the People, Process and Practice of the effort.
People
Player-coach design lead on the Donations team, collaborating with the Engineering Lead and Product manager to build a culture of human-centered thinking on the team. Coached Product Designer through their first successful GTM launch at Resilia.
Process
Hands on in the end-to-end design process for the first launch, including conducting user research, competitive analysis, user testing, and producing development-ready UX designs.
As the product matured, I coordinated simultaneous efforts among the Donations, Impact, and Marketing teams to execute a comprehensive strategy aimed at converting free users to paid subscriptions and cultivating long-term growth.
Practice
Maintained a high standard of quality to quickly onboard users, and increase revenue from individual donors.
The Approach
Focus on First Time Users
In a saturated market filled with free-to-start donation platforms such as Givebutter, Facebook Fundraisers, and Donorbox, our solution is specifically designed to address the needs of startup nonprofits that have limited resources and are seeking their first online donation platform. These organizations typically operate with constrained budgets for marketing and require the capability to swiftly launch campaigns across their social platforms and email lists. Our campaign landing page builder offers user-friendly WYSIWYG tools, enabling nonprofit users to easily add images and promptly initiate their campaigns to start collecting revenue. The management pages are deliberately streamlined, focusing on providing organizations with high-level details to track the overall health of their campaigns, payouts, and transactions. These simplified features also enabled the team to launch rapidly and begin generating revenue through transaction fees.
Monetization Opportunities
We launched our platform with a free-to-start model to foster user acquisition and revenue generation. We introduced feature gating for high-demand functionalities, including reduced transaction fees and the ability to run multiple campaigns to drive upgrades to premium tiers or seek sponsorship from their grantmakers, positioning Resilia as a valuable source of new prospects. Donations were seamlessly integrated for enterprise clients as a complimentary add-on, establishing a supplementary revenue stream from organizations already utilizing the platform. This approach yielded $100,000 in revenue within six months of launch.
Freemium Marketing and Upgrade Strategy
Capacity Building as a Differentiator
Resilia strategically set itself apart by emphasizing its focus on fundraising as an integral pillar of nonprofit capacity building and impact. The Donations team and I leveraged this distinct position by connecting our fundraising tools to the greater Resilia ecosystem, such as the academy and Impact features, enabling nonprofits to build a comprehensive strategy for scaling their donations. By prioritizing capacity building, Resilia emerged as a distinctive and valuable platform, focusing not only on immediate fundraising needs but also on fostering long-term organizational growth and impact.
Fundraising as Outcomes
In collaboration with the VP of Product and Product Leads from the Impact and Donations teams, we developed a comprehensive strategy to implement the flywheel effect, illustrating how enhancing financial capacity positively influences operational capacity. The strategy is based on a cyclical process where fundraising enables organizations to expand their operations, thereby strengthening their mission impact. As organizations scale their operations, it creates a compelling narrative for both grantmakers and individual donors. Grantmakers are more likely to sustain funding and renew contracts with Resilia for a second year, while individual donors are motivated to contribute more, generating additional revenue for both the nonprofit and Resilia through the donations platform. To execute this strategy, I introduced a reporting cadence using AI, making the process more efficient and streamlined.
The Outcome
New Revenue streams
The introduction of the new donations line of business generated $100K in revenue within the first six months across both Free and Grantee customers. This successful launch effectively monetized a previously untapped user segment.
B2B2C Marketing Strategy
The donations platform facilitated the implementation of new B2C marketing strategies for fundraising during the Giving Tuesday holiday, resulting in a 40% increase in transactions throughout the campaign. Our monetization strategy not only successfully converted free users to paid subscriptions but also generated valuable leads with grant funders, ultimately securing multiple six-figure deals.
Set New Designer up for Success
This project served as a chance for a recently onboarded product designer to establish a foundation for consistent success throughout the entire product development lifecycle. It allowed them to have ownership over a high-impact problem area, and grow into a high-performing member of the team.