Overflow 25 emphasizes the need for a deeper understanding of our neighbors – who they are, what they want, need, and desire.
Similar to how monitoring, evaluation, and learning focuses on our program participants, this framework focuses on learning from our supporters and support church partners. It’s designed to help us develop the habit of listening to and learning from our supporters on an ongoing basis to gain insights and inform the application of our strategy.
The Voice of Supporter Framework has been designed to bring the perspective of our neighbors into our collective discernment and as an inspiration for future innovations. The goal is simple, to develop a deep understanding and empathy of our supporters and advocates so that we can build relationships to solve the global water crisis.
This framework has the following three parts articulated below: 1) Philosophy 2) Process 3) Tools.
OBJECTIVE:
Develop deep understanding and empathy of our supporters and advocates
Philosophy
The Voice of the Supporter (VOS) program is a process of continually listening and learning from our supporters to gather feedback and develop insights across the supporter experience. Based on the above objective, we seek to understand supporters’ problems, needs, and expectations by collecting and contextualizing data into information, studying and organizing information to gain knowledge and applying knowledge with wisdom in our actions and decision-making. This process
enables Living Water to love our neighbor in tangible and relational ways.
The following principles and mindsets will guide our behavior when operationalizing the Voice of Supporter framework:
Process
The Voice of Supporter process does not have a definitive, time-bound end date but is rather a dedicated pursuit to continually learn from our supporters. This process requires iteration and agility to focus attention and resources on answering important questions as they are presented. Research is both an art and science. Different questions will require different or even multiple creative methods of learning. The following table outlines the potential methods and learning activities we could
use when applying the Voice of Supporter framework:
Tools
The following section outlines learning products, tools, and templates related to the Voice of Supporter process.
• Customer Experience (CX) toolkit – consists of tools that assist in strategizing and planning fundraising and marketing operations at Living Water. These tools are personas, value prop canvases, and journey maps.
• Learning Library – a collection of learning products, reports, and the up-to-date learning agenda. The library will be regularly refreshed with the most relevant learning products.
• Research toolkit – a collection of templates that are used across varying learning activities to conduct research and document findings.