I’m deciding whether to fund a charity to develop a digital product or service

• Does the charity show evidence of research directly with their user group to understand their needs? For example through 1-1 interviews with users, or undertaking shadowing or contextual research?  
• Do they have a plan to continue to engage with their intended service users over time, such as talking about conducting usability studies?

• User needs based on user research
• Personas
• Jobs to be done
• A research plan for ongoing usability testing

• User needs – the Government Digital Service has great guidance on identifying and writing up user needs
• 1:1 user research interviews – here’s a handy how-to for charities on NCVO
• Personas – there’s lot of guidance on the web, this is a helpful overview on Personas
• Jobs-to-be-done – this Harvard Business Review article a is useful introductory article, more practitioner-focused information can be found on these dedicated sites jtbd.info and jobstobedone.org  
• Usability testing – Nielsen Norman group have many good resources like this introduction, Steve Krugg has published two very helpful introductory books
• Contextual inquiry, or shadowing – there’s a good introduction here
• Form software such as Typeform or Google Forms can be helpful for signing up users for research and gathering short bits of information
• Acumen parted with IDEO.org to produce a free introductory course to human centred design – Acumen / IDEO Human-centred Design Course

• Has the charity shown evidence that they have looked both inside and outside of their sector, in the UK and abroad, to identify services that are trying to do something similar? Have they identified how their service is different to these?  
• Has the charity shown evidence that they’ve looked both inside and outside of my sector, in the UK and abroad, to identify services that are using a similar process or technology? Are they building with this, or have given a good reason why they need to build something new?  

• Market scan, competitor analysis or map of other services out there already doing something similar
• A business canvas showing how their product or service differs from what’s out there

• Alidade can help create a plan for finding technology tools that suit a social change project
• Charity Catalogue helps nonprofits easily and quickly discover the best online tools and resources
• Nesta’s DIY Toolkit has been designed for development practitioners to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better results
• Squarespace, Tilda and Github pages can be useful for creating simple websites
• The Lean Canvas and Superhero Canvas can help a charity map out what’s unique about their service.  
• Tech trust marketplace gives charities tailored access to discounted software

Has the charity demonstrated they have appropriate skills to deliver the work:

• Do they have dedicated technical resource, whether in house or through an external agency?
• Do they have evidence senior management buy-in – for example a senior sponsor in the organisation?
• Do they have access to expertise in the social area they are working in?
• Are users represented, either through an ongoing plan for user research, or through their involvement directly in the work?

• Contracted teams of staff who are clear on the budget and timescale of their work.

• CAST and Neontribe’s Conversation menu can help guide conversations between charities and developers
• CITA’s Tech Surgeries can help support charities with IT queries
• Reach Volunteering can help connect charities with experts
• Super.global can help charities find agency partners
• DataKind can help charities connect with data scientists