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Welcome (back) to Ten Things for non-profits: eclectic links for purposeful procrastination. 
 

For the first edition of the year, we’ve got a loose theme of centralising knowledge and improving research. I’m thinking about both these things a lot of the moment; I’m working on two non-profit intranets/knowledge bases, and conducting/reading mountains of research, and realising all the while just how huge the impact of making all this insight accessible can be. Hopefully this will catch some of you in the same place.

• "Scattered, inaccessible knowledge is the reality for most charities today"
• "Here we are decades later and the silos have not disappeared"
• "The benefits of organising content councils"
• "User research can easily get lost in the shuffle"
• "How we set up UX Research"
• "Identify bottlenecks and create efficiencies in your process with scripts and automation solutions"
• "When research inspires it invites people to tap into their endless well of curiosity"
• "Research sessions can prompt emotions regardless of the topic"
• "Observations from real usability testing on what people do and what they don’t do on the web"
• "Ask the content strategy agony aunt (me!)"

"Scattered, inaccessible knowledge is the reality for most charities today"

Lauren Crichton on why centralising knowledge can help your organisation, what tools to use, and how to roll out your new approach.

This is a concise read to get us started on our theme, with a focus on the tech that’s out there (and what discounts they offer for charities).

"Here we are decades later and the silos have not disappeared"

Val Swisher on why we’re stuck with silos.

Silos. The eternal content problem, and one of the biggest barriers to the good flow of knowledge in an organisation. I like Val’s realism in explaining that you can’t break silos, and showing why and how to start working across them.

"The benefits of organising content councils"

Spotify’s Jennifer Schmich on how to run a content council - without getting dragged down.

This is a nice complimentary read to the Thing from Val on silos. Jennifer explains how content councils can help siloed teams share knowledge and resources, with pragmatic advice on how to make sure it doesn’t become an exhausting task.

Side anecdote: this is something I used to do for big clients when I was in agency-land. They would make huge investments in multi-year programmes of work that were all about getting their people to share knowledge. The results were great, but it was slow, hard work. So if you’re in a growing organisation, start getting the foundations in place now.

"User research can easily get lost in the shuffle"

Rachel Miles on the need for research operations and how to make sure you can scale successfully as your team - or the amount of insight you have - grows.

This is a really comprehensive read on Research Ops and a great intro if you have no idea what it is and whether it’s something you need.

"How we set up UX Research"

Yagmar Erten on what it was like to set up UX research at Buzzfeed.

I know it’s not a non-profit example, but I think it’s always good to share these kind of case studies, because they show what the process of doing something looks like in real life.

"Identify bottlenecks and create efficiencies in your process with scripts and automation solutions"

Kim Salazar from Nielson Norman Group on how using automation could streamline your research processes.

There’s a lot of time-consuming admin associated with research, so I’m all for harnessing technology as much as possible to lighten the load (but only if it can do so without harming the participant experience). There’s some good ideas here for how to automate workflows and repetitive tasks.

"When research inspires it invites people to tap into their endless well of curiosity"

Pinterest’s Jenny Zhou on why letting go of the rules can lead to better research.

I really like how Jenny makes the case that research should be about inspiring content, design choices, etc, rather than just informing them:

"While informing answers “what is true?”, inspiring pushes the boundaries of “what could be”. Informing helps teams reduce risks when making an important decision. Inspiring kindles peoples’ creativity and gives them permission to explore, to lean into risks. Informing embraces objectivity. Inspiring embraces serendipity. We inform through the head; we inspire through the heart.”

A lot of this post feels very relevant to the non-profit sector too, where so often we are dealing with issues of the heart as well as of the head.

"Research sessions can prompt emotions regardless of the topic"

Scope’s Grace Lauren on research ethics and ensuring participant wellbeing.

Would it even be an edition of 10 Things for non-profits if I didn’t share something from the amazing team at Scope?!

"Observations from real usability testing on what people do and what they don’t do on the web"

Vitaly Friedman on design and usability patterns users love and hate.

I appreciated how quick and easy it was to skim through this article and pick up a few ideas for things to do more and less of. I’d take it all with a pinch of salt, because it’s based on personal observations, but it’s a good prompt for further thinking and research.

"Ask the content strategy agony aunt (me!)"

I get emails now and again where people ask me for help with little (and not-so-little) content problems. The questions often highlight interesting, finicky, frustrating content problems that I think many people would relate to. So I’m turning them into a new agony aunt column. Think Clare Rayner*, but with a MacBook and a trail of stakeholders saying ‘Can you just…’

*British agony aunt

To make this work, I need your problems! You can mail them to me by replying to this email, or ask them anonymously here: