Challenge

The Social Innovation Council of NSW developed the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Benchmarking Model, enabling organisations to self-assess their own capability around customer focus and corporate governance. To complement the benchmarking exercise, FutureGov was commissioned by the Department of Finance, Services & Innovation (DFSI) to deliver workshops that help those organisations better meet those standards.

Approach

FutureGov designed and delivered workshops on human-centered design and design thinking with NGOs across NSW. We balanced theoretical learning with hands-on exercises using a design challenge. These exercises allowed participants to practice and get coached on activities from user research through to insight synthesis. We also prepared a toolkit and recorded the workshop for participants and other NGOs to use with their own teams and projects.

Impact

For a sector already user-centred and committed to working with some of the most vulnerable members of our community, it was great to see the high level of engagement from participants wanting to learn about different tools and ways of working. We hope the human-centred mindset, process, and tools will help NGOs to continuously improve, adapt to the changing needs of their clients, and increase their success to deliver positive outcomes.