Power of 5 – Worldwide Engagement Platform
As a key strategic and tactical partner for the Power of 5 campaign, we support Amway’s efforts to end childhood malnutrition woldwide. Since 2010, as part of a multi-disciplinary team, we have been charged with developing innovative soltions that form the core infrastructure of the campaing’s online presence and fundraising tools.
Through engaging web applications and emotive website experiences, we take great pride in helping this worthy cause expand its global impact.
Project Details
Website
When we were first engaged by the Power of 5 years ago, their immediate need was a website. They wanted a platform that allowed them to tell their clearly lay out the issue and drive people to get involved.
In the most recent update of the site we worked closely with the writers on the team to create a content strategy that focused on raising awareness for the issue and presenting the Power of 5 solution. Clear results and multiple calls to action funnel users towards the ultimate goals of donating to the campaign and sharing the story of the Power of 5.
The design of the site is focused on the mobile experience. With such a global audience, the site needs to be as accessible on the ground in Zambia as it is at the UN in New York. We use the navigation not just as sitemap for content on the site, but as guides to walk users through identifying the Issue, explaining the Solution, presenting the Results, and asking them to Get Involved. In the top right of the site is a persistent call to Donate, paired with a countdown of sorts showing how many children remain to be helped during the ongoing initiative.
Web Application
One of the main goals of the Power of 5 initiative is to connect with the younger, more active generation of Amway business owners. The team decided that the concept of a virtual 5k, where users sign up online and run remotely, would effectively engage this demographic while tying into the existing energy drink and nutrition brands within Amway. Thus the new initiative “the Power of 5K” was born.
Using Fitbit experiences as a model, we developed a web application for the new initiative that allows us to create both time-based races and virtual experiences. Users can sign up for races online, pay their registration fee, run wherever they are in the world, then self-report their times to see results on the leaderboards. They can print off their own race bib and completion certificate, and at the end they are given a shareable badge for each race or experience they complete.
The virtual experiences feature a more personal experience. Users sign up and are shown a route at a remote location – the Nutrilite Farm at Ubajara, Amway Headquarters in Ada, etc. – with waypoints along the way. As a user self-reports, the distance they travel, waypoints and factoids are ‘unlocked’, giving information, panoramic photos, or videos that coincide with their progress. Fees from races and virtual experiences all benefit the Power of 5 campaign.
In addition to giving users pre-built races and experiences, the system allows people to create their own fundraising pages to raise money for and awareness of the Power of 5. These personalized events allow users to host any kind of event they like – a local basketball tournament, a community cooking class, or even just an ongoing fundraiser – and share their unique page using whatever social tools work best for them. With a global audience this can mean Facebook, Weibo, or even WeChat, an SMS-based app popular in south-east Asia. The page tracks donations and ties them to a running count of children helped in a month. Pages then get ranked, promoting a sense of community and competition benefiting children worldwide.
To use the system users must create a basic profile on the site. From this profile they can see their progress in any ongoing experiences, access upcoming or past race pages, print off completion certificates, or share their completion badges. This profile is a valuable tool for the Power of 5 team to track where users are coming from, their engagement in the program, and how and where they donate.
Donation Widget
The key to tying all the web properties together is having a unified donation channel that tracks all payments and their metadata. To achieve this we designed a donation tool that is portable, flexible, and reports multiple sets of data to Stripe, a US based payment processor.
The widget is designed to put children first. Instead of directly asking for money, we instead ask “How many children would you like to help?” and tie that number in with a minimum fee of $10. This minimum represents how much it costs to provide nutrition to one child for one month. The widget allows people to give in multiple currencies and can be translated into multiple languages. The widget is also distributed to Amway markets worldwide and can be easily placed on any website. Since the core of the code resides on our servers, we can make changes to graphics or functionality which cascade down to all instances of the widget on the web.
Reporting
From the web application to the donation widget, all of the tools we build come with tracking and reporting at their core. From the donation widget, we can track metadata on where payments originate from and who a person’s “upline” (Amway business owner who sponsors them) is. If a person is using the race, experience, or personal fundraising tools, we also can pass their entire user profile on the Stripe along with their payment. Within Stripe we create a profile every donation received which gives the Power of 5 team deep insights into what regions are responding to their marketing efforts, what business owners are engaging most with their downlines, and what demographics are engaging most with the digital tools.