Brainstorming Page - Missions App

Explore

User Interviews

(S) Dennis - Interview Notes

Thought about becoming a missionary at some point vs marketplace

Enjoy supporting missionaries — financially or in prayer

Have a few missionary friends — always inspired by what they’re willing to sacrifice to do God’s work

Now head of product at E-motive - series B - text message marketing — macro economic - affecting

Tell us about a recent experience supporting missions…

Have a couple - Paul and Shannon missionaries in China

They were having hard times in China, some tiems they couldn’t stay in the country, able to come back to the US more often than they epxected to, got to see them and get updates

Would be huge to see real time how theyre doing when they’re in China, comms, be in touch know

Went to same church in SoCal

They asked for support and a few people decided

They send newsletter update once a quarter, there sporadic — will write a whole piece with one picture — PDF file

Other ways to keep in touch, when they come back, will visit scmall group?

How do you keep track of the missionaries you support?

More transactional when they come back and ask, will put an offering

Would love to support missionary and get onboarding

Currently supporting 1 active. All the others were more

One time gifts — at church, they’ll share at the pulpit and put in an offering, that’s it; on prayer list for a couple, would have to write

Supporter

General:

What’s your one off or monthly support ratio?

What does a typical day look like for you?

What apps or websites do you use on a daily basis? Why?

Messengers: different groups with family members

Founded a business fraternity in college

Some are on Facebook messenger

Uses instagram and facebook — silent scroller

How do you engage with the posts that you see? Just view things. In small groups,

When does a group get too big where you stop posting — when there are more than 10 people — why? It gets noisy and overwhelming, and I don’t want to add to that noise.

What’s your experience with ministry and missions?

Been to Mexico to help with construction — had to fundraise from the church, it was a day trip

Supporting missionaries

General

What are the ways you current support missionaries or missions orgs?

What do you like about how you currently support missions?

Believe in what they’re doing — Paul is a PhD in linguistics, was working on translating Bibles in certain dialects in China — knowing that they’re doing meaningful work, getting updates is helpful

What has been frustrating in your experience supporting missions?

Sometimes they can go dark, you don’t know how things are going or how you could be praying for them

How social media works today, would like it to more real time or interactive

Whether in the form of a group chat or DMs or see posts or photo

Do you know nay of their other

Collectively support or communicate? through meila

What products or tools do you use to facilitate support? e.g. banking app to transfer funds, email/social media to read about their updates, phone call to check in on them

What do you like or dislike about these products or tools?

Have you paid for any of these products or tools?

Discovery

How do you find missionaries/missions orgs to support?

Church

What makes you decide to support them?

Because they know them and there’s a relationship

Often, the ones upon request — when they share what they go on mission

Have you given to everyone that has asked?

For the ones you didn’t give to, what was the thought process? — not explicit, more when they can communicate well and effectively, more confidence in what they can achieve

Clarity and coherence on why they’re going, story behind it, why their heart is tugged int that way

Support

How do you stay updated on their activities?

What makes you decide to continue supporting them?

Ending support

What makes you decide to end support? Has there been a time when you decided to stop supporting?

What does ending support currently look like?

Often supported upon

Has there been a time when you gave without someone ask

What do you like about the group chat experience?

Created group chats for each kid — post specific

works well - record keeping how how they’re growing up — intention and purpose for that group chat

impetus and feedback loop — what’s compelling you to come back to do it? You know the guardrails of what that thing is for —

why is it important to have a history/update — are you expecting engagement and discussion? Or is it the act of posting

where is your dopamine coming from?

as family, they interact, it’s nice to have different family members put in photos so they don’t lose track of it

What do you dislike about the group chat experience?

When it gets too noisy: overwhelming amount of texts in a short amount of time

When discussions deviates from intention and purpose?

Will lose track of things when it gets to be too much — disconnect from tech

Go back to a time when you didn’t give — have they approached you directly and you didn’t or it was just from the pulpit?

What are the things you’re thinking when deciding whether to give or not?

A lot of times, would hear game plan, e.g. go to Japan to teach English. The goal is to live among locals and evangelize — that’s helpful

When there isn’t a clear game plan, when it sounds like they’re just going to live in a country — fear that funds wouldn’t be used effectively

Converted from prayer support to financial support? No, often the missionary come to church, out of sight, out of mind —

If their call to action were - “follow my journey” - would you be willing to follow if they didn’t have a game plan? — yes, much lighter call to action — see progress updates and might give

An update that would make him want to give:

Something he enjoyed from worldvision: kid he was sponsoring would draw and write letters, get a photo every so often

Why?

Put picture in wallet just to

Visual artifact is helpful

Enjoy supporting missioanrires → tried looking for missionries to support?

Haven’t actively looked

Wouldn’t know where to look

If I find a directory with a bunch of names, would be overwhelming, don’t see self clicking through every profile

So much of missionary support is hearing their story in different format — instinctual decision

Quick and easy call to action

Journey: one time CTA or

Do you feel like I’m not doing it, I might do it one time, go to recurring — or skip straight to recurring?

Most churches don’t give option to give in a recurring manner in Dennis’ experience

If can maintain relationship with a missionary, want to be ongoing support for them until they decide they’re done then automatically

Global support — if they’re a missionary in the US, it’s just call of a Christian to evangelize

Instinctually, wouldn’t follow or support US-based missionaries

In navigators, had full time staff that was targeting/serving students

When Dennis was in navigators, as members would support navigators

How did you stop supporting Navigators

was a poor college kid, didn’t think to give until there was a reason to

When you were evaluating whether to go into missions field

How big of a consideration was issue of fundraising? What were other limitations

Dennis’s main factor: his parents aren’t Christian, being Christian and tithing never made sense to them

When Dennis went to intervarsity, was trying to figure out what was God’s will for his life

Decided to give management consulting path one more shot, if can land it, then go with it. If can’t land it, answer is clear. Got an internship. Also considered peace corp - build local business to self fund and operate through that

Paul and Shannon - almost had a business plan going to China, create travel agency to convince travelers to their town, needed something to get htem to kickstart

Dennis is business oriented, like to have a plan, build something that can become

Would rather give to something that’s more self sustainable?

It’s a hard path when can’t create alternative income stream

Part of it is that there isn’t any technology to stay connected with missionaries — out of sight, out of mind

When lose touch with missionaries, don’t know where that money went, don’t know whether the money given affected change/have impact

Want to be good stewards of finances

⁠

Conviction

Wanted group chat

Kept coming back to out of sight and out of mind

pictures, regularity, stay top of mind

engagement was secondary

there seems to be a lack of information coming from m

Surprising

intentionality and record keeping

Need to get clear on the persona of the supporter — I’m not part of the persona. He’s closer to the persona — will forget if he doesn’t see it, have a heart to give more but doesn’t know more people to give to — never got the invitation to monthly. Or invitation was made but they lacked competence

Even if he saw transformation but it was local in the US vs abroad, would not give

Upside, best case on the product, people are giving more locally

For adoption, focus on overseas giving vs US givers

Tim: primary persona: US missionaries abroad — we’re fighting a different bias

Right now, primary bias: we don’t hear from them enough so we don’t give. If we hear from them more

If we focus on people in the US — if you saw them more often, would you give? No. We’re not equipped to handing able nature of missions or giving, but to handle lack of information density.

There may be subtle things to encounter, so be clear about the bias, who are the people we’re reaching. It might affect things

We dogfood it first. We’re the missionaries using the app

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.