Nonprofit United States

Delivering high-quality results while working on an application with a user base of over 225k

Executive Summary

Challenge: Ensuring high quality delivery and improving an existing application, a key part of our client’s organization, to make it more flexible and universal. The goal is to answer the needs of various NGOs using it and to satisfy the end-users from young generations who are searching for service year offers.

Approach: We stay in touch with SYA’s team, consult and provide necessary expertise whenever possible, allowing the client to answer the end-users’ and NGOs’ needs quickly. Through intensive workshops and requirements gathering our team made sure that everyone involved is on the same page.

Result: The platform that we work on is more adjusted to what our clients and the end-users’ need, resulting in better targeting and much better conversion of a better quality. The user experience on the platform is streamlined and has been optimized to make it much easier to navigate and submit an application for a service year of choice.

Table of Contents

About the client

Service Year Alliance is working to make a year of paid full-time service a common expectation and experience for all young Americans.

There are over 65,000 opportunities in America that offer varying lengths of commitment, issue areas and geographic locations. All service years share one thing in common: they provide a paid, life-changing experience.

Along with making an impact in the community, a service year will help young people grow personally and professionally. Service years provide an opportunity to develop new skills, participate in training and professional development, and receive financial support.

Business challenge

Service Year Alliance was looking for a new IT partner who would guarantee higher flexibility, quality delivery, and further development of the existing online application aiming to increase the awareness about the program and consolidate service year opportunities in one place. The platform is a crucial part of the organization’s activity, allowing young Americans to leverage the potential coming from participating in service years.

Through the hands-on experience, Service Year Alliance learned that the platform needed to be optimized and ever-evolving to change along with the new generations’ approach – they started with Millennials, now they work mainly with Gen Z, and in a couple of years the target would be changed to Generation Alpha. What’s more, the organizations involved in creating service year opportunities are managed in different ways, so the application had to be universal to be able to incorporate them all.

>225k

user accounts on platform

>50k

certified opportunities

Providing competencies

Our collaboration started with three days of workshops at the Future Processing headquarters and two weeks of knowledge transfer to ensure that the engaged team fully understood the project. As the collaboration continued, we built a strong partnership and gained trust. To stay up to date with the development and business needs, we hold frequent online and offline meetings with Service Year Alliance’s team, and there is an openness for discussion and exchanging ideas.

Future Processing has been very helpful and allowed us to focus our limited resources on our most important priorities at any given time all within one team. There were times over the years when we needed more extensive UX design work, more intensive workshops. Recently, we had a handful of different needs – security, infrastructure, and how to get the most value out of the data. As an NGO, it is extremely valuable to us to have one partner that has all the expertise and competencies, and Future Processing has been that partner for us.

Kristen Bennett
CEO, Service Year Alliance

Consulting and focus on quality

Future Processing started the collaboration with Service Year Alliance as a technology expert following the client’s roadmap, only to become a trusted consulting partner over the years. We maintain a very close relationship with SYA’s CEO, Kristen Bennett, who knows that whenever there is a new challenge, we can advise on choosing the best approach, e.g., concerning cybersecurity, infrastructure, or UX issues. We ensure that our services are of the highest value, suggest the possible solutions, and remain flexible.

ServiceYearAlliance_screen

Partnership that delivers

Service Year Alliance highlights that working with Future Processing allows them to work in a flexible manner, as we can add new features and address feedback and end-user requests quickly, bringing them more value over time. The platform is a crucial part of the organization, enabling our client to bring their vision to life and making service years more accessible for youth across the country.

Our client is dedicated to delivering the best quality to their NGO partners and the end-users of the platform that we work on. They conduct a lot of different and thorough activities to make sure that ServiceYear.org is intuitive, targets the right people, and that it serves its purpose. For example, SYA does regular user testing on both sides, thoroughly analyzing the data to make sure that the end-users are succeeding and converting in the ways our client wants them to and that the NGOs have all features they need to get the most out of the platform.

Watch the interview

Listen to Kristen Bennett, CEO, talking about how Service Year Alliance provides opportunities for Gen Z, how the pandemic has changed young people’s lives, and more.

Play Video about video_service_year

It is a pleasure to work with the talented and hard-working team at Future Processing. We are grateful for their partnership, their dedication, and their impressive results.

Kristen Bennett
CEO, Service Year Alliance

Main benefits of our partnership

  • Service Year Alliance confirms that the quality of conversion within their application is much better than before
  • Young people find the platform user-friendly and easy to navigate, the application is streamlined thanks to the UX work
  • Our client gets the expertise they need right away and in one place, thanks to our comprehensive portfolio of services
  • We collaborate very closely, enabling SYA to answer their end-users and NGO partners’ needs fast and in an effective way

Technologies used in the project