An opportunity to support and empower CicLAvia teams to reach out to potential sponsors by elevating their visual storytelling.
A modular pitch deck to present to potential corporate sponsors, using ChatGPT to assist with streamlining the research process and using A.I generated images to assist in conveying the presence of sponsors at CicLavia events
Santa Monica's IxD program worked with CicLavia, a 504(c)(3) non-profit that created vibrant public spaces by closing down streets at a large scale to become places that people could walk, run, bike, skate through. They host multiple events thought out Los Angeles where they welcome the local neighborhood and the community at large to participate. Because of the large operations, it's assumed that this is an event that is hosted by city which is not, because of that our groups task was to increate fundraising efforts with CicLavia Goers and partners.
Class Interaction Design III
2023
Project Manager, Researcher, Surveyor, Booth Attendant, Designer
People don’t know CicLAvia is a non-profit. As a non-profit, raising money is always a struggle that is never ending and always trying to go above the status quo. Our task centers around creating a system and strategy that helps boost fundraising for CicLAvia
attract and secure new corporate sponsorships that align with our mission and values, ensuring a mutually beneficial partnership for both parties?
Our goal is a a solution tailored to activate and entice potential new donors. Our impact will use storytelling to bridge the gap between fundraising and community connectedness through the use of A.I
Over the course of two weeks, we conducted interviews with various individuals involved with CicLavia and affiliated non-profit organizations, including the CIO, CPO, consultants, board members, and directors from partner organizations.
Our goal was to have a better understanding on how to better service CicLavia and how other non-profits work. Gather insights from each unique perspective. From these interviews we got a better understanding with the direction we wanted to take our project with the kind of experiments we wanted to run and the kinds of questions we wanted to ask during our next phase during CicLavia events.
“The board sets the tone for fundraising. If they are not doing it, you can’t get other people to do it. Because they are the face of the organization. They are the biggest cheerleaders and have the opportunity to leverage their connections” - Dianne Tyau(Director of Donor Impact at Harvest Home)
We performed several experiments at Ciclamini: North Hollywood to get a better understanding on event goers knowledge of how CicLavia is operated, the type of merch they would like to see, as well as the number of times that they have gone to a ClicLavia event.
Along with the interactive surveys that we ran we also took observational documentation to get a better understanding of the feel and vibe of the event. Is is important to mention, CicLamini was a brand new event for them to close down a mile long street instead of several and host a more intimidate experience with several stations for companies and shops to set up and partake in the event. So the event definitely had a different atmosphere compared to a standard CicLavia event. Where compared to going from one end and to the other before going home people were able to go back and forth and enjoy the Hub Centers as well.
At CicLAvia’s Heart of LA event on October 15th, 2023. The route branched out from East Los Angeles towards Chinatown and towards South Park with it being 7.8 Miles. Our group was designated at the Little Tokyo Hub Center as it was right before the routes branched out towards opposite directions.
We tested three separate experiments to help us uncover why event goers weren’t donating and which type of engagement would allow us to inspire them the most to donate.
The experiments ran to get a better understanding of CicLavia and their knowledge of the organization.
Donation contributors numbers.
and a survey to understand why people donated or didn't
“With so many people, I would give anything to get have that public perception and opportunity to engage with so many thousands of people that are participating” - Dwain Wilson(Founder & Executive Director At Wildwoods)
We had a lot of great ideas for raising fundraising efforts at events. Logistically they were outside of the current's team efforts as it would add on to their current team's responsibilities for running the show smoothly. We decided to pivot our efforts to outside of the time frames of events and focus on partnership outreach and activating board members responsibilities.
We felt this gave a lot of opportunities for a lot of big companies that are housed in Los Angeles to give back to the community at events as well as give opportunities to promote themselves.
Board members can leverage their position to partners as they hold a unique situation to not only support but grow the non-profit .
Our first step for this system was using a document A.I. A step by step guide to leveraging A.I models for research. A.I is becoming more common and companies are only becoming more familiar with and applying it more to their day to day basis. For this particular case we used ChatGPT as the sample model for system.
Developed a research outline for CicLAvia to incorporate A.I. in the research of potential corporate sponsors, providing a structured research base for pitching P.O.S.E to corporate sponsors or high-value donors. This purposeful template is tailored to support staff and board members in efficiently collecting pertinent information during the research process.
The next step was creating a system for generating A.I images. For this particular step we used bing image generator. This is crucial for creating concept images of the company/partner at the Ciclavia events.
This is a crucial element for the story telling aspect as a picture tells a thousand words. This also helps with giving the partner a stronger impression of what they could look like at a CicLavia event.
“When a board member gets on the board, you have to say “here’s what’s expected from you” almost by definition, board members are busy people. So you have to be honest about them about what’s expected from them in terms of time and donating ” - Jim Ehlers(Executive Director of the Office of Gift Planning at Caltech)
Our modular pitch deck was meant so that it was easy to drag and place images and info to slides and cater it to the specific partner.
We created several examples using this system for Netflix, Hulu, Hoka, Patagonia, and Snap.
We reached out to MaCher, a Certified B Corporation, and presented a curated version of P.O.S.E for them. Jamila Jackson and Ben Denzinger provided feedback. Leveraging Gigi Martinez’s narrative effectively communicated CicLavia’s powerful message. The incorporation of A.I-generated images vividly illustrated how prospective partners might envision themselves at events
This was the first time I project managed and learned so much about documenting and delegating tasks. There was so much field work and research that went into this project. I'm so happy with the team I worked with. They worked so hard and diligent. I'm so happy that CicLavia gave us the opportunity they are doing so much good work and you could see it at events.
.jpg)
