Northern Lights Chorale

Northern Lights Chorale is an auditioned ensemble performing free choral music throughout the Twin Cities. Northern Lights aims to attract a more intergenerational and diverse audience. They strive to keep choir music free and accessible to everyone. To do this, they need to increase their fundraising support.

Background

For the last decade, education boards around the country have felt the pressure of budget cuts in the field of the fine arts. Among the fine arts that are fighting to stay a part of our culture, is the musical chorale. Choral music was once a more customary musical form of communal entertainment, but today, it is primarily associated with school and church programs. Northern Lights Chorale is concerned it will become a dying art form.

the problem

The recent retirement of the volunteer director and founder of Northern Chorale, has left the group at a crossroads, needing to decide on its future direction. With increased expenses they have a need for more financial sponsorship to afford to continue performing. However, their mission is to keep the fine arts accessible to everyone so they would like to keep their events free, and charging for concert tickets is a last resort to raise money. Additionally, given that their current audience primarily consists of individuals 55 years and above, there is an emerging desire to diversify their demographic reach as they embark on a new chapter, envisioning both artistic innovation and financial stability. 

How might we develop a design strategy for Northern Lights Chorale that boosts donation support while also broadening their reach to engage younger audience members?

The Solution

Our touchpoint strategy map highlighted the importance of updating the client’s website and flyers, incorporating video content into their social media channels, and creating a goal driven fundraising page.  All our touchpoint prototypes for Northern Lights Chorale were designed to help audience members and financial sponsors to feel engaged, inspired, and altruistic so that they are able to experience impressive chorale music and support the fine arts legacy.

To accomplish this user experience our team’s design strategy focused on audience engagement and fundraising. As a result we hope to see a change in web analytics, concert attendance, audience demographics, and donations.

The Process

Defining the “Problem Space”

Based on the initial client meeting and design brief, two focus areas emerged—product strategy and community outreach. As a team, we started the project by mapping out our knowns, unknowns and assumptions, and turning them into questions for our stakeholder meeting with Northern Lights Chorale. 

Based on that call, I decided to create two user personas to represent the primary members that Northern Lights hope to reach. 

Discovering Areas of Opportunity

Northern Lights concert attendees primarily fall into two distinct user groups: individuals aged 55 and older, and a desired younger demographic. To expand our outreach efforts and diversify our audience, we aim to attract a younger crowd while maintaining support from our current base.

To effectively address both fundraising goals and audience diversity, we've segmented these generational groups to understand their unique needs and behaviors at various user touchpoints, using a Touchpoint Strategy Map. Through our deep dive research and strategy map we determined six main areas of opportunity, based on the two different user groups’ predicted behavioral trends:

Community Awareness & Engagement - social media, flyers, website

Fundraising support & Maintenance - concert billfold, fundraiser, emailed newsletter

Our Design Strategy

To accomplish the clients goals we focused on audience engagement and fundraising by updating user touchpoints in online presence, promotional communications, and funding interactions.  All new user experience touchpoints for Northern Lights Chorale will help audience members and financial sponsors to feel engaged, inspired, and altruistic so that they are able to experience awe-inspiring music and support the fine arts legacy.

While designing my prototypes I asked myself two main questions to ensure we were hitting both our client and user goals for the most impact.

Does this design make the user feel inspired, engaged and altruistic? And does this design increase either community outreach or financial support?

Building the future roadmap

Design Rationale

After conducting research on social media, I determined instagram would be the most effective social media tool for Northern Lights Chorale. Unlike newer platforms like TikTok, instagram is used by a multitude of generations. I curated content in the story highlights and posts to help users feel inspired, engaged, and altruistic.

To inspire users - Videos of performances and third party reinforcement with positive review highlights. Along with appealing & bite sized visual content in posts. 

To engage users - The profile highlight will host personalized video introductions to members of the choir. This is also reflected in the video below with member portraits. A linktree for more info. 

To boost altruism - A fundraising story highlight, and a friends highlight showcasing sponsors who have donated. Giving donors a sense of belonging and acknowledgement for their generous funds.

Scrollable Prototype

Fundraiser Page

Northern Lights Chorale has never done a fundraiser, and only collects donations through their website and at concerts. I felt it would be critical and helpful to show them how to design and curate a fundraiser. My deep dive research showed that there is more motivation for people to donate when there is a specific goal the funds are building towards. Currently, Northern Lights only performs at churchs. Because they aim to attract a wide audience range, I suggest that they raise funds to pay for a venue like the Lake Harriet bandshell, which is highly visible and located in a family neighborhood centralized in Minneapolis. 

Next steps

Throughout this project, I was inspired by Northern Lights Chorale’s mission to make concerts free and accessible. To carry their mission further, I recommend these next steps :

1.  Diversify concert venues and fundraise for this goal!

2.  Streamline social media content by utilizing tools like Hubspot

3.  Research on chorale music showed that doing a concert with one artist’s songs generates excitement a larger audience. I’d consider this for future concerts.

4.  Make it a date night! Partner with local food venues and sell tickets for the dinner but provide free music :)