Project Overview

The Telstra Foundation is Telstra’s charity, focused on driving digital and social innovation to benefit vulnerable communities. One of three grants programs the Foundation runs, Telstra Kids Fund, distributes one million dollars in small $1200 grants to more than 800 grassroots community organisations. Open to all Telstra employees, the program’s governance and management relied heavily on complex manual verification and paper-based processes, unchanged for 13 years.

Project Commissioner

Telstra Foundation

Project Creator

Focus Creative

Project Brief

Telstra Foundation briefed Focus Creative to simplify and digitise Telstra Kids Fund processes, in line with the Foundation’s new focus on digital innovation. Specifically, the Foundation was looking to simplify the application, assessment, verification and grant distribution process in addition to automating social media functionality to amplify the grants and their impact nationally. It was also keen to improve the end to end user experience for the program manager, employees and grant recipients in order to reduce process enquiries from the 1000s of applications received.

Project Innovation/Need

Define, design and build an entirely custom digital platform for the Telstra Kids Fund. Built in to the platform was automatic verification of staff details and eligibility to request a grant, verification against the Australian Taxation Office database of registered not for profits, automated email reminders, automated approval of 60% of application details, automatic distribution of applications for review, automated payment error resolution and integration of social media platforms relating to completed projects. All this was developed within Telstra’s brand guides and security requirements to look beautiful and be simple.

Design Challenge

The design challenge for this project was how to not only make the complex appear simple, but also beautiful. Application progress graphics visually breaking the process down in to sections, creating a “dash-board” for users and another more advanced one for administrators which was designed as carefully as any front facing element. Where possible we used approved Telstra images to complement the program’s focus on fun, play, and learning experiences since the program’s focus was to benefit kids. It was also a challenge to integrate of multiple social media feeds, from a range of platforms into a seamless single experience.

User Experience

The new platform has saved 132 working days annually in administration. It has created a constant flow of social media content to amplify the good work being done. Now, through the system, the funding rounds have been condensed from an average of 6 weeks to just 4 days. Payment of grants to approved projects has been shortened from up to 8 weeks to within 10 working days. In the last grant round the system proved so easy to use that when the round closed there were an additional 20% of pending applications (which carry over to the next funding round).