Week 5 – Developing Share
Edventure ‐ Week 5
Written by student Valentine from Switzerland.
This week has been a big step for the team since we’re starting to bring our main ideas to reality. As Manda explained already when she documented last week, we split our team into two groups:
- Team RUMABE: Ruby, Matt and Ben
- Team TRIANGLE: Rosa, Manda and Valentine
The RuMaBe team is taking care of different projects such as marketing, crowd funding or redesigning the website and the shop. While we, team triangle, are organising a clear out for SHARE to get rid of the items that are barely or never borrowed. We’re also trying to develop a new volunteer program in order to get more people involved. Finally we are looking for new possibilities to make SHARE more accessible to people who could need it.
So having a lot to do for the next few weeks we started week 5 by checking the timelines that we had been drawing and our Gantt chart in order to make sure everything was covered and would be done on time.
Team triangle Gantt chart
Since this week was about splitting into two different teams I can only document what the team triangle has been working on. So in order to make sure all the great projects we trying to achieve are acknowledged, Matt has kindly agreed to write a bit about the RuMaBe team (see on page 4).
Rosa, Manda and me spent Monday afternoon starting the volunteer’s and outreach’s research by making phone calls and creating questionnaires. One questionnaire was intended for actual volunteers and the other one was about asking customers if they would like to see more high value items in the shop.
On Tuesday morning we had a meeting with Johannes and the RuMaBe team for a session about how to make a business plan. It was particularly interesting because to understand how a social lean canvas works we tried it out with some of our main projects like creating a volunteer program or getting some high value items for the shop.
The social lean canvas
We learned how a social lean canvas differs from a classic lean canvas by having a purpose and an impact. This tool is really helpful to make sure you’re solving an actual problem and that it matches with your purpose and the impact you want to have. Moreover you can look at your value proposition and check if it’s the best one to appeal to your customer segments.
Link to Edventures lean canvas tool
For a concrete example using our own project: the new volunteer program.
The purpose of our project is to distribute SHARE’s workload more effectively as the shop’s managers have barely enough time to run the shop. The lack of time is our main problem. Then our customer segments would be the staff and our impact would be to give them more time by getting more volunteers involved.
Then for the end of the week, basically Wednesday and Thursday, the team Triangle started to organise the clearing out. As we were going to move a lot of items, we needed a plan. We decided to go through the data and to find out which items were never or barely borrowed. Then using this list we put a sticker on those items in order to let SHARE’s staff to give their veto or their thoughts. Afterwards we started clearing out! Depending on the items and on their aspect they were sent to the recycling centre, to charity’s shops or kept for a future big jumble sale.
Rosa and Manda working hard!
It was quite a difficult process since there are so many items in the shop and it was sometimes difficult to find the ones we were looking for! But eventually we manage to make some space in the shop in order to organise a more effective storage.
Week 5 for Team RuMaBe by Matt
The fifth week got off to a quick start for “RuMaBe”, otherwise known as Ruby, Matt (me) and Ben. With Ben absent on Monday, Ruby and myself focused on doing crowdfunding research online, as well as creating a team timetable for the week in order to give us some structure with regards to the numerous tasks we had to get done.
With Ben back in at Edventure on Tuesday morning, we began the day with a business planning session with Johannes. Following that, we continued with the crowdfunding research from the previous day, and Ruby gave us a short presentation of what she had learned about LocalGiving from a talk she had attended with some of the other groups team members.
Wednesday morning’s focus for Ben and myself was solely on storytelling for the crowdfunding page. Primarily, we needed to brainstorm all the different categories we would need to cover before we could each begin writing for the different sections. It was a time-‐consuming process, but one that was vital for us to detail in creating a solid and structured foundation to work from. After lunch, we decided to switch things up a bit by watching a video interview on YouTube related to crowdfunding in Frome.
On Thursday, we focused further on storytelling, made a to do list, and came up with ideas for rewards for the crowdfunding page. In the afternoon, we had a reflections session as a group to express how the week had been for each of us.