Thank you for your interest in our pro bono program! Applications are closed for 2022. Sign up for our email list to receive updates on our 2023 program.
Blink is looking for nonprofit organizations and social enterprises to partner with for our 2022 pro bono program. Is your organization tackling problems and topics that address society’s most pressing issues? Are you facing a UX challenge? We have a dedicated and talented team of designers, researchers, and strategists ready to partner with you!
Black-led and Black-owned companies, BIPOC organizations, and organizations supporting underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.
About the program
Launched in the spring of 2020, Blink’s pro bono design program helps organizations increase their impact and further their mission through evidence-driven design. By combining your organization’s mission with our UX research and design expertise, we hope to drive social change and positively impact the community.
How it works
- Each spring, Blink selects two clients to work with on a pro bono basis.
- Once selected, clients work closely with a UX team of strategists, researchers, and designers to better understand their UX challenges and reimagine, design, or develop a user-centered product.
- At the end of the project, clients have a design solution ready for implementation. Project deliverables can include design strategy, research insights, concept development and testing, and prototypes.
Program timeline
February: Applications open
April: Application review
Early May: Applicant interviews and final selection process
Late May: Project scoping
June: Project start
August: Project wrap-up
Our ideal client
To be considered for the program, applicants must be an organization or company with a social impact mission and a UX project that fits into a 10-week timeframe. We ask that partner organizations allow us to share our work and be committed to implementing it in the near future. Black-led and Black-owned companies, BIPOC organizations, and organizations with initiatives centering on other underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.
We’d love to work with organizations and companies that operate in one of the following fields:
- Arts and culture
- Civil rights
- Education
- Environment
- Health and wellness
- Poverty
- Racial equity
If this sounds like your organization or company, we'd love to hear from you.
Project ideas
Here are some examples of UX challenges we could tackle with you as part of a research and design project:
- Communicate your mission through data visualization and digital storytelling
- Build a vision for a delightful mobile app
- Establish a new brand grounded in a digital experience
- Take a concept and bring it to a buildable product
- Craft a digital experience for onboarding users, customers, or volunteers
- Design and evaluate an out-of-box experience for users, customers, or volunteers
- Optimize an employee's workflow using digital tools
- Create a holistic design system from disparate touchpoints
How to apply
Thanks for your interest in our pro bono program! Applications are closed for 2022. Sign up for our email list to receive updates on our 2023 program.
Past pro bono work
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC) is a food rescue organization with a threefold mission: to make food rescue sustainable, eliminate food waste, and make food hunger a thing of the past. The organization works with volunteers — or “rescuers” — to transport food from local donors to shelters, soup kitchens, and human resource centers in its local communities. RLC partnered with Blink to uncover the best way to attract, retain, and support new and current rescuers through a reimagined online volunteer platform.
ImpactMapper
ImpactMapper helps consumers invest in companies that positively impact the climate, human rights, and the planet. Through its platform, HERO Index, ImpactMapper transforms qualitative data into quantitative insights to show companies’ impact on environmental and social issues to help investors decide if company values align with their own. Blink worked with ImpactMapper to design and prototype an engaging, visually stunning website, which the organization used to secure development funding.
Sistahbiz Global Network
Sistahbiz is a global network focused on coaching, training, and providing services to help Black women entrepreneurs to build and expand their businesses from a small side hustle into a sustainable enterprise. At the heart of the Sistahbiz network is access to coaching, the community, and resources. Blink partnered with Sistahbiz to do research, strategy, and design for its membership platform, both current state and future vision.
Welfie
Welfie is a health platform currently focused on heart health and is extending into diagnosing and tracking COVID-19. Blink partnered with the Welfie team to fortify the existing Welfie experience while evolving COVID-19 features to help students, parents, teachers, and K-12 school administrators return to the classroom safely and confidently.
