Streamlining Donations
This is a project to improve Salvation Army’s services of donations on the
warehouses located in Savannah by introducing the a new channel to receive
donations more efficiently.
Group Members: Alice Huang, Sanath Desai, Shijun Li, Ruibing Jiang
My Contribution: Research, Ideation, 3D modeling, 3D rendering
September 2022 - November 2022
Introduction
The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. Salvation Army also follows the philosophy of helping meet human needs without discrimination by providing them aid in the form of few services.
Salvation Army , Savannah, Ga
Thrift Store
Salvation Army runs thrift stores for the community with the help of donations. People from the community donate Clothes, furniture, and stationery items for good will which are then sold cheaper so that it is affordable prices for the poor communities.
Stakeholder's Map
Research Ecosystem map
Salvation Army runs thrift-stores for community with the help of donations. People from community donate Clothes, furniture and stationery items for good will which are then sold cheaper so that it is affordable prices for the poor communities.
Current Service Blueprint
The current service blueprint is created from the primary data that was gathered on the ground. This service blueprint reveals that the warehouse is the most common touch point for all the scenarios.
Pain points - Donator
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Distance from Salvation army is too far.
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The weight of the donations is too heavy.
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No free time to donate (most d
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donations are saved for weekends).
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Salvation army is not the preferred thrift store for donations.
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Salvation army’s items are a bit
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expensive and not of good quality.
Pain points - Staff
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Inefficient sorting process, too many different
categories. -
Work would mostly pile up on weekends at
noon (most people donate on weekends during their free time at noon). -
The working environment in the warehouse is
too cluttered and not clean enough. -
The cost of disposing of leftover waste after
sorting is too high.
Root Cause Analysis
The root cause analysis was conducted to find the main cause of the pain points gathered from the interviews and ethnographic observations.
Solution - Donation Stalls
Donation Stalls can be kept around the communities that donate the most to reduce the strain on warehouse workers. The donation stall collects donations segregated into different categories by guiding the donors.
Labelled Categories
Donation Box have labels to guide donators and allow them to donate as little as possible at any given time. Donation Stall has 6 categories to reduce the worker’s efforts.
Short , Pant, Jeans
Shoes
Dress, Shirt
Scarf, Hat, Gloves, Tie
T-shirt, Shirt, Sweater
Coat, Suit, Jacket
Replaceable Bins
Once the Bins in the donation stall are full, they can be replaced by accessing the back door. This makes small donations possible too.
Easy Discovery
The locations and information on the Donation Boxes stalls are
available on google maps and on Salvation Army’s Website.
Easy Discovery
The Donation Stalls is a new service that the Salvation Army can adapt to work more efficiently. The stalls provide the staff and the donators with time.
