Enable volunteer consultants tackle global issues

Happy New Year!

Our DC, Pittsburgh and San Francisco teams are currently engaged with client development or with projects. We have also had students step up to lead initiatives to enhance DSO's marketing, recruit new members, and get course credit for projects.

In this report, we will feature our project with Ashoka Changemakers and discuss DSO's next steps.

Featured Project

DSO had the pleasure of working with Ashoka Changemakers on an evaluation and redesign of the two most visible and crucial web pages, within the context of a wider website redesign effort. DSO provided a thorough design analysis, user studies, final mockups, and recommendations for the future of the website.

Ashoka Changemakers is the world’s leading network of social innovators that, through collaborative competitions or "challenges," connects high-potential changemakers, their ideas, and resources. Operating under the mantra “Everyone a Changemaker,” Ashoka Changemakers' website is the portal through which social innovators around the world access people and resources to make their projects a reality. Changemakers is redesigning this portal and reached out to DSO to ensure that pages were easy to use, up to web standards, responsive, and consistent to make a fluid experience for the site's diverse users.

DSO thoroughly evaluated existing content, conducted several user studies, met with end users to assess functionality, and produced increasingly detailed design deliverables (from wireframes to high fidelity mockups). As demonstrated through user studies and surveys to the Ashoka team, DSO's deliverables incorporate Ashoka's values and human feel into a usable structure that can be applied to the remaining pages of the site.

DSO members Jessica and Hannah built a strong rapport with the Changemakers team over the course of the engagement, which concluded with a successful and widely attended final presentation and site visit at Ashoka headquarters. 

A testimonial from the Director of Community and Product Manager

We worked with DSO on redesign for the home page and a major landing page of our site (200 thousand + users, 1 million + visitors per year). In the redesign, we focused on updating the pages to reflect contemporary design standards while giving a human face to our organization. Our team from DSO carefully learned about our organization's mission, history, and business objectives. They provided timely updates on their design and were responsive to difficult feedback. The end product was aesthetic, functional, and reflected our brand positively. Having worked with other professional design firms, we rate our relationship with DSO the most friendly, productive, and enjoyable in recent years.

What’s next for DSO?

Over the next three months, the DSO teams of students and professionals will be hard at work to finalize project engagements before the end of the 2015 academic year. Each project will be assessed with DSO impact framework to ensure the organization is contributing concrete value.

As the year ends, many of our talented students are looking for summer internships. If you are looking to fill internship positions with students from Stanford, Georgetown, and Carnegie Mellon University please contact us.

If you are interested in helping with the next steps above, have references, or would like to learn more about DSO opportunities please e-mail inquiries@dsoglobal.org.

Thank You! With your support, we are able to pursue our passion every day. 

Links:

• Visit our website and learn how to get involved!
• Read our stories and insights into international development
• Engage with us on Twitter

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we are grateful to attract and retain cream of the crop talent across our organization.

But what energizes us most is how passionate, accomplished and diverse our members are inside and outside of DSO. In this report, we will share testimonials from two returning students, feature an overview of our talent, share some of our proudest accomplishments, and discuss DSO’s next steps.

We hope you enjoy learning more about our team as much as we have!

Testimonials from two of our Student Consultants

Working with DSO has been a tremendous learning experience. It has allowed me to sharpen my business skills while making a tangible impact on real-world business issues for clients committed to international development. The projects provide great exposure to top management with years of industry expertise, to mentors and professional volunteers committed to your personal and professional development, and to other students passionate about making a difference. I'm excited to learn and grow in another year with DSO! - Rachel, San Francisco

My reasons for joining DSO soon turned into the reasons that I love being a part of DSO.  As a college student who's goals were to break into the consulting industry, it was hard to gain the experience that firms usually look for as well as philanthropy that reaches further than just raising money. Through DSO I was able to gain experience through two projects which involved real life scenarios such as improving brand names and helping human trafficking NGOs move from a paper based system to an online system.  Being able to interact with clients and perform roles from requirements gathering to developing the actual app gave me deep insight into the industry that I was aiming to break into. Additionally it was great to see how our work benefits the client to be able to pursue their passions and help more people. The guidance and mentorship that I received from the amazing DSO leads enabled me to land a consulting job and gain a network of dedicated and passionate friends. - Sonum, Washington DC

Some of our proudest accomplishments

We have a heavyweight crew member, ROTC cadet, published poet, community builder, an "Engineer without Borders," half-marathon runner, bakery business expert, co-founder of an international youth network and a history teacher. 

What’s next for DSO? 

Over the holiday season, DSO will be actively working on 4 main efforts.

• Recruiting Experts - Experts are expected to volunteer 3-5 hours a month providing mentorship and project guidance based on their expertise (5+ years of experience). By the end of the year we are looking to bring on 5 new experts

• Board Development - DSO is looking to bring on 2-3 new board members who would be able to help contribute towards DSO’s mission and current initiatives. We are looking for experienced professional (5+ years of experience) with a passion for international development and a proven track record of entrepreneurship, fundraising, client development, or organization management.  

• Starting New Projects - We are grateful to have exceptional talent and are actively working on scoping 3 new projects for January. Our areas of expertise include digital and content marketing, financial sustainability, market research, human centered design, product development, and systems integration.

• Sharing our point of view - In 2015, we will be more active sharing stories and results from our projects and team experiences. Follow us on Twitter and follow our blog to ensure you don’t miss anything.  

If you are interested in helping with the next steps above, have references, or would like to learn more about the opportunities please e-mail inquiries@dsoglobal.org.