Center for Restorative Justice Works
Building an external fund allocation platform to manage donations and distribute funding to programs
TIMELINE
Feb - May 2026
TEAM
1 PM, 1 Design Lead, 2 Dev Leads, 3 Designers, 4 Devs
ROLE
Product Designer
SKILLS
Product Thinking, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Data Visualization
CONTEXT
Center for Restorative Justice Works (CRJW) is a nonprofit dedicated to restoring relationships and communities impacted by incarceration. CRJW supports children, families, and formerly incarcerated individuals through programs that encourage connection, healing, and successful reentry into society. I served as a product designer on this team and several of my impacts included:
THE PROBLEM
CRJW relies on donations, but managing it requires tedious manual cross-referencing
CRJW relies on donations to sustain its programs, internal needs, and serve families impacted by incarceration. While they have a functional donation intake system from multiple sources (Harness Giving and Quickbooks), they lack a centralized platform to allocate funding and store data long-term.
Employees must cross-reference multiple sources of data to track donations and grant funding, then use Excel sheets or pen & paper to manage and allocate funds to appropriate needs.
HOW MIGHT WE
reduce the time and manual labor CRJW employees spend cross-referencing multi-source data so they can efficiently allocate funds to their programs?
UNDERSTANDING THE WORKFLOW
How does CRJW currently allocate funds to their programs?
CRJW uses Harness Giving to collect donations through shareable links and QR codes. Grant money and major recurring donations from companies are collected through QuickBooks. Donations are separated by campaigns or fundraising events, which help track where funds are coming from and give credit to specific groups and events.
💵
Donations are separated by campaigns or fundraising events
Harness Giving
Collects donations through
shareable links and CR codes
QuickBooks
Collects grant money and major
recurring donations from companies
Employees must determine where funds from each campaign should go to within the organization, such as their programs (e.g. Get on the Bus) or their general fund.
Donors can specify what program their donation should go to, but staff ultimately decides how the funds are divided internally within those sections
The lack of a consistent workflow makes this process manual and time-consuming
Although donations are tracked by campaign and are associated with a donor, Harness Giving does not support long-term storage, leading to data expiration after 90 days ⚠️
I’m not sure where we should put this money...
LIZ RIOS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
OF CENTER FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE WORKS
After many meetings and discussions with our stakeholders, we decided to:
SOLUTION
Build an external fund allocation platform that works alongside Harness Giving & Quickbooks by auto-importing new donor and donation information, and transforming them into structured and usable data
Allocation Table View
A table view of the allocation platform, featuring an in-line row allocation distribution summary.
Allocation Board View
A board view of the allocation platform, allowing users to categorize donations into “buckets.”
Fund Allocation
Adding money to specific categories and programs.
Analytics Dashboard
A redesign of their analytics dashboard and reimagining the way they visualize and summarize data.
RESEARCH
We looked at the landscape of data visualization and donation management softwares
We analyzed multiple data visualization and donation management platforms to identify their strengths and weaknesses. By evaluating how complex data is structured elsewhere, we informed our strategy to design an intuitive allocation workflow and a clear analytics dashboard tailored to CRJW's unique needs.
Notion: has visual tables and boards that make organizing information clear and flexible, but lacks guardrails, which can easily lead to a messy and confusing setup
Confluence: provides highly precise search and filtering features to quickly dig through dense data, but its built-in charts and visual reports feel rigid and outdated
GoFundMe: features a simple, low-friction process that makes donating effortless for the everyday user, but lacks the backend tools needed for advanced fund tracking and long-term donor management
Bloomerang: good at connecting donor histories directly to specific non-profit fund allocations, but its rigid interface offers little flexibility for customized workflows
TEAM COORDINATION & FEATURE OWNERSHIP
I took ownership of the table view, focusing on scannable information architecture
To achieve our team’s goal of creating a fund allocation and tracking platform for CRJW, we divided tasks for focused feature development. I took ownership of tackling the main table view and filtering options, making sure staff can easily navigate, scan, and filter the donation data.
NARROWING MY FOCUS
How might I streamline CRJW's data density to make the fund allocation process clear and see insights at a glance?
Circling back, our research indicated that while staff needed to manage high volumes of multi-source donation data, they were overwhelmed by the lack of clear hierarchy and the tedious manual overhead of spreadsheets. My goal was to establish an intuitive information architecture that balanced data density with scannability.
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
Filtering options layouts
To explore how filtering data should look like, I tested various iterations (presented below). After evaluating these options based on usability, scalability, and cognitive load for the users, I selected Version 3. It was the most intuitive for our users, who are not as tech-savvy, since it was the most familiar pattern and allowed them to select multiple criteria efficiently. The team and I agreed this option was the most balanced and would best support our users in filtering the data.
V1. Mega Menu Filter
❌ Takes up lots of space on the screen screen
❌ Can overwhelm the users with choice paralysis
✅ Shows all the available options at a glance
V2. Token Search Bar
❌ Hides options from user; forcing users to guess the options (poor recognition over recall)
❌ Can be confusing for less tech-savvy users
✅ Frees up maximum real estate on the screen
✅ Intuitive for users who type with commands
V3. Multiple Individual Drop Down Menus (the selected option 🎉)
❌ Requires more repetitive clicking if the user wants to select multiple criteria simulatenously
✅ Highly familiar pattern and intuitive
✅ Segments options into smaller categories
✅ Reduces screen clutter
USABILITY TESTING
Designing with the goal of intuitiveness and simplicity
After we prototyped a MVP, we shared our designs with Liz Rios, who is one of the main staff members who will be performing allocation tasks within the organization. We wanted to make sure our platform was intuitive and easy to use from our main users.
Here are the results from our usability testing:
Avg. 20s
task to completion time
100%
task success rate
25%
1 misclick out of 4 tasks
ITERATIONS
After reviewing the results of our usability test and receiving feedback from our client, I iterated on some layout issues to make it more intuitive to the staff’s workflows, refined and polished the filtering options and data visualization on the table view, as well as changed the wording of the instructions.
DESIGN SYSTEM
Colors & Components
We used variations of CRJW’s main purple that exists on their internal platform and their website. We added other colors to differentiate between their programs. We decided on DM Sans for simplicity and readability while working with a data-heavy platform.
FINAL DESIGNS
After getting some final feedback from our client and auditing our own designs to make sure it was consistent and intuitive throughout, we polished up our designs and prepared for handoff. Our team presented on demo day and received positive reactions! 😄
THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT TO THE END! :)
Reflections & Learnings 💭
This was my first long project with Nova, Tech for Good and I loved every second of it! I learned so much from my peers and they were always willing to help me and answered my questions. We had so much fun and I’ll definitely miss our work sessions!
🤹 Always be adaptable
To be honest, we were working with a different client initially, but due to a change in their internal project alignment and constantly evolving requirements, it was clear we were moving away from a project we could learn and grow from. Navigating a major pivot under pressure taught us how to realign our objectives quickly without losing momentum, proving that a team's resilience is just as critical to a project's success as the final design itself!
🤝 The importance of team collaboration and open communication
Another big challenge we faced was how we could design the fund allocation process to be as simple and intuitive as possible. The flow itself was complicated and we worked together thoroughly to make sure we all understood the process before designing for it. I learned that team support and lots of discussions is incredibly important so we could all keep moving forward.
💧 Sweat the small stuff
Through design crits, iterations, and feedback, I realized that the smallest details could make or break the user experience. When you’re designing for something meant to handle dense and complex data, it can be easy to get caught up in the grand architectural vision. I learned that the real breakthroughs happen when you break it down into microscopic details and interactions.
Special thanks to my wonderful team at Nova! ✊❤️