Detailed interviews

• Teacher at regional secondary school

• Children’s counsellor located in regional area

• DSG Youth member

• Gay Male from Regional Area

Quick interviews

• DSG volunteer at NSW-wide legal referral centre

• Representative from ACON - Trans & Gender Diverse Health Equity

Key Insights

• There is a lack of information specifically for people who may refer others to StartOut

• StartOut is not speaking on a professional, peer-to-peer level to those who may refer others

• There is referer’s are frustrated by an ill-defined service offering

The Opportunity

“How might we instil confidence and trust in StartOut’s referral partners, so StartOut can be seen as a legitimate service provider”

With our How Might We statement sitting front of mind we went into the ideation phase, using Crazy 8’s!

After which we used these ideas to make concept cards to further investigate these ideas.

Vision to Reality

Once our concept cards had been developed we were able to map them to a Service Blue Print.

This road map outlines the prioritisation of the initiatives outlined above.

Initiatives in Detail

Story curator

Intention:

Communicate the individual success stories of past StartOut mentees, to demonstrate relevance and effectiveness for non-clinical interventions and support for DSG youth.

People:

The role of story curator ensures that the testimonials of previous StartOut mentees are captured and shared with potential future users or referrers, to demonstrate the positive impact. The role will also assist in building the personalised stories for the board and mentors to create a brand "voice" across the site. The stories will reassure referees that the service credible and relevant to their client's needs.

Process:

Establishing a story template allows multiple StartOut staff to gather mentee stories and not have to have one person responsible. The process ensures an ongoing consistency in the quality and structure of content.

Technology:

Setting up a custom template in the CMS will allow multiple contributors to create, edit and publish story content on the site.

Affiliate relationships

Intention:

To connect up StartOut’s services with other existing service providers, establishing their position in the spectrum of support services available for DSG youth. To increase the professional profile of StartOut, and to make it more probable that DSG youth who don’t need clinical support will be referred to StartOut. 

People:

This role is to be responsible for managing StartOut's affiliate relationships, to formalise referral pathways through DSG support networks.

Process:

Affiliates must be researched, approached and an MOU reached with each. StartOut’s value proposition and service offering to be articulated provided to affiliates, so they can disseminate to each of their membership base.

Technology:

Links back to StartOut’s site to be set up on affiliates web sites.

Research paper development

Intention:

To give a credible underpinning to StartOut’s services.

People:

Role to be responsible for reaching out to accredited research communities to develop academic, peer-reviewed corroboration supporting the type of mentorship program StartOut implements. Build and maintain relationships in these fields to keep up to date with findings and share via all StartOut channels.

Process:

Approach relevant experts/academics/researchers to set up a unique research project with StartOut participants or undertake a literature review to support StartOut's methodology.

Technology:

This is a long-term relationship building exercise, so a database of contacts needs to be developed to track interactions, activities and agreements. Suggest a CRM-style database or sales style database like HubSpot or similar. 

Peer outreach

Intention:

To encourage familiarity and confidence in StartOut for peers and professionals, by talking to them about the service offered to clients, in their language. To assure that duty of care to mentors and mentees is taken seriously.

People:

Role to be responsible for managing peer specific resources and peer relationships. Oversee the content creation of collateral for professionals and peers (for example: StartOut’s process, protocols, FAQs) and build a strategy for distributing in multiple channels.

Process:

Establish an open dialogue with potential referers. Create and distribute industry/peer specific content via StartOut’s communication channels. Have a feedback process to ensure content is relevant and up to date. 

Technology:

• Have a separate “contact us” mechanism on the site for peers and professionals.

• Add a new page on the site to house information for referrers and  peers.

• A database of contacts needs to be developed to track peer interactions. Suggest a database in Salesforce is set up to track feedback and interactions. 

Quant survey 

Intention:

To quickly establish StartOut’s mentoring success and effectiveness as a non-clinical intervention by surveying participants who complete the program, and creating a good-news story around the insights gained.

People:

Develop quantitative survey to measure effectiveness of StartOut’s service for current mentees and to send to previous participants. Pre-activity questionnaire could be added to the onboarding process for new mentees.

Process:

Have quant survey added to offboarding process, manage design and distribution of survey through tool like Survey Monkey. Collate responses, analyse and communicate results and insights for a broad audience. 

Technology:

• Set up account with SurveyMonkey, utilise to analyse results.

• A database of contacts needs to be developed to track mentee interactions. Suggest Salesforce database to track questionnaire completion, feedback and interactions.