Grant Experience Design

Designing a new end-to-end grant experience by SG Enable,
from ground up, from outside in.
GRANT
EXPERIENCE
DESIGN

CONTACT US
If you find this document interesting, useful or insightful for your own work, we’d love to hear from you. Questions about
collaborative projects with your organization are welcome too – we’d love to chat with you on how human-centered design/design
thinking can help you serve new communities and better solve social problems.
Please contact Jason Leow (email: jason@outprint.io) for more information on sharing rights of this document.
ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT
In November 2014, SG Enable started a design sprint project with Outsprint to envision a new end-to-end experience for their new
grant. This project tapped on human-centred design tools and techniques to help SG Enable better understand the needs and
challenges faced by grant applicants, grant makers and other partners. This report captures the findings and ideas generated from
the project.

What if the grant wasn’t just
about the money? How might
we create a holistic experience
around the grant, that supports
& excites an entire sector?

Background of the project and why we’re doing this
ABOUT THE
PROJECT

The Tote Board Enabling Lives Initiative (TB-ELI) Grant is a
new grant that aims to create meaningful social impact for
persons with disabilities and their caregivers. The grant is
open to Voluntary Welfare Organizations (VWOs), non-profit
organizations, social enterprises, and private corporations with
a social mission. Besides pilot projects, the grant will also
fund existing programmes that need resources to scale up.
With an all-new grant, the SG Enable TB-ELI Programme
Office had the exciting opportunity to envision a new way of
grant-making. SG Enable approached Outsprint to tap on
human-centred design to explore new areas for redesign of the
end-to-end experience of the entire grant process. The team
felt duty-bound to challenge the status quo, but only if the
status quo was a worse-off future than our vision for the grant
experience. We asked what do we want the grantees to feel at
the end of their grant? What’s the current relationship like
between grant applicants and fund administrators? How does
collaboration happen? What does the sector need most and
how would the grant add unique value? How do we create
new ways of solving old problems?
It was in the spirit of these big questions that we started a
design sprint project to learn more and design better.

What we did over a one-week design sprint
OUR
PROCESS

Human-centred design is
an iterative approach built
around mindsets, methods
and tools.
The 6 phases of the design process are by no means a
step-by-step, one-after-another process. Think of the
circles in the diagram (on the right) as workspaces
that one can occupy during a project, with each space
having its related tools, methods and mindsets. You
can jump from one to the opposite space without
necessarily going through the ones in between, if the
situation calls for it. Experienced practitioners do that
all the time, embodying what being creatively
adaptive and nimble means. But as a starting point, if
you are new to design thinking, it’s often easier to
think of the design process as 6 step-by-step phases,
and that’s okay too.
A five-day design sprint might be short but certainly
not any less useful. Made popular by Google
Ventures, design sprints are a fast and focused way to
quickly innovate. It can point out new questions to
ask about the issue, and these questions can help point
the team towards a better grant process and
experience. This approach plays to the time and
manpower constraints of the SG Enable TB-ELI
Programme Office and also contain costs.
frame
sense-
make
ideate
prototype
iterate/
mobilize
empathize

Mystery shopper
We walked in the shoes of a hypothetical social
enterprise researching through real websites of
existing grant makers in Singapore to look for
suitable grants for its new tech product for
persons with disabilities. This allowed the team
to develop empathy and understanding of the
painpoints and needs of grant applicants.

In-depth conversations
We would spend an hour or so to chat with
people face-to-face, and at a venue most
convenient and comfortable for them, be it their
home or a café. Rather than a stiff and boring
survey interview, the session is more like a
casual friendly chat. This helps us develop
rapport and gives them time to open up, and for
us to explore deeper questions and truly ‘get
under their skin’. Photo prompt cards and
journey map sketches also help us achieve that.

Guided tours
When we meet people to have in-depth
conversations, we try to meet them in the
context of their environment. A guided tour
through their work space adds important
experiential data to the verbal information they
say, helps us ask better questions and allows us
to better understand what they are saying.

Sense-making
After all the in-depth conversations, it’s easy to
feel overwhelmed by the amount of information
collected. During sense-making, we jot down on
sticky notes the key quotes and comments that
were surprising, insightful or useful for the
project topic, organize them into themes and
push the analysis beyond the face value of the
words into deeper motivations and unarticulated
needs. This helps the team filter and synthesize
all the rich learnings into something more
manageable to ideate around at the next stage.

Analogous settings
Looking in the same places often leads to the
same answers. Getting the team to venture out
of the social sector into foreign but parallel
settings in other industries helps spur creative
leaps when thinking about solutions. Being able
to see other examples of innovation in action
also helps us get a tangible feel of how we can
apply it in our own setting by borrowing
elements of the experience or product. In our
case, we visited local incubator space The Hub
and learned how they bring in diverse skillsets
and mentors to help startups grow.

Ideation
The team brainstormed ideas around 7 key
themes that came up after sense-making.
Colleagues from other departments were invited
to help the team generate many wild and useful
ideas. This was also an opportune time to
engage and update colleagues who might be
directly or indirectly involved at later stages of
implementation. Following the brainstorm, we
prioritized the ideas into 3 groups – mission-
critical for launch, important but not mission-
critical, good but optional ideas – and proceeded
to work on the mission-critical ideas.

Storyboard & prototype
Storyboarding is a useful way to organize the
many ideas generated during ideation. Creating
a story of an ideal experience that a grant
applicant goes through from start to end, is a
more concise way to share many different ideas.
Prototyping ideas by creating rough paper
mock-ups of what parts of the service might
eventually look like, allows people to see, touch
and feel the ideas in a tangible way and thus
help them give better feedback on our ideas.

Testing our concepts
We invited 6 people outside of SG Enable to
come hear our pitch for the new grant
experience and to openly give feedback on what
works and what doesn’t. It’s also a great
opportunity to bring stakeholders from different
parts of the ecosystem together in the same
room to hear one another’s concerns and
develop mutual understanding.

Reflecting on next steps
The team spent the last hour of the design sprint
reflecting on the new tools and techniques they
learnt, as well as planning the next steps and
design iterations to follow up on.

Grant makers, grant applicants and other stakeholders
PEOPLE
WE MET

11 participants,
6 in-depth conversations,
1 co-design feedback session.
Grant makers, grant applicants,
VWOs, public officers, incubators.
(Their faces are not shown and names
are changed to protect their privacy.)

CORE:
SG Enable grant team
CHAMPIONS:
SG Enable colleagues,
SRC, Tote Board
CONTENT
EXPERTS:
VWOs, NVPC,
NCSS, grant makers,
incubators
COMMUNITY:
VWOs, SEs,
Corporations,
Research Institutes,
IHLs, Societies,
PWDs, Caregivers,
Public
STAKEHOLDER MAP

Making sense of what we learned from our conversations
INSIGHTS
& FINDINGS

Insights are interpretations of
what we learned from our
interviews and observations.
Insights reveal something non-
obvious, surprising or valuable
for our project.
These insights are:
Interpretations drawn from qualitative data
Communicate a human need or mindset (said/unsaid)
Can be explicit (said), tacit (observed), or latent (inferred)
Reveal blind spots and challenge assumptions
“I never thought about it that way before”
1
2
3
4
5
These insights are NOT:
Statistically representative
Quantitatively proven
May or may not be demographically widespread
Provocative for it’s own sake
1
2
3
4

Insight 01 / Grant intent
Managing innovation is counter-intuitive: what we do and
what we want to achieve might sometimes conflict, if we
are not mindful.
It’s easy to lose sight of what really matters when it comes to
grant-making. We learned from ex-grant manager Lionel’s (not
his real name) experience running technology grants in the
public service, to ask the all-important question “Are we
driving utilization of the grant, or driving innovation in the
sector?” Managing the day-to-day operations of the grant can
become about numbers-chasing for outreach, utilization and
KPIs, and this might dilute or even conflict with the larger
mission of the grant of spurring innovation to better serve
needs. Metrics for innovation can be counter-intuitive from the
usual metrics for grant management, e.g. having a 90%
success rate for proposals submitted to panel for approval
might sound good for the grant team, but that might also mean
that we’re not pushing innovation enough by self-censoring
and floating up only ‘safe’ proposals. Another counter-intuitive
point: getting a good number of good projects to be funded
under the grant might be important to track in the short-term,
but for impact and sustainability in the long term, it is perhaps
better to develop an ecosystem of investors and projects that
sustains and replicates itself and weans off grant money
eventually. All these would not be achieved if grant managers
were focused only on hitting numbers.
How might the grant management team continually stay on track of the grant's vision and at same
time, stay relevant with changes in the sector and needs of our stakeholders?

same target clients but have different expertise on different
parts of the value chain (e.g. a counselling service and a
research organization whom both have caregivers as their
target clients), working together is possible too.
Insight 02 / Collaboration
Interactions are mostly ‘vertical’ and confined between a
grant maker and applicant. Seeding lateral connections
might then seed more cross-collaborations.
Our experience as mystery shoppers for grants was a confusing
one, jumping to and fro websites trying to compare grants.
There’s currently no easy way for grant applicants to ‘shop’ for
grants and compare them side by side, and it’s even more
frustrating considering how huge and diverse the grant
landscape is. This inefficiency is then transferred to grant
makers collectively, since applicants have to ask around each
grant to make sure. Hence there are opportunities for grant
makers to collaborate on information and referral, but
extending beyond, perhaps during application and reporting as
well. Ying (not her real name), an ex-grant manager,
mentioned how grant uptake can be enhanced by working with
a selective network of funders who refer applicants to you if
the proposals are not eligible for their own grants. For VWOs,
collaborations are more likely between two organizations
when they are not serving the same clients. If they have the
How might we get grant makers to work together on information and referrals, and beyond? How
might we create more opportunities for connections in the grant process, not just between VWOs, but
also with social enterprises, research institutes and institutes of higher learning?
Grant
makers
Grant
applicants
Referral
Collaboration
Collaboration
Current
interactions
Current
interactions

Insight 03 / Communications
Jargon may help us cover all our bases for accountability,
but it can lead to downstream inefficiencies from queries
due to confusion and frustration.
more confusion. Details are often shared from the agency’s
point of view – knowing the date your panel meets is less
helpful than knowing when they can expect an answer on their
grant application. Evaluation criteria of proposals are not
always transparent – this can leads to applicants just trying
their luck sending in proposals (and therefore the grant
manager has more poor proposals to go through). Last but not
least, the tone of the writing is often a signal for the
relationship you want to have with the applicant – is the usual
top-down, authoritative tone the best way forward?
How might we communicate information about the grant in a way that even someone new to grants is
receptive and understand?
Using technical terms such as “capital funding” or “recurrent
funding’ helps us share information that is accurate and
transparent to all. But sometimes this leads to downstream
inefficiencies in the form of queries, as applicants might not be
familiar with such terms, even the ones who had applied
before, because applications are not typically their core work
and they only come across these terms during application. The
whole step-by-step process of the grant application is often not
clear, and how information is laid out and presented visually
are often inconsistent across different grants, leading to even

Insight 04 / Differentiated diagnostics
Assessing and supporting a project needs to be
appropriate to its growth phase. A one-size-fits-all
approach might be counter-productive instead.
expect from projection figures; what are the reporting
commitments; whether we measure outputs or outcomes; the
different criteria the Panel evaluates each proposal by. Being
able to diagnose the growth phase also informs how we
support the organization during implementation. Supporting
and enabling them to take steps to be successful within each
phase, is key to ensuring long-term sustainability of the
project, and thus also the overall impact of the grant.
How might we better assess the different profiles of applicants and their needs, context, challenges so
that the support and money from the grant is more targeted?
Ying shared that “In grants, there’s a continuum. There’s this
grant model that shows different stages of growth of a non-
profit organization, and what type of funds will help them… It
depends on where your grant sits, and what’s the aim you’re
trying to achieve.” When we identify the stage of life cycle of
the particular organization with their idea, we are in a better
position to design diagnostic tools and grant support/resources
to intervene. This informs the entire grant process - how we
fund; how many layers of approval we need; how much to

The best grants in people’s minds are usually likened to
marriages. Instead of heavy-handed transactions or pay-
for-service, think mutually supportive partnerships.
How might we grow relationships with grant applicants that are equal and mutually supportive like a
partnership?
Insight 05 / Relationships
view grantees as partners, you will do things differently…” It’s
a little bit like a marriage, like how Alicia speaks
affectionately of her positive relationships working with
corporate partners as a VWO: “It’s a lot of effort, a lot of give
and take. We go in and support them. We want to show them
that they have been supportive of us so we support them too.
It’s a relationship.” How does a mutual relationship look like?
Advice was plenty: be less critical but more constructive;
“friends” or “partners” instead of “applicants”; involve VWOs
in setting KPIs; pitch together to the Panel. Without a doubt,
there’s a hunger for a different kind of relationship that we are
well placed to introduce as a new grant in the sector.
A VWO partner Kay shared very starkly that “There’s also this
attitude [that funders have], that “I’m always right. You’re
receiving funds. I issue you KPIs and you just do it.” I don’t
agree to that. I know my programme better and so let’s set the
KPIs together. Of course I will not go for a low and easy-to-
achieve KPI, because I do want to make my programmes more
robust. This is something we have to be really careful.” Both
grant makers and grantees we spoke to preferred having a
more equal and mutually supportive working relationship. A
‘master-slave’, heavy-handed approach that centres around
money and numbers was frowned upon, although this was still
the dominant way of working. Ying emphasizes that “If you

Insight 06 / Capability
The job title “grant manager” is a misnomer. The skill
base need to make a grant successful goes beyond mere
money management.
How might we bring in diverse skill sets and expert knowledge needed in enabling grantees through
the whole grant cycle?
is an asset too, so as to create connections and foster
collaboration. As the team thought through their roles, one
thing emerges very clearly: there’s no way for any grant
manager to possibly have enough knowledge or contacts for
every possible project proposal that comes along. There needs
to be ways to bring in diverse skillsets, in order to have
sufficient depth (in specific fields or domain knowledge such
as software development) and breadth (more general skills that
are applicable across organizations such as impact
measurement, leadership).
“I really saw myself as a “grant manager” then. But if you
think about the job title, it’s of course set up to fail. I’m
managing the grant, not managing innovation. If I’m an
innovation manager, I would manage the process, not just the
money.” ~ Lionel
Diverse skill sets and capabilities are needed beyond project
management, if we want the projects to succeed. The grant
manager has to play multiple roles beyond simply managing
the numbers. Having industry contacts and access to domain
knowledge of the projects is important. Being able to network

Insight 07 / Process pain-points and time lag
An onerous grant process too focused on accountability
affects the success and relevance of the grant in ways we
may not see.
How might we introduce feedback mechanisms to help us co-iterate the accountability process with
partners? How might we make waiting time productive and engaging? What if applicants just have to
'do it once' with regards to providing info and reporting?
accountability - is therefore also in the best interests of
achieving the strategic outcomes of the grant by attracting the
most promising candidates and best ideas, in order to get more
impact for the same amount of money put out.
Besides process burden, there’s also room to improve the
experience by reducing time lag (and thus anxiety from
waiting) between actions/stages. The grant process is often a
linear, hierarchical step-by-step process, of which at various
points there are opportunities for running things concurrently
to ease waiting anxiety. For instance, instead of waiting a week
more for the offer letter to be hand-signed and delivered,
perhaps the news can be shared over email first while the mail
is on the way.
“When it comes to grant calls, we have now become choosy in
terms of the process. I want to see how efficiently the funders
are going to manage us. If it’s a $3mill project, we can always
have one dedicated staff to manage funders. It’s not worth
having 3 or 4 people managing a small amount of funding, like
$100,000. I can say this because we got volume now. If I
don’t, I’ll probably be desperate and do as the funder pleases.”
~ Kay, VWO partner
Often, it is the bigger and better organizations who might
choose not apply if the grant process is too onerous and micro-
managed, as they can tap on their own donor sources and are
less desperate for projects. Making the process as easy and
straightforward as it can - without compromising

Insight 08 / Conflicting messages and roles
We tell partners to be bold and innovative in their
proposals, but later on we say “don’t fail”. The roles of
enabler versus regulator are conflicting and confusing.
How might we create a process for accounting for failure where due diligence had been done? How
does other public service agencies account for investment losses? How might we make
reporting/evaluation more meaningful and useful for partners?
time to generate results. VWO partners typically want to
ensure quality and integrity of service delivery but a grant
manager's anxiety over public accountability, failure and KPI
micromanaging might cause frustration and drive the wrong
sorts of behaviour that compromises service integrity. Are
there ways to create a process, where so long as accountability
is in place and due diligence done, failing can be rationalised?
Innovating always comes with risk. But with public/donor
funds always comes the procurement mindset and a need to
demonstrate transparency, fairness and value-for-money. This
usually means a low appetite for risk, and a correspondingly
high need for control, especially if the project looks like its not
meeting outcomes! However, Ying highlights how KPIs don't
tell the full story - sometimes the project must be given

Reimagining the ideal experience that a grant applicant goes through
with SG Enable
IDEAL GRANT
EXPERIENCE

APPLICANT PROFILES
Looking beyond the average applicant
From the synthesis of our findings, we had a hunch that there were 3 hypothetical groups of grant
applicants. These fictional profiles are useful by showing us how one size does not fit all when it
comes to managing the grant. Through these 3 profiles, we can envision different ways of support
and resourcing for groups of organizations in a more nuanced and targeted way that meet their needs
based on its growth phase in the life cycle of their organization or service.
SEED stage
Concept still untested
but passionate to
launch.
GROWTH stage
Stable demand,
maturing program
model and governance.
INSTITUITION stage
Scaling up for broad
institutionalization on
local or regional scale.
Sam Gina Ivan

Concept still untested but
passionate to launch
SEED stage GROWTH stage INSTITUITION stage
Sam Gina Ivan
Stable demand, maturing
program model and
governance.
Scaling up for broad
institutionalization on local
or regional scale.
New and untested, and not
been implemented before
Tried and tested service
model in one organization
with good outcomes
Successful model with
independent studies showing
impact in other organizations
In-kind support, ad-hoc funds Funding from a few sources Diverse fundraising & sources
Volunteers, staff may be
part-time
Hired full-time staff with
broad responsibilities roles
Large hierarchy with defined
management roles
Founders make most
decisions
Defined senior management
team with small board
Diverse board of directors
with multiple sub-committees
Validate and launch in short
term
Grow and stabilize in
medium term
Scale and sustain in long
term
Output Outcomes Impact
Description
Newness
Funding
Structure
Governance
Success is…
Evidence
These attributes
represent broad
behavioural/
growth patterns,
not fixed traits.
APPLICANT
PROFILES
Print
this in
A3
“Help me
kick-start my
idea fast.”
“Help me do
more, well.”
“Help me
showcase my
success story.”

Reimagining the grant beyond transactions and money to
a holistic experience of mutual support and partnership.
EXPERIENCE JOURNEY OF
A GRANT APPLICANT
Based on the insights from the previous section, we
brainstormed ideas around the ideal experience that a grant
applicant would go through together with SG Enable. We re-
imagined how our ideas would flow in each stage in their
journey with us. This is called a user journey. Hence the
storyboards serve to illustrate the spectrum of interactions and
activities offered by the grant, how different stakeholders
would interact with one another, and how the grant might
benefit VWOs, social enterprises, research institutes, funders
and other stakeholders. These scenarios of interaction show
how the different stages of the grant are structured to serve the
needs and alleviate the pain-points of the different stakeholders
who are part of the grant process. We can break down their
journey into 7 stages:
Pre-
application
Application Assessment Notification Implementation Reporting Closure

1 / PRE-APPLICATION
Pre-
application
Setting the tone right by a human first touch. Seeding
collaborations at the onset.
Sam receive an EDM in his email that tells him about an
exciting new grant called the TB-ELI Grant. He attends a fun
briefing hosted by Ai Ling from SG Enable, where they shared
an interesting presentation about the new grant and assessment
criteria. What’s even interesting is how they shared the larger
intent and mission the grant wish to achieve for the disability
sector. It was an inspiring vision. At the briefing, Sam meets
interesting people from diverse fields – social sector,
technologists, researchers, industry experts, and also Ai Ling,
the friendly go-to people for any queries about the grant. He
exchanged name cards, made lots of new connections on
LinkedIn and Facebook. What made him most excited are the
ideas exchanged and possible collaborations with a VWO and
research institute. He decides to fill out the application form
for an idea his social enterprise had been testing out. The form
was easy to understand, written in simple language, visually
appealing. There’s even examples on how to think through the
logic model, including an eligibility criteria checklist and a
diagnostic checklist to help self-evaluation. Information on
website provides more details and the FAQs answered most of
his questions.

Pre-
application
2 / APPLICATION
Helpful helpline keeps the relationship warm.
Gina, who also attended the grant call briefing, went ahead to
fill out the application form downloaded from the website.
As she prepared the relevant information, supporting
documents and wrote up the proposal to get more funds for the
programme that her organization had been running for the past
year, she decided to call up Ai Ling to chat about fine-tuning
her proposal. To Gina’s surprise, Ai Ling even offered mentors
and industry contacts if she ever need to beef up those
projection numbers and counter-check for possible blind spots.
Gina also thought of getting in touch with the people she met
at the briefing to talk about her proposal and to see if they are
interested to collaborate.

3 / ASSESSMENT
Differentiated help for different needs. Pitching in to
pitch, together.
Pre-
application
Ivan receives a call and was sad to hear that his proposal for a
national-scale program was rejected. But at least they called so
that he could ask questions. An email confirmation was later
sent to him to confirm the rejection and closure this time
round. Meanwhile, Sam is overjoyed! He was informed of
being shortlisted over phone followed by an email
confirmation. He meets up with Ai Ling to answer queries and
refine his proposal over 2-3 meetings. They highlighted that
despite the shortlisting, sometimes things might not work out
at this stage if there’s any new information or developments.
Sam is confident to make this work. He then goes on to meet
the evaluation panel to co-present his proposal together with
Ai Ling. He thinks he dazzled them with his pitch. He’s glad
he was there to answer questions directly but also heard many
useful advice on his project.
Back end, Ai Ling recommended different assessment criteria
for different projects, as well as fast track approvals and
endorsement for those applying for smaller quantum since it
has lower liability/risk levels. The “A, B, C” banding for
projects based on potential impact were helpful for the
evaluation panel to decide fast.

4 / NOTIFICATION
Celebrate the start of a great partnership. Or if rejected,
alternatives offered to help partners press on.
Pre-
application
“We will love to partner you and support your project. You can
start pre-ops while waiting for offer letter to arrive in 2
weeks.” it said over email. Sam checked through the terms and
conditions in the email while waiting for the letter to deliver.
He then meets Ai Ling face-to-face to sign the funding
agreement and agree to the roles and responsibilities,
obligations, reporting requirements, outcomes and
deliverables. Sam really happy that there’s fast track approval
for his funding quantum below a pre-determined amount. He
was also informed that there is flexibility incorporated within
the agreement to allow for changes after working with mentors
or experts, as well as exit clauses allow for early exit of project
if it doesn’t work, and allowing new funders to come in to fund
steadily before the current one expires. That’s really good as he
might need to iterate on his novel concept. Gina, made it to
panel but unfortunately didn’t get her proposal approved. But
Ai Ling links her up with another funder who might be more
suitable for her. “We wish you all the best.” was nice but a
rejection nonetheless. At least she’s not left empty-handed. She
decides to pitch a better proposal to the new funder based on
the feedback she got from the evaluation panel.

Mentors bring much needed diversity of skills to help
projects succeed. Fail fast to succeed sooner.
5 / IMPLEMENTATION
Pre-
application
Sam had regular meetings with Ai Ling to discuss issues his
project faced. It also allowed them to see the programme in
action. Being new to reporting, tracking and evidence-based
planning, they provided guidance and tools to help him. What
he was really grateful for was the mentor network that he
could tap on anytime for advice and consultancy. He also
tapped on SG Enable’s network of PWD clients and other
VWOs to get feedback and test ideas. He liked the grant team’s
Agile methodology-inspired philosophy of “fail fast, fail
early”, troubleshoot on the spot together. He doesn’t feel like
he’s being monitored or micro-managed like in other grants.
Instead he feels supported as and when he needed it. It feels
like an equal, mutually supportive relationship instead of a
heavy-handed, top-down transaction.

5 / REPORTING
Working together to reduce process pain-points and time
lag as much as possible.
Pre-
application
Sam only had to submit reports every 6 months. He
understands that it’s to protect him and help him see if his
project is on track. He thinks 6 months is reasonable as he has
sufficient time to prepare his reports. In any case, these
reporting requirements were communicated clearly upfront in
the beginning already. Besides, he finds it really helpful
receiving feedback on his performance based on the
information he submitted. At the end of the financial year,
within 6 months, he had to submit an audited financial
statements to demonstrate corporate governance. What he
found interesting was how financial reporting was separate and
done differently from the outcome reports. As he usually
discuss his progress on project outcomes at their regular
meetings, he was told that he need not submit a formal report
on outcomes; case notes and meeting notes will suffice. That’s
saves so much hassle! He’s happy to have more time thinking
ahead for his project.

Continuity and sustainability is key. My ending is your
beginning.
6 / CLOSURE
Pre-
application
It’s been 5 years. As Sam nears the end of the grant, he
continues to submit audited statements and there is no need for
a consolidated statement. He works with Ai Ling to craft a
final report on the project outcomes achieved not just for sake
of fulfilling his commitment to reporting, but more
importantly, as a way for him to share his success and journey,
using the numbers he had submitted over the years as well as
client stories, case notes, interviews and videos to illustrate the
richness of his outcomes delivered. Even though it’s nearing
the end, he was again surprised by the grant team’s
commitment to helping him – they linked him up with funders
to help him sustain the project beyond this grant term. He’s
confident to approach other funders as he has the data and
evidence to show that it works. Besides, being a graduate of
the TB-ELI Grant has some degree of prestige to it, which
would help him secure other funding much easier as he
envisions scaling up towards national distribution. It’s been
one great journey with SG Enable, and he feels like he’s only
just started!

End of design sprint, beginning of a new grant experience
END /
START

ENDING IS ONLY A START.
Having a iterative mindset means that this report is not
finished……yet.
This design sprint project captured a qualitative understanding
of what kind of grant experience the community wanted. The
project team also learned lots of new tools and methods from
the design thinking process. The one-week sprint had been
instructive, to quickly learn about a problem, point out new
questions to ask and turn up blind spots. But we only had one
week. Now that we have a rough sense of what people need,
how do we develop some of the ideas further? What makes
sense to implement? How do we continue to iterate and refine
the ideas towards the launch of the grant? So, think of this as a
set of learning points and ideas to bring forward for further
study and exploration as the grant progresses, or as inspiration
to deepen understanding of what truly matters to your partners
and stakeholders. This report is generative, not restrictive. This
report is intended as a vigilant backlog of the experiential
learnings received over the week, and therefore becomes a
resource to be built upon for anyone new coming on board to
run the new Tote Board Enabling Live Initiative Grant. Most
importantly, keep iterating and refining, while keeping in mind
the needs of the people we learned here.
The human stories end here, but here is where you can start creating new and better
experiences under the Tote Board Enabling Lives Initiative Grant. Keep on designing.

Compilation of other useful stuff
ANNEX

TOOLS &
RESOURCES
Tools, readings and resources for further learning

Lean for Social Change
http://plusacumen.org/courses/lean-for-social-
impact/
Making Sense of Social Impact: Acumen’s
building blocks for impact analysis
http://plusacumen.org/courses/social-impact-2/
Design for Impact: a Skoll World Forum talk by
Kevin Starr, Dircetor of Mulago Foundation
http://youtu.be/sx1hiL2ZG6o
Service Design Tools: An open collection of
communication tools used in design processes that
deal with complex systems
http://www.servicedesigntools.org/
Development Impact & You: Practical tools to
trigger and support social innovation
http://diytoolkit.org/
Free learning materials and expert advice by
NESTA UK
http://www.nesta.org.uk/develop-your-skills
Experiment Board: A canvas for testing startup
ideas
http://www.javelin.com/experiment-board.html
Social Lean Canvas: A tool for social
entrepreneurs to understand and build great
business models
http://socialleancanvas.com/the-canvas/

ABOUT
OUTSPRINT
What Outsprint aspires to do for the public and social sector

68
Outsprint is the fastest way to innovate public policy and
social services. We help organisations create better public
good outcomes and social impact through human-centred
design. All within one week, using what we call a design
sprint.
We’re a social enterprise at heart but also a public
innovation design consultancy. We love helping people who
are in the business of helping other people, or doing work to
improve peoples’ lives. Some of our clients come from
government organisations, social services, NGOs, and social
venture start-ups. Typically, they approach us when they are
looking for a fast and fresh approach to solving a sticky
problem. These issues are often about the human
experience, relationships and interactions between process
and people.
That’s when we bring field-tested design thinking tools and
methods on fast-paced, one-week projects called design
sprints. We believe in working closely together with (not
just for) our clients, all of the team all of the time. That way,
everyone can experience for themselves the deep insights,
different viewpoints and innovative ideas that help their
organisation think about issues in ways they cannot see.
Outsprint – Home
http://outsprint.io

ABOUT THE
CONSULTANT
Background of consultant and his work

Jason’s first forays in design was helping businesses build online brands
through user-centered web design, as well as applying design thinking to
developing his freelance business. Before starting out as a designer, he
was previously with the National Council of Social Service where he
helped develop new social services and championed ground-up
collaboration between government agencies, voluntary welfare
organisations and the grassroots.
At The Human Experience Lab in the Public Service Division, Jason had
the opportunity to bring his passions for human-centered design, social
innovation and entrepreneurship into government to create public good.
He spent 2 months working as part of the design consultancy team at the
globally renowned innovation firm IDEO, on a project commissioned by
the housing authorities and PSD to look into the future narrative of
public housing in Singapore. He led 7 multi-agency projects,
interviewing more than 70 people (in one-to-one or group settings) on
wide variety of public and social issues such as public housing,
neighbourliness, career aspirations, life aspirations, financial literacy,
employment for persons with disabilities, and community inclusiveness.
The job also required teaching and facilitating some 15 training
workshops on design thinking, as well as guiding the artistic and
editorial style, copywriting and visual communication for project
collateral such as videos, print reports, and posters. The Ministries and
Statutory Boards he had worked with and consulted for includes SG
Enable, MSF, NCSS, MOE, MTI, MND, MOF, HDB, PA, CSCDC,
PSD, CAAS, NHGP, EMA, STB, HPB, CSC and even public officers
from the Commonwealth countries such as Malaysia.
He is now running Outsprint, a social enterprise as public innovation
design consultancy, creating products and services that deliver public
good and social impact. He recently helped SG Enable, an agency
dedicated to enabling persons with disability, design a new end-to-end
grant experience through a one-week design sprint.
His voracious reading and passion for sharing online articles had now
found some popularity and practical use, in the Design For Public Good
Flipboard magazine, with over 11,000 followers.

Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, published or transmitted in any form or by any
means without the prior permission of the copyright owner. All information is correct at the time of publishing and printing, and is subject
to change without prior notice.

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