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CLIENT CASE STUDY

KaBOOM!: Enabling high performance with an innovative digital strategy

We helped position KaBOOM! to inspire more volunteers to create great playspaces for America’s kids.

Overview

KaBOOM! is the national non-profit dedicated to giving kids the childhood they deserve by bringing play to those who need it most. Children today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation, a fact that is having disastrous consequences for their health, achievement levels, and overall well-being. Founded in 1996, KaBOOM! envisions a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America because children need to play actively every day at home, in school and in their communities.

The client was in the process of refocusing its organizational strategy, and needed support in determining how best to align its website with its new strategy. The overall goal was to provide KaBOOM! with a way to better engage website visitors and volunteers to achieve its mission of creating great playspaces for children.

In order to achieve this, the Accenture team undertook a thorough review of the organization’s existing online capabilities in order to make recommendations for the client’s revised digital strategy.

Opportunity

Since its foundation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization has identified more than 95,000 places to play, built over 2,300 playgrounds and successfully advocated for playspaces in hundreds of cities—effectively saving play for over 6 million children.

Its existing website was nevertheless limited as a tool to boost play action. Of the nearly 3,000 playspace build projects initiated on the Our Dream Playground online project planner tool for example, just seven percent were active. KaBOOM! urgently needed a better means of encouraging volunteers to help build and fund a playground through its website.

The organization’s renewed approach to reducing the play deficit focused on three key activities:

  • Create and catalyze great places to play for kids who need them most

  • Inspire, empower, and lead play advocates

  • Educate and elevate the societal conversation about play

KaBOOM! turned to Accenture for help because of the innovative and impactful ideas that were presented during the inaugural U.S. AMC Innovation Challenge—a multi-round case competition that gave MBA students the opportunity to develop and present solutions to the challenges faced by the organization, as well as to experience Accenture’s approach to creating value for clients.

Solution

The Accenture team undertook a thorough review of the organization’s existing online capabilities, conducting a benchmark assessment of similar organizations that promote social good without financial incentives. The team also defined the needs of KaBOOM! website visitors and volunteers and the online functionalities required to support them.

This included expanding the range of actions that website visitors could take, improving the levels of personalization and segmentation for website visitors, improving the available incentives, and making the website more user-friendly.

Having identified the necessary improvements to kaboom.org, the team created mockups of a redesigned website and provided both short- and long-term recommendations on how to enhance the organization’s digital presence.

In addition, the Accenture team crafted an implementation approach with high-level cost estimates, activities, timelines, and potential solution providers.

Results

KaBOOM! now has the necessary tools to develop a stronger digital presence—greatly enhancing its ability to meet the needs of the children it serves.

As a result of working with Accenture, the organization plans to develop a more engaging homepage, leveraging key statistics to explain the relevance of the KaBOOM! mission. It has plans to make it easier for website visitors to locate opportunities to provide support, developing hubs to highlight available resources, and rewarding and recognizing efforts through gamification. And by identifying fellow play advocates with similar preferences and interests—capitalizing, for example, on its Alumni Network for the purpose of mentoring new users—the organization hopes to build a more robust online community.