We helped 360Giving turn questions the team was answering in weekly support sessions and contact form enquiries into eight practical search guides, with a reusable content pattern for future guidance.
The challenge
360Giving helps organisations publish and use open data about grants. GrantNav, 360Giving’s free search tool, brings together grants data so people can explore who funds what, where money goes, and which organisations receive grants.
People often come to GrantNav with a clear question: Who funds work like ours? Which organisations are active in our area? Where is funding going for a particular cause?
The difficult part can be turning that question into a search. Finding an answer involves choices about keywords, filters and data fields. People might understand their question well, but not know how to translate it into something 360Giving data can answer.
360Giving was already supporting users through weekly one-to-one sessions. These sessions were useful, but many of the same questions came up repeatedly. Users had to wait for help, while the team explained common searches to one person at a time.
360Giving has already identified the need for a new “How to search” section, and drafted a set of example searches.
The challenge was to turn those drafts into guidance people could use: helping them prepare for a search, complete it in GrantNav, and adapt the example to their own needs.
Our approach
We used content design — designing information so people can find, understand and use it — to turn common questions into clear, step-by-step guides to using GrantNav.
We reviewed the draft searches written by 360Giving alongside existing guidance, analytics, GrantNav search data, help-desk emails and the reasons people had booked one-to-one support. We also spoke to the 360Giving team about the questions they regularly helped users work through.
The evidence confirmed that people often arrived with a clear goal, but not a clear route. Existing guidance explained the tool, but it did not always help users recognise where to start, or translate their question into a search.
We used this evidence to prioritise eight common user journeys, and structure them around recognisable tasks, such as finding funders for a cause, looking up recipient organisations, or exploring grants in a particular place.
Each guide begins by explaining when it will help, and what someone needs to know before starting. It then uses one concrete example to make the search tangible, and makes clear which search terms users can replace with their own.
We designed for confidence before complexity. Each guide starts with the simplest route to a useful result, then introduces filters and refinements where they add value. The steps are concise, use plain language, and follow a consistent starting point, so users do not have to relearn the process each time.
We also considered how the guides fitted into the wider service 360Giving offers. We separated task-based tutorials from reference guidance and proposed a clearer structure for the Explore section of the 360Giving website.
Alongside the eight rewritten guides, we produced information architecture, practical content and accessibility guidance. This gave 360Giving a reusable pattern for creating future searches.
The result
360Giving launched eight task-based guides covering common searches for funders, recipients and grants.
People can now start with the question they want to answer, rather than first having to understand how GrantNav is structured. Each guide gives them a route into the tool and a method they can adapt to other searches.
Early analytics show that the journey is beginning to take shape. People are moving from the “How to search” landing page, into guidance for a specific task, and then onto GrantNav.
The guides are changing how the 360Giving team supports users. Instead of explaining every common search from the beginning, the team now has practical guidance they can share when questions come in.
This gives 360Giving a stronger foundation for helping more people complete common searches independently, while freeing up one-to-one support for more complex questions. It also gives the team a repeatable way to turn what it learns from supporting users into clearer routes through its service.