Continued Development of Wimblecomm

 

Sponsor: Wimbledon Community Association (WCA)  Soltren photo
Sponsor Liaison: David Hall David, Susanne Ollig, and Naomi Martin
Student Team: Daniel Luis Soltren
Abstract: The Wimbledon Community Association (WCA) is a nonprofit organization that is currently operating an online venue hiring directory website called Wimblecomm. Several objectives and methods were chosen to address the question of how Wimblecomm can distinguish itself and increase its presence in the community. As a result of the findings from this project, the WCA would benefit from a more unified vision for the WCA distinct from Wimblecomm, initiating a social media campaign, hiring people with skills the WCA lacks, hosting a series of networking events, and identifying alternatives to the Wimblecomm venture.
Link:

Wimblecomm – Final Report

Wimblecomm – Final Presentation

Executive Summary

The Wimbledon Community Association (WCA) is a Company Limited by Guarantee and registered charity serving the greater Merton area. They owned and operated a community center in Wimbledon until 2012, due to increasing costs associated with day-to-day operations and building maintenance. Through a deal with the Merton Council, the new trustees invested capital from the sale of the premises toward funding the creation of a website called Wimblecomm. The purpose of the website is to facilitate connections between venue providers and venue users in Merton, as well as position the site as an “online community hub” to disseminate news and promote local networking. The WCA is committed to developing Wimblecomm into a viable platform for connecting venue operators who lack the resources to promote their venues and venue users who struggle to find local places to host events.

Two factors impede the growth of Wimblecomm: lack of community awareness and low engagement with venue providers. The goal of our project was to evaluate Wimblecomm’s current standing relative to similar organizations and find ways for Wimblecomm to better serve the Merton community. Our objectives included: examining Wimblecomm’s business model, conducting market research to gain insights from similar organizations that can be transferred to Wimblecomm, identifying opportunities and barriers for constructive engagement, and examining the WCA’s social impact potential. To accomplish our objectives, we audited the WCA’s business model, conducted interviews with key stakeholders and disseminated surveys among three target groups: current venue providers, prospective venue providers, and the general public. The conclusions drawn from our secondary research and feedback from the community was presented with recommendations for the WCA to apply toward the continuous development of Wimblecomm.

 

Background

The WCA was founded in 1946 by a Wimbledon-based group led by Sir Cyril Black MP. At the time of its founding, the general goal was to “promote the wellbeing of the broad community based around Wimbledon” (About WCA). The organization operated from a building located at 28 St. George’s Road, Wimbledon. Its corporate image emphasized non-party affiliation, non-sectarian, and non-discriminatory stances concerning all social matters. From the time of its opening until the year 2012, the center has served over 100 different groups. These groups would utilize the center space for various activities, including: self-help, leisure, educational, health, consultancy and sporting exercises.

Due to slowly increasing costs related to building maintenance and day-to-day financial operations, the community center was forced to close in 2012. Immediately after the closure, negotiations began that eventually concluded in a deal with the Merton Council in 2013. The Trustees used the capital resources realized from the sale of WCA’s share in the community center as a financial foundation for the future operations and activities. The capital was used to fund the administrative costs and services associated with the creation and maintenance of the organization’s new website, Wimblecomm (www.wimbledoncommunity.org). The website was formally launched in September 2016. Since then, the website and organization have continued to evolve to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the services they offer.

The Annual Meeting Minutes Draft for 2018 confirmed that Wimblecomm lacks a structured development plan, and at the moment there are no future plans for the expansion of the organization. In early 2018, to make improvements Wimblecomm sought assistance from a third party to review and make recommendations regarding how to optimize their web-based service for the community. Superhighways was hired to perform this task. Their mission statement is to “build voluntary and community organisations” ICT capacity, enabling more efficient and effective service delivery in the community” (Superhighways). In their final report they included the following recommendations:

  • Review your mission and vision, be clear about your values so that you, and others, can make sound judgements as to whether your services are indeed valuable;
  • Set your goals and business objectives (and / or develop an outcomes framework);
  • Consider paid advertising with popular websites with big user bases such as Netmums;
  • Develop a marketing/communications plan with smart objectives;
  • Consider social media paid advertising – although referrals from social to the website are currently very low and Adwords is likely to yield higher results for search;
  • Consider a quarterly eNews update for venue owners if not already doing so – sharing impact figures with them and directing them to best practice resources; and
  • Clarify the vision for WCA going forward and why it’s an exciting time to be involved with a growing digital charity – sell the benefits of being involved and specifically what they could contribute.

To address these issues, the goal was to conduct research and present a set of priorities in the form of recommendations for Wimblecomm to act on.

 

Methods

Our research focused on the following question: How can Wimblecomm distinguish itself in the marketplace and increase its influence in the community?

To address this question, we developed a series of objectives:

  1. Examine Wimblecomm’s business model for short and long-term vision as identified by Wimblecomm.
  2. Conduct market research to determine Wimblecomm’s performance relative to similar organizations.
  3. Identify opportunities and barriers to constructive engagement with stakeholders in the community.
  4. Examine the social impact potential of Wimblecomm toward facilitating creative engagement across greater Merton.

 

We used the following methods to satisfy our objectives: secondary research, surveys, and interviews. We applied secondary research to gather information regarding: business model strategies to transfer to Wimblecomm; number of venue-hire organizations in the local and national community; demographics of the people they serve; categories of venue spaces they offer; how they interact and attract people to their service (marketing strategies); and their performance metrics (i.e. the venue cost, how many times a venue is booked per week, month, and year, and what type of activity the venue space is used for).

Through data gathered by secondary research and the social network experience of our sponsors, we identified a set of stakeholders to disseminate surveys, conduct interviews and create focus groups. This approach increased our ability to locate individuals that were best fit to provide the insight Wimblecomm was seeking to improve its position as a leader in the community. Although interviews, surveys, and secondary research were applied to address each objective, secondary research was the primary data collection method for the first two objectives and interviews and surveys for the last two objectives.

 

Results

After applying the research methods to address each of the objectives, the following results were observed:

  • The revenue streams, customer relationships, and channels sections of the Osterwalder Business Model Canvas require further development for Wimblecomm;
  • There are no “competitors” in the market other than My Community Space (mycommunityspace.com) that are nonprofit and function as an online venue directory service;
  • According to Superhighways (See Appendix F: Case Study – Superhighways), the attributes being tracked for Wimblecomm on Google Analytics may not be tracking the most relevant information with respect to determining site performance;
  • Wimblecomm lacks a user-friendly design that orients the user to the service being offered;
  • Wimblecomm suffers from a lack of effective marketing;
  • Venue providers and local organizations are interested in the success of Wimblecomm.

 

Recommendations

By examining Wimblecomm’s business model, conducting market research to determine its performance, identifying opportunities and barriers to constructive engagement with key stakeholders, and examining its social impact potential through the utilization of secondary market research, personal interviews, and surveys, the following recommendations were made:

 

  • Develop a more vision/identity for the WCA as an organization, distinct from the Wimblecomm venture;
  • Initiate a social media campaign to increase awareness of the service you offer;
  • Invest in hiring individuals with skills the WCA lacks;
  • Host a series of community networking events;
  • Identify alternatives to the Wimblecomm venture, specifically other community needs that the WCA could take initiative in addressing.