Overview
Fannie Mae Foundation is a private, non-profit organization committed to affordable housing and the revitalization of communities across America. Fannie Mae Foundation has developed a strategy of supporting high-performance community organizations and promoting alliances with others to organize, make available and direct the critical mass of information and resources required to facilitate the success of its mission.

The Challenge
Fannie Mae Foundation's leadership team needed a nuanced picture of their target audience to inform and guide the redesign of KnowledgePlex (www.knowledgeplex.org), an information portal for the affordable housing and community development field that serves as the organization's primary knowledge-sharing and communications vehicle. Fannie Mae Foundation hired Experience by Design to create a detailed picture of its target audience that better defined the audience's goals, wants and needs as input for the redesign of KnowledgePlex.

The Solution
Experience by Design used its Audience Discovery methodology to manage the project from inception through delivery. Project goals were defined through research and working sessions with internal and external stakeholders. Topics included the makeup, capabilities, goals and needs of professionals and stakeholders from the various segments of the affordable housing and community development fields. Experience by Design conducted interviews, working sessions and focus groups with a representative sample from each of the primary audience segments, and delivered findings and recommendations in a series of deliverables that included an audience profile, personas and summary report.

The Result
Fannie Mae Foundation's leadership team and staff have a broader picture and more nuanced understanding of their target audience. This has enabled the successful alignment of KnowledgePlex's features and content with the needs of affordable housing and community development professionals and stakeholders. It has fostered successful outreach and increased adoption and use of the portal by members of the target audience. Fannie Mae Foundation's leadership team has continued to build upon the findings and recommendations of Experience by Design's Audience Discovery project. They serve to guide additional knowledge-sharing initiatives and inform strategic planning to ensure efforts are rightly aligned with the organization's mission and the needs of key constituents in affordable housing and community development.