Introduction
What Is Jobs To Be Done and Why Should Nonprofits Use It?
At its core, the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is about understanding what people are trying to accomplish in their lives and how they 'hire' products, services, or organizations to help them do it. While typically used in business and innovation, JTBD offers valuable applications for nonprofits aiming to better connect with their audiences.
JTBD Defined in Simple Terms
Imagine someone donates to a food pantry. Are they just giving money, or are they trying to feel like a contributing community member? Perhaps it’s about setting an example for their children or acting on personal values. In JTBD terms, they’re not just donating – they’re 'hiring' your organization to help them fulfill a deeper purpose. That’s their 'job to be done.'
The JTBD framework encourages organizations to identify the progress people are trying to make – functional, emotional, or social – and what’s getting in their way. For nonprofits, this shift in perspective helps move past assumptions and see the real drivers behind actions like attending an event, volunteering, or seeking services.
Why It Matters for Nonprofits
Nonprofits operate in a unique space between community service and stakeholder accountability. To succeed, you must deeply understand both sides: what your community members are seeking and what motivates your donors and partners to support you. JTBD helps uncover those motivations.
- Program design: Build services that solve the right problems, not just the obvious ones.
- Fundraising and donor engagement: Connect your mission to the personal goals and emotions of your supporters.
- Marketing and messaging: Speak directly to what your audience cares about, using their language and context.
Instead of designing strategies around demographics or broad personas, JTBD focuses on context, motivation, and intended outcomes – making it a powerful tool for nonprofit growth and innovation. It shifts the focus from 'what people are like' to 'what they are trying to achieve.'
The Role of Research
As part of your nonprofit audience research or broader market research for nonprofits, JTBD can be a guiding approach that turns scattered feedback into actionable insight. When combined with qualitative interviews or community insights studies, you can start identifying common 'jobs' that allow your team to align offerings with true needs.
At SIVO, we believe in making the complex simple. JTBD helps simplify the why behind people’s actions, turning individual behaviors into strategic direction. For nonprofits looking to strengthen their impact, it’s not just a framework – it’s a mindset shift that leads to more relevant decisions and better outcomes.
How JTBD Helps Nonprofits Understand Donor and Community Needs
One of the biggest challenges in nonprofit strategy is knowing what your audiences – whether they are donors, volunteers, or service recipients – truly need. Too often, organizations rely on assumptions, survey checkboxes, or surface-level trends. Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) offers a deeper lens, helping you explore motivations and unmet needs hidden beneath visible behaviors.
Looking Beyond Demographics
Traditional audience research often segments people by age, income, or location. While helpful, this doesn’t always tell you why someone donates to your cause or chooses one service over another. JTBD focuses on context – the moment a person seeks a solution – and explores what they are trying to fix, feel, or accomplish.
For example, a young parent attending a financial literacy workshop offered by a nonprofit might not just be seeking knowledge. Their job could be, “Help me feel confident about planning my child’s future.” That’s a very different insight – one that shapes how you design and talk about your programs.
Uncovering Donor Motivations
Donors are more than just funders – they are active participants in your mission. But what job are they hiring your organization to do? By applying JTBD, you can understand:
- What emotional outcomes they expect – pride, connection, impact
- What situations trigger their giving – holidays, life events, stories that resonate
- What’s competing for their attention and support
Understanding donor motivations with Jobs to Be Done can inform more personal, compelling fundraising campaigns. It also helps avoid one-size-fits-all messaging – making donors feel seen and valued.
Informing Program and Service Design
For community-based nonprofits, understanding what your audience is really trying to do can transform how you serve them. Whether you're offering job readiness programs, food distribution, or mental health support, JTBD reveals the real goals behind participation.
In a fictional example, a community member might attend job training sessions. Rather than just seeking employment, their underlying job might be “Help me feel hopeful again after losing stability.” Knowing this allows you to design programs that offer not just skills, but emotional uplift and confidence-building – aligning more closely to their true needs.
Bringing Research Closer to Impact
By integrating a JTBD lens into your nonprofit audience research – through interviews, thematic analysis, or co-creation – you begin to surface patterns that point to strategic opportunities. This is where research becomes actionable, fueling nonprofit innovation and smarter decisions at every level.
Ultimately, improving nonprofit outreach with Jobs theory is about having empathy and clarity. It allows your team to serve with purpose, aligning your mission with the real progress your audiences seek. And in doing so, you earn deeper trust, stronger engagement, and greater potential for long-term social impact.
Using JTBD To Design Programs That Deliver Real Impact
When nonprofit organizations align their programs with the underlying motivations of their audiences, they create offerings that not only serve needs but also foster long-lasting engagement. This is where the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework shines. Rather than developing programs based on assumptions or surface-level demographics, JTBD helps nonprofits understand the why behind behavior – the real reasons people seek out help, resources, or involvement.
At its core, JTBD helps nonprofits move from offering “services” to delivering outcomes. By identifying the functional, emotional, and social jobs that community members or donors are trying to fulfill, leaders can tailor initiatives that truly resonate. This people-first strategy enhances program relevance, effectiveness, and reach – all critical in maximizing social impact.
Designing Programs That Address the Right Problems
Let’s say a food bank experiences low attendance at their weekly meal distribution. A traditional approach might assume scheduling is the issue. But by using JTBD thinking, they might discover that people avoid attending because they feel judged or face transportation challenges. With that insight, the nonprofit could redesign the experience – offering home delivery or mobile pantries that match the “job” of getting food with dignity and ease.
This shift in perspective allows teams to craft solutions that address real, not just perceived, barriers.
JTBD in Practice: Guiding Program Development
Here are a few ways JTBD thinking strengthens nonprofit strategy and innovation:
- Clarifies Purpose: Keeps programs focused on the outcomes your audience wants, instead of internal goals only.
- Prevents Mismatch: Avoids investing in initiatives that don’t align with what people are truly trying to accomplish.
- Drives Innovation: Reveals unmet needs that can spark new, more effective solutions.
By grounding programs in audience jobs – not assumptions – nonprofits build credibility and enhance impact. And when supportive data from market research for nonprofits is layered in, these strategies become even more powerful.
Examples of How Nonprofits Can Apply the JTBD Framework
Applying the Jobs To Be Done framework might sound complex at first, but in reality, it lends itself to a wide range of applications in nonprofit marketing, fundraising, and program delivery. Below are a few fictional examples that illustrate how JTBD can guide clearer decisions and greater community alignment.
Example 1: Understanding Donor Motivations
A nonprofit focused on wildlife conservation wanted to improve fundraising results. Initial surveys showed donors cared about environmental impact, but the team used JTBD interviews to dig deeper. They uncovered that many donors were actually driven by a desire to feel like protectors of future generations, not just support wildlife initiatives. As a result, the nonprofit rebranded their monthly giving program around “legacy building” – positioning donors as stewards of tomorrow. Donations grew by 28% over the next six months.
Example 2: Designing Programs Aligned With Real Needs
A youth services organization aimed to launch afterschool programs for middle schoolers. Instead of assuming the job was “keep kids busy,” they interviewed students and parents using a JTBD lens. Students were actually looking for ways to build confidence in social situations, while parents wanted their kids to avoid negative environments. The nonprofit created interest-based clubs (technology, music, art), with adult mentors trained in emotional support – leading to a 40% increase in participation and better engagement metrics.
Example 3: Improving Nonprofit Marketing Outreach
A mental health nonprofit was struggling with low engagement on its digital campaigns. Using JTBD-thinking, they asked: “What brings someone to seek out our resources online?” They discovered that visitors were often trying to regain a sense of control after a personal crisis. This insight led to messaging centered around restoring balance and empowerment, instead of general mental health benefits. Click-through rates and time on page both improved significantly.
Takeaway
These examples – though simplified for illustration – show how a deeper understanding of community and donor jobs can guide effective nonprofit strategy. It’s no longer about simply promoting services; it’s about aligning with the audiences’ goals and situations. Whether you're focusing on donor engagement, nonprofit growth, or designing services with dignity and empathy, JTBD offers a fresh lens to drive change.
Getting Started: Simple Steps to Use JTBD in Your Organization
Ready to start using JTBD to strengthen your nonprofit strategy? You don’t need a major budget or advanced tools to begin. At its heart, Jobs To Be Done is about listening differently – with curiosity and purpose.
Step 1: Choose a Focus Area
Begin by identifying a specific challenge or opportunity you're working on. This could be improving donor retention, understanding community participation, or shaping new services. Having a clear focus allows you to gather the right insights.
Step 2: Talk to the People You Serve
Conduct 1-on-1 interviews or small group conversations. Instead of asking what someone likes about your service, ask what they were trying to accomplish when they decided to engage with you. What triggered their decision? What outcomes were they hoping for?
These conversations reveal the underlying jobs – emotional, social, and functional – that drive behavior.
Step 3: Look for Patterns
As you collect responses, look across interviews to identify recurring themes or phrases that hint at common jobs. Do families say they wanted peace of mind? Do volunteers mention a desire to feel useful? These patterns help you create job statements like:
“When I feel overwhelmed caring for my parent, I need support that helps me feel capable again.”
Step 4: Translate Jobs into Action
Use the patterns to refine program design, adjust messaging, or tailor outreach. For example, if donors are seeking transparency, highlight where their money goes. If clients are seeking emotional reassurance, consider training team members in trauma-informed communication.
JTBD-inspired decisions don’t happen all at once. Start with one area, pilot changes, and grow as you build confidence.
Step 5: Use Market Research to Scale
As your organization becomes more comfortable applying JTBD thinking, layering in formal nonprofit audience research or consumer insight support can unlock deeper understanding at scale. Tools like surveys, ethnographies, and segmentation can help validate and expand on your initial discoveries.
Whether you’re innovating programs or improving nonprofit marketing, small steps using the JTBD approach can lead to big impact over time.
Summary
In this beginner-friendly guide, we explored how the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps nonprofits shift focus from services to meaningful outcomes. By understanding what drives donors, volunteers, and communities to act, organizations can better design strategies for programs, fundraising, and outreach.
We started with what JTBD means and why it matters for impact-driven missions. We looked at how this mindset helps uncover real motivations versus surface-level preferences in nonprofit strategy. Taking it further, we shared how JTBD improves program design and how to apply it through practical examples – from donor messaging to community support services. Finally, we offered a starter roadmap for putting JTBD practices into action, even for small or lean teams.
Whether you're looking to elevate your nonprofit innovation, deepen community insights, or align your efforts with what audiences truly want, Jobs To Be Done offers a powerful, human-centered tool to guide your next move.
Summary
In this beginner-friendly guide, we explored how the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps nonprofits shift focus from services to meaningful outcomes. By understanding what drives donors, volunteers, and communities to act, organizations can better design strategies for programs, fundraising, and outreach.
We started with what JTBD means and why it matters for impact-driven missions. We looked at how this mindset helps uncover real motivations versus surface-level preferences in nonprofit strategy. Taking it further, we shared how JTBD improves program design and how to apply it through practical examples – from donor messaging to community support services. Finally, we offered a starter roadmap for putting JTBD practices into action, even for small or lean teams.
Whether you're looking to elevate your nonprofit innovation, deepen community insights, or align your efforts with what audiences truly want, Jobs To Be Done offers a powerful, human-centered tool to guide your next move.