Improving Search & Usability in Thrivent's Choice Dollars Program

Thrivent Choice is a membership benefit that lets clients direct Thrivent's charitable funding. Members choose which organizations receive Choice Dollars, giving them a direct say in how Thrivent's resources are deployed. One of Thrivent's highest-engagement programs, it recorded 178,361 member directions in 2022 alone — and is cited as a key reason members choose to do business with Thrivent.

Despite being one of Thrivent's highest-engagement programs, Choice Dollars lacked basic search functionality in the newly available client portal. This forced 28% of clients to direct funds by phone — a clear signal that UX gaps were limiting digital adoption.

With an ongoing platform migration underway, I needed to:

• —Ship search functionality quickly within severe technical constraints
• —Validate that search was the key unlock for participation
• —Build a data-driven case for investing in a scalable solution

Rather than wait for ideal conditions, I pursued a two-phase approach: establish the capability with an MVP, then use evidence to advocate for the experience users actually needed.

With the platform mid-migration and engineering capacity limited, I wireframed two approaches and evaluated each against technical reality:

• 1.Search embedded in a drawer — the drawer pattern already existed in the post-login experience, making this the fastest path to ship.
• 2.A dedicated search page — the better long-term solution. Drawers have limited real estate and pose accessibility challenges at scale, especially as more features get added to Choice Dollars.

After presenting the tradeoffs to PM and engineering, we aligned on the drawer MVP while keeping the dedicated page design on record for post-migration consideration.

The MVP validated demand — but the data also revealed that the drawer pattern itself was the constraint, not just missing features. I gathered signal from two sources: call center notes and Qualtrics intercept surveys surfaced consistent frustration with the confined UI, including representative feedback like:

“I do not like the small pop-up screen… difficult to enter the amount… please bring back the full screen.”

In parallel, I partnered with a researcher on a targeted dscout study that quantified specific failure patterns:

• —18% of users accidentally exited the flow due to unclear navigation
• —53% misread the screen title as a clickable link, indicating poor visual hierarchy
• —Users expected filtering and multi-selection that the drawer architecture couldn't support

I synthesized these findings into a presentation for the product owner — pairing quantified error rates and accessibility gaps with the dedicated search page design already on record. Despite ongoing migration constraints, we aligned on moving the direction flow to a full-page experience, establishing a scalable foundation for future enhancements.

The redesigned full-page experience delivered measurable improvements:

• —17% increase in digital Choice Dollars transactions within six months
• —20% growth in first-time participation (2025 vs. 2024), indicating reduced barriers for new users
• —Reduced support escalations around search friction and navigation confusion
• —Established a scalable foundation for filters, multi-charity selection, and repeat donations