An Award-Winning Fundraising Platform
A COLLEGIATE ATHLETICS FUNDRAISING PLATFORM
My role
concept validation
site mapping and interaction strategy
low-fidelity wireframes
high-fidelity mockups
front-end development
My role
concept validation
site mapping and interaction strategy
low-fidelity wireframes
high-fidelity mockups
front-end development
OVERVIEW
The Gordon College Athletics department was challenged to come up with a new fundraising strategy, and they came to the Creative team with the idea for a friendly competition amongst the spring sports teams. They were in their initial brainstorming phase, so they were seeking our guidance on the concept and then top to bottom plans for design and implementation.
We thought this twist on peer-to-peer fundraising was fun, but had some concerns—they were positioning this to us as “feeling interactive like a video game.” We had to spend some time hashing out what their vision was and then right-sizing some expectations, as they were only one of our many projects and clients and we weren’t video game designers. We needed to deliver an end product that felt interactive and exciting for the coaches and players, but reasonable and attainable to our team. We went on to craft a campaign that now consistently raises $100,000-200,000 annually for Gordon College Athletics.
AWARD-WINNING DESIGN
This campaign went on to win a Silver w3 Award for microsite design.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
With a financial squeeze being felt across all of the College, Athletics needed to generate some of their own funds for training trips and certain equipment-related expenses. Their previous methods were feeling stale and had a decreasing yield. They also felt like something splashy and new could help them engage a different donor base, and that perhaps a competition-style fundraiser could hold a strong appeal to their previous donors (alumni athletes, families or athletes, etc.).
The problem was that we had never built something custom for this purpose before and they had big visions for what it could feel like and accomplish. They worked with our Creative Director and our development-focused copywriter on a fully fleshed-out campaign strategy, which included the creation of many assets for social media promotion, copy to be used for gathering pledges, a multi-week schedule to prepare for the actual competition day and more. My main job was to design and build the platform where the competition would take place.
Goals
1. User research and finalize concept
2. Conduct feasibility research
3. Design and build platform
4. Help Athletics break their goal of $30,000 raised
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Athletics needs a well-branded mini fundraising site that feels fun and interactive, where three teams can compete to raise money for their spring giving campaign. Donors need an experience that feels straightforward and clear, but also surprises and delights and leading to more shares, and hopefully increased giving.
DISCOVERY + RESEARCH
Testing the concept
We surveyed people from the primary audience groups (students, family members, alumni athletes) as well as some internal stakeholders (athletes and coaches). The initial response to the idea was strong but it was clear the concept needed to be crystalized for people to truly understand and be able to meaningfully engage. Some great questions for us to address rose to the surface.
USER QUOTES
“Are they competing against each other or within their own team?”
— 19 year-old student
“What constitutes winning: highest dollar amount raised or most gifts?
— Athletics coach
“This doesn’t seem fair—some teams are way bigger or already have wealthy donors waiting to give…”
—Participating athlete’s parent
“Can I give to more than one team?”
— 20 year-old-student
Feasibility
I also needed to do some feasibility research to see how close we could come to their initial vision. I researched external fundraising platforms, some peer-to-peer specific and others not, and came to the conclusion that to get the customizability they wanted at a price point they could afford, it would need to be built in-house. My primary focuses were on technical and economic feasibility, and I started in on this immediately as other teammates interviewed users.
As a result of my research, we were able to pass along these ideas and parameters to Development and Athletics for trying to achieve the level of interaction they were after at the price they could afford.
– All of the interactions would be manually coded, so they needed to respect the time and man-power required and provide their content at predetermined deadlines.
– We would meet the interaction goals by having personalized progress bars that changed as teams got closer to the goal (ie: an illustrated airplane flies closer and closer to Florida for spring training), icons that changed when specific dollar amount benchmarks were met (like the amount reached for buying plane tickets), and we’d feature team and player gifs.
IDEATION + DESIGN
Branding
We came up with the name Clash of the Tartans for the competition. A logo was designed and a host of assets were created for the teams and players to use for promotion.
Navigation
I started by designing a sample team page with the “give” call to action button featured prominently twice, a big progress bar and a spot for their specific team goals. Then I sketched a main landing page that would hold overall campaign branding and details, and serve as a switchboard for getting to which team you wanted to support. Teams could promote directly to their own fundraising pages, but the College would promote the landing page from the main College accounts and Athletics accounts. I showed the stakeholder the interactive process below for the landing page, to a specific team, then the giving form and confirmation page.
Key Design + Development Questions
– How might we track progress in a visually engaging way?
– How might we provide brand new donors with a streamlined experience?
– How might we support repeat donors in having a simplified experience?
– Which metric should be used to define the “winner”—dollars raised or number of gifts?
– Should conditional logic for interaction be based on real dollar amounts (ie: plane tickets) or default benchmarks that are the same for all teams ($1,000, $1,500, etc.)?
FINAL PRODUCT
They continue to run Clash of the Tartans (now just once per academic year) and the campaign consistently raises between $100,000 and $200,000 annually for Gordon College Athletics.
Below is a slideshow of screenshots and gifs from multiple years of designing and developing for this campaign.
RESULTS + REFLECTIONS
Surpassed goal of $30,000 raised
Campaign still runs 5 years later, raising $100,000-$200,000 annually
Won Silver w3 award for microsite design
From the outside, the campaign was a huge success—over $30,000 raised for Athletics across the three teams, tons of engagement all across campus, many new donors (current students wanting in on the fun and wanting to support their friends) as well as recapturing donors from previous years. From a business standpoint, all benchmarks for success were exceeded, and this even led to the administration and Athletics deciding shortly thereafter that they’d try to run this campaign every sports season. The fall and winter teams wanted a chance to get in on the action, and each team has a slightly different donor base, so at least for two more seasons, the Creative Team could see the merit in everyone getting a chance to play.
However, we bristled at the thought because internally, the execution of this campaign proved to be challenging. One pain point was that people were bringing large-scale structural changes to the process even after the event was live, without the understanding that the ripple effect was substantial for the designers. As one of the leaders on the project, I had to insert myself into conversations happening above me to explain the repercussions of such changes, defending our previously agreed upon deadlines and also defending my burnt out teammates. I needed to re-assert boundaries to streamline communication and bring clarity. It was tough to find the balance between including many voices and opinions for a brainstorm versus establishing an end-point decision maker come game time. I needed to navigate that delicately so as to not step on any toes, while making sure my teammates felt valued and defended. At the time, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. There was a mismatch of expectations which lead to frustration on both sides and some disappointment.
How did we measure success?
As a group, we all wrestled with measuring success because on paper to the institution, this campaign was very successful. However, we knew that many more debriefs and planning sessions would be required to address the communicational and oversight issues we experienced if this event was to be recurring. Monetarily, we were successful, but interpersonally, it was not. We were all honest and respectful in our debriefs, so greater understanding and empathy ultimately were established among the departments. It seemed most important that Athletics and Development understand the ripple effects of their actions (and inactions, like missed deadlines) so that we could all best support each other in future campaigns, and for Creative to understand that flexibility could lead to greater financial yield for the organization, so we’d need to try to build in room for that if possible. We went on to run this campaign at least six more times in the following three years, and I’m happy to say we made improvements in our process every time. Gordon College still runs this campaign (now once a year), and it brings in $100,000-$200,000 every year for the Athletics Department.