Rebuilding Donor Trust Through Digital Experience
Campus Outreach Columbia is a regional chapter of a global college ministry committed to building Christian leaders. The organization relies entirely on partnerships with individual donors and supporting organizations to fund the mission. As donors are the lifeblood of the ministry, creating an exceptional digital experience for them is critical to sustainability and growth.
In 2022, I led a full website rebuild to make the donor experience more intuitive, trustworthy, and aligned with our ministry’s values.
5 months
The Problem
Our donors are the backbone of the ministry, but their digital experience was falling short. Confusing and disjointed user flows led to frustration and reduced trust. Our previous website created significant barriers for both donors and administrators:
Disjointed Flow
Giving forms lived off-domain on a third-party platform, making the experience feel disconnected and impersonal. Staff campaign pages weren’t part of the main website, reducing trust and discoverability.
Limited Personalization
External pages did not match the website branding and didn't showcase the personality and context of the people donors were supporting, missing opportunities for meaningful connection.
Poor Donor Resources
There was no donor portal and limited communication on how to modify or cancel gifts. 31% of donor-related support tickets involved users seeking help to modify their giving preferences or requesting guides, often expressing frustration.
Backend Bottlenecks
Manual campaign management in Squarespace lacked a systematized workflow, risking layout errors with every update. Managing giving pages on a separate platform created a fragmented administrative experience, while support tickets required time-consuming manual responses.
The Solution
Recognizing that most of our users are donors, I approached the redesign with two priorities: improve the giving experience for donors and simplify campaign management for our staff. The result is a donation system that is both user friendly and operationally sustainable.
1. Donor-Centric Design
Comprehensive Giving Landing Page
A centralized landing page that outlines why to give, ways to give, and links to staff and ministry fund campaigns. Quick access to FAQs, adjustment forms, and contact support is now standard.
Staff Campaign Pages
Each staff page now includes bios, job titles, photos (professional and personal), and a clear embedded giving form hosted on our domain. We also added detailed instructions and visuals for giving by check.
Resources Placement Improvements
The Giving Adjustment Form is now visible on every giving page, with clear instructions for modifying or canceling gifts. These links are also included in the giving receipts.
Navigation Enhancements
Users can now search or sort staff campaigns to find people faster.
2. Admin Experience
The administrative side needed equal attention to ensure sustainable management.
Webflow CMS
We migrated the site to Webflow to gain more control over design and structure. Using CMS collections, we built a templated system for staff campaigns that allows for fast, error-resistant updates.
Simplified Embedded Forms
By simplifying the embedded form, we move all the customization to our main website rather than the giving platform, creating a seamless experience while reducing the number of platforms staff need to manage.
Custom Styling
We styled the embedded forms with CSS to ensure visual consistency across the site.
UX Research
Our research process was methodically grounded in actual user frustration and pain points that we systematically identified through both qualitative and quantitative analysis. We specifically focused on understanding the barriers donors encountered when interacting with our digital platforms, allowing us to develop targeted solutions that directly addressed their needs.
Support Ticket Analysis: Quantitative
A review of 122 donor support tickets from 2022 showed that 31% involved users needing help to modify giving preferences or access instructions. This highlighted a UX issue that diverted staff time from ministry to tech support.
Support Ticket Analysis: Qualitative
Through deeper analysis of support tickets, we identified recurring user pain points. This analysis uncovered significant usability flaws in our donation management system.
Donors frequently struggled to find basic account functions like updating payment information or canceling recurring donations, revealing poor information architecture. These insights guided our redesign strategy that prioritized self-service options and clearer navigation. The result was fewer support requests and better user engagement.
Peer Organization Analysis
We analyzed similar nonprofits and found most offer dedicated donor portals with self-service options—a feature our platform lacked. We identified best practices we could adapt as workarounds within our technical constraints. Since we cannot change our donation platform to offer donor portal and self-service options, we implemented workarounds including clear communication to donors about how to modify their giving on the website as well as emails.
The Results
After launching the website rebuild in early 2023, we measured and analyzed the results to determine if the donor experience had improved. The redesign delivered more than just aesthetic enhancements. It created measurable impacts on donor engagement and operational efficiency while building lasting trust:
Improved Donor Self-Service
The Giving Adjustment Form saw 1.5x increased engagement, resulting in a 31% decrease in support tickets related to donation guidance as donors became more aware of how to update their donation preferences.
Unified Branded Experience
All donor user journeys now live entirely within our domain, creating consistency and trust, which led to an increase in completed donations.
What’s Next
While the website dramatically improved the donor experience, there's still more the organization can do: explore donation platforms with built-in donor portals and add self-service functionality for payment updates and recurring giving.
This project wasn’t just about cleaning up a website. It was about building a system that honors both the generosity of our donors and the relational heartbeat of our ministry.