Transforming fundraising through storytelling with an enhanced platform

Amidst the vibrant, ever-expanding landscape of Salt Lake City, The University of Utah (The U) is a leader in education, innovation, and promise. Recognized as one of the nation's leading research universities and the #1 public university on the West Coast by the Wall Street Journal, The U is the home to the state's singular academic medical center, providing unparalleled health care education and patient care. The U's ongoing success is largely driven by its unwavering commitment to enriching the lives of its students and staff while making a broader societal impact.

We collaborated with major stakeholders at The U and the various colleges to map out a winning strategy that would not only help them hit their fundraising goals quicker but would simplify the overall donation process. In turn, this would remove any unnecessary barriers for donors to truly connect with the programs that mean the most to them.

Identifying the need for a unified fundraising platform

Our initial conversations with various stakeholders focused on identifying The U's needs and goals for a user-friendly fundraising experience. One major discovery to be addressed in the redesign was the broader structural challenge of the platform. With multiple departments, over 30 schools and colleges, and more than 10 partner organizations, each entity operated independently. These diverse fundraising approaches across The University of Utah led to confusion, frustration, and missed opportunities.

It was clear that The University of Utah needed a unified digital fundraising platform that all departments, schools/colleges, and partners could leverage, while still maintaining overall brand alignment. On top of that, the redesign needed to give people a reason to show their support. Streamlining their process and addressing user pain points were essential to ultimately empower The U to foster enduring donor relationships for generations to come.

Through user interviews and research, we uncovered pain points and desires to shape a more frictionless, simplified, and enjoyable experience. These insights ultimately guided our main strategy: transitioning from transactional fundraising to storytelling. This shift was a natural evolution. Fundraising is about offering people one way to channel their passions and beliefs into meaningful action. What better way to ignite that human connection than through impactful stories?

Aligning donor motivations with intuitive giving experiences

Using immersive storytelling as the gateway to a more user-centric redesign, we recognized that intrinsic motivation alone is not enough to inspire giving on a larger scale. Every step of the process had to be intuitive and straightforward, ensuring a seamless experience that epitomized the professionalism and care of The U.

Our goal for the new Giving platform was to create a tool that helps donors support causes they care about while encouraging additional giving aligned with their motivations. Moreover, creating a singular platform that housed all the intricacies of the donation process across all colleges was of paramount importance. We were successful on both fronts.

The U's new Giving experience highlights new branding that draws donors in and is thoughtfully structured to deliver a stellar user journey while also remaining flexible. The platform puts to use progressive disclosure, featuring the most recent fundraising efforts along with impact stories of recent donations. Placing the most pertinent and timely information at the very beginning of the user journey prevents information overload, piques interest, and sets the tone for the remainder of the user journey. In tune with our focus on narrative storytelling, the platform now affords users ease when showing their support and also serves as a central location for The U's overall fundraising efforts.

Engineering a flexible, scalable foundation for fundraising

Behind the scenes, our engineering team built a flexible platform on WordPress to support the full range of The U's fundraising needs. With over 30 colleges and departments contributing content, we focused on creating a modular system that could scale with them.

At the core is a custom page builder and theme that lets editors create new pages by mixing and matching pre-built modules—like image galleries, story sections, and donation prompts. Fundraising teams can now publish quickly and confidently, all while staying on-brand.

To support visual variation across departments, we built a theming system that applies custom styles—like logos, headers, and color palettes—at the page level, no devs required.

Structured content types for stories, campaigns, staff, and events keep content organized and make filtering, sorting, and aggregation seamless—whether on dedicated pages or embedded in broader stories.

We launched using The U's preferred hosting setup, optimized for speed and accessibility, and provided documentation and recorded training to support ongoing success.

The result: a unified platform that makes publishing faster, storytelling easier, and long-term fundraising more sustainable.

The U's Giving platform is more than just a donation tool—it's a seamless, story-driven experience that fosters lasting connections. By unifying the fundraising process across departments and empowering donors with intuitive, user-friendly pathways, The U can now better engage supporters and strengthen its impact. This redesign not only meets The U's current goals but also lays a foundation for future growth, enabling the university to continue making a meaningful difference for generations to come.