St. Paul's Foundation

2022
Purpose built, people first.

Building trust through donor recognition and community storytelling.

Process

Role: Brand Strategist & UX Architect
Skills: Brand strategy, UX strategy, information architecture, user interviews, client presentations, leading workshops
Team: 2 Creative Directors, 1 Strategy Director, 1 Project Manager, 1 UX Designer, 3 Developers
‍Agency: Briteweb
Website: St. Paul's Foundation

St. Paul's Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the work of St. Paul's Hospital and other subsidiary hospitals in Vancouver, Canada. The foundation heavily relies on donations from individuals and organizations to fund research, equipment, and patient care initiatives.  

In collaboration with Briteweb’s team of strategists and creatives, I helped the foundation re-define their brand strategy and online user experience to become more community-focused, inclusive, and values-driven.

Putting donors front and centre.

Why give to St. Paul’s Foundation?

The donor wears the cape, not the foundation.

As the new St. Paul's Hospital in downtown Vancouver was set to launch in late 2023, the foundation’s primary focus included showcasing their legacy and identity as an organization, improving the user experience of their donations portal, and sharing future news with the public.

The St. Paul's Foundation website prior to Briteweb’s involvement was outdated and not user-friendly: users were having difficulty finding information about the foundation's mission, impact, and ways to donate. This was resulting in lower engagement and fewer donations.

To drive donations forward and to build longer-term trust with their key users, answering the question of why give to St. Paul's? was a core part of our strategy.

The importance of donation transparency and impact.

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Designing for optimal user flow and quicker conversions.

Centering their donor community

We conducted a competitive analysis of other healthcare and non-profit websites to identify best practices and areas for improvement, analyzed website analytics to identify user behaviour patterns and pain points, and conducted user surveys and interviews to gather feedback and insights.

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People-first, accessible, intersectional, and trustworthy.
Opportunities we discovered to build trust with their users:
  1. Purpose-built, people first - honing in on their founding mission of compassionate care.
  2. ‘Give Now’ page - expressing gratitude and offering people the power of choice as to how and what they choose to give (voluntary time, money, or something else?).
  3. ‘Why Give’ page - highlighting diverse and real healthcare stories from their community.
  4. Showcasing annual reports data, personable leadership profiles, and the helpful impact of donations received.

We decided to hone in on their mission of "purpose built, people first" to create the new brand and creative direction.

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A focus on community stories.

Results

The site redesign resulted in significant improvements in user engagement and donation conversion rates. The foundation saw a 25% increase in overall donations, with a 35% increase in monthly recurring donations. User feedback was also positive, with users noting that the website was more visually appealing, easier to navigate, and more informative.

Our digital strategy: To highlight real and human stories from the foundation's community, share impactful quantitative and qualitative data with the public, create a frictionless user experience for the donations portal, and showcase their core mission of “Purpose built, people first” for the world to see.

Outcome

The final result ended up being a space that featured their community, increased online donations and engagement significantly, and created room for folks from all walks of life to see themselves represented.

This inclusive brand experience not only widened their reach and public perception, which increased the chances of the foundation being discovered, but also built long-term trust and credibility with their users for years to come.

Appealing to the hearts of people, no matter where they came from, was our overall strategy to answer the question of why give to St. Paul's Foundation and to drive future donations forward.

More work