Designing for Donor Transparency and Trust
Overview
Simbi Foundation is a Vancouver-based nonprofit supporting access to education for refugees in Uganda and India. Donor surveys revealed a growing desire for greater transparency around how contributions were being used and the impact they were creating.
This project focused on defining a donor experience that helps supporters understand their impact while strengthening transparency and trust.
Team
1 Product Manager, 2 UX Designer, 1 Developer
Duration
3 Months
the opportunity
Donors wanted greater visibility into how their contributions created real-world impact.
This created an opportunity to explore how transparency, reporting, and storytelling could be brought together in a more meaningful donor experience.
UNDERSTANDING DONOR TRUST
Understanding what donors value when evaluating transparency and impact.
To better understand donor expectations, I synthesized findings from donor questionnaires and competitor research. The goal was to identify how donors evaluate transparency, understand impact, and prefer to engage with nonprofit organizations.
01
What donors value
More than half of our donors are over 54, highly educated, and value financial transparency, especially access to detailed reports.
02
How donors understand impact
Many competitors have built their own donation-impact models, clearly visualizing what each dollar achieves.
03
How donors prefer to engage
About 70 percent of donors want to engage with more diverse media, such as photos, videos, and stories that bring their impact to life.
These findings established three design priorities: clear impact reporting, accessible information, and richer storytelling.
MVP STRATEGY
Exploring the solution space
Research uncovered a wide range of opportunities to improve transparency, engagement, and impact communication. The challenge was prioritizing which capabilities would deliver meaningful donor value while remaining realistic for an initial MVP.
We used the Truck–Skateboard framework to move from the complete product vision to an MVP that could be realistically validated. Starting with the opportunities uncovered during research, we worked with product and development teams to identify the capabilities that best balanced donor value, organizational goals, and technical feasibility.
From
Complete Product Vision
Everything we explored
What we prioritized
To
Validation MVP
Concept development 1
Making individual impact immediately visible
With the MVP defined, the next step was determining how impact should be presented. The goal was to help donors immediately understand the outcomes of their contributions while keeping the most meaningful information visible and actionable.
Challenge
The initial viewport emphasized navigation and supporting content before answering the donor's primary question: What impact did my donation make?
Design RESPONSE
Designing the First Impression
The first viewport was redesigned to consolidate key impact outcomes into a single, scannable summary before presenting program details and supporting content. This made the donor’s contribution the clearest starting point of the dashboard.
Initial Information Hierarchy
Impact distributed across separate dashboard modules
Impact-First Hierarchy
Key outcomes consolidated into an at-a-glance summary
Concept development 2
Connecting impact with human stories
Research showed that transparent reporting alone was not enough to build donor understanding. Donors wanted stories, photos, and videos that connected impact metrics to the people and communities behind them.
Challenge
Impact metrics alone provided transparency, but lacked the human context needed for donors to understand the people and communities behind their contributions.
Design RESPONSE
Complementing data with storytelling
To provide greater context around donation outcomes, the dashboard introduced a dedicated media space featuring project updates, photos, videos, and stories from the field.
Stories, photos, and videos complemented impact metrics with human context, helping donors better understand the outcomes their contributions supported.
VALIDATION & ITERATION
Validating assumptions before development
Before moving into development, I conducted internal usability testing to evaluate whether the proposed experience successfully communicated impact, transparency, and donor value.
finding 1
Navigation between programs was unclear
What We Learned 🔍
Users didn't realize they could switch between BrightBox and Scholarship because the tab navigation lacked visibility.
Design Response 🎨
Replaced tabs with pill buttons to make switching more noticeable.
finding 2
Visual complexity reduced discoverability
What We Learned 🔍
Competing modules, colors, and interface elements distracted users from identifying key content.
Design Response 🎨
Simplified the layout by removing unnecessary icons, reducing color variation, and strengthening information hierarchy.
DEFINING SUCCESS
How the concept would be evaluated
Because the project remained in a pre-launch stage, success was defined through donor understanding, confidence, and task completion rather than post-launch product metrics.
01
Understanding Impact
Can donors quickly understand the outcomes their contributions supported?
02
Navigating with Confidence
Can donors move between programs and key content areas without confusion?
03
Exploring Impact
Can donors easily access reports, updates, and stories that provide context around their contributions?
04
Building Trust
Do donors feel informed about how their contributions are being used?
a few final thoughts
This project reinforced that effective product design is not only about generating ideas, but also about deciding which ideas are most important to validate first.
Research surfaced a wide range of opportunities, but attempting to address everything at once would have diluted the product's focus. Working through the MVP definition process reinforced that prioritization is a design activity. It requires identifying which assumptions matter most, aligning stakeholder expectations, and creating a foundation that can be meaningfully validated.
This experience strengthened my understanding that successful products are shaped as much by what is left out as by what is built.
Defining what not to build can be as important as defining what to build.
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