Challenge

NGP VAN's acquisition of DonorTrends handed us a powerful predictive analytics engine tied to a white-glove consulting model that couldn't scale. When COVID hit, fundraisers needed accessible tools right inside the CRM they already used, not weeks of consultation. Our job was to turn a consulting engagement into a self-serve product without losing what made DonorTrends' insights valuable.

Approach

I brought the DonorTrends team in as design partners from day one, running a workshop to frame How Might We statements before opening Figma. From there, I iterated through wireframes and usability sessions with fundraisers from seven organizations to land on a scannable single-page pattern.

Before

Onboarding (below): Even after buying DonorTrends, getting up and running took a while. Spinning up an instance took the small team about a week, training ran three hours, and monthly user groups tried to help fundraisers make sense of the predictive scores. Momentum died before anyone opened the tool.

After

Fundraising Optimization Guide (below): An interactive, self-serve guide inside NGP VAN. Fundraisers open it and see ROI-ranked strategies drawn from their own donor data. Predictive scores also show up across the CRM so intelligence surfaces where the work already happens.

Impact