Transforming Kappa Delta’s donation platform

Setting the scene

Kappa Delta Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Kappa Delta Sorority, funding scholarships, leadership training, and charitable initiatives that empower women. Their mission depends on cultivating strong donor relationships and delivering a seamless digital experience for supporters.

Kappa Delta Foundation were suffering from using a dated, clunky system, causing a large amount of manual effort for the admin team.

A collage of screenshots showcasing various sections of the Kappa Delta Sorority's foundation or fundraising website, designed for large desktop screens. The different sections include: Alpha Epsilon 100th Anniversary Scholarship Endowment Fund: Features a collage of photos of members and a donation form with options for one-time, monthly, or yearly gifts. Total funds raised: A dashboard with a progress bar showing over $128,000 raised towards a $155,000 goal, along with statistics for "Founders Day Challenges" like the number of donors and chapters represented. Our latest givers: A section listing recent donors, categorized under headings like "Confidence" and "Inspiration." Education & Technology Funds: A page with a search bar and a list of various specific funds that can be supported. Chapter leaderboards: Two lists ranking university chapters, one by "Amount raised" in dollars and the other by "Number of donors." — Custom modules and layouts were created within Raisely, and continue to be refined and iterated, which each campaign and event that Kappa Delta run each year, building on learning and data from the previous.

The challenge

The Kappa Delta Foundation needed to rebuild their entire donations system, including their regular, one-off, and White Rose Garden virtual gifting platforms, before their immovable June 2023 convention deadline. The new platform had to streamline their technology stack, integrate seamlessly with Salesforce, eliminate the heavy manual administration burdening staff, and deliver a polished, fully branded experience for their donor community.

The solution

With Kappa Delta’s main website built in WordPress, we recommended Raisely as a cost-effective solution for the donations platform, leveraging Drupal to provide a secure, custom integration between Raisely and Salesforce. We built this custom integration after identifying a vulnerability in the standard connector that could expose donor data, ensuring secure transfer and giving the Foundation complete control of donor records.

We extended Raisely where it added value and kept reuse in mind, so the same custom building blocks could support multiple campaigns. For Founders Day we customised Raisely blocks to show live challenge progress and chapter leaderboards and ensured the digital experience aligned with coordinated email and mail campaigns. For the White Rose Garden convention campaign, we designed a bouquet experience that made the act of giving feel tangible. Donors could choose a bouquet size, see their contribution displayed on a Hall of Fame page, and enjoy an emotionally rewarding journey that reduced friction and made the decision simple for users.

Design and delivery were fast and collaborative. We used Figma for rapid design iteration and ran continuous deployment, so the client could stress test features as they were built. Daily check-ins during sprints, a responsive Slack channel, and early feedback loops meant we stayed aligned with the Foundation and could pivot quickly where needed. We were pragmatic about scope and trade-offs, creating bespoke blocks only when they delivered clear value and reusing standard Raisely components elsewhere to keep costs low.

The work combined UX and UI design, integration design, and frontend development to create new blocks and page templates, with automated testing and maintenance for the Salesforce integration. We also provided training and documentation, so the Foundation team could operate independently after launch.

A screenshot of the desktop view of the "Founders Day of Giving 2025" website for the Kappa Delta Sorority. The main section features a photo of three young women smiling on the left, with text that reads, "Founders Day of Giving 2025," and a date of "October 23, 2025." On the right is a prominent donation form. It includes a progress bar showing "$150,630 raised" towards a "$355,000 goal." The form provides options for one-time, monthly, or yearly donations with pre-selected amounts ranging from $18.97 to $500, as well as an "Other" option. At the bottom of the page, a green banner titled "Thank You To Our Donors" displays a list of recent contributions with the donor's name, amount, and time of donation. — The donation landing page, this example showing the Founders Day of Giving 2025 campaign

Once the rebuild was complete, the challenge shifted to creating more ambitious campaigns. The 2024 Founders Day event aimed to leverage the competitive spirit between chapters to boost donor numbers and total giving.

The 2025 White Rose Garden convention campaign required something different: an experience that felt special, magical, and unique. The concept was to move from individual, virtual flowers to a bouquet that donors could gift, making the act of giving more meaningful and instantly recognisable. Donors would see their contributions displayed publicly in a way that felt rewarding and prestigious, while the donation process itself had to be quick, intuitive, and emotionally engaging.

The outcomes

The new platform delivered a step change in donor engagement and operational efficiency. The streamlined experience made it easier for supporters to donate, while staff could manage content more efficiently, saving time and reducing reliance on external support.

The transformation produced immediate, measurable results:

The rebuilt platform launched at the 2023 convention, where fundraising exceeded the target by more than 100%.
During the 2024 Founders Day campaign, donations flowed so quickly that major donors doubled the available match funding mid-campaign.
The 2025 White Rose Garden campaign raised 51% over their target.

Our strong relationship with Kappa Delta continues, and together we are planning ahead for 2026 campaigns.