In today’s charity sector, launching an emergency appeal is no easy task. With crises emerging more frequently and the digital landscape rapidly evolving, charities must act swiftly to capture public attention and secure support.

This urgency often clashes with internal operations, outdated workflows, and the challenge of smooth coordination across teams. Add to that the need to balance transparency, maintain donor trust, and comply with regulations, and the complexity only deepens. In this high-pressure environment, overcoming these hurdles is essential to reach a wider audience, boost donations, and deliver aid swiftly to those in need.

World Vision Canada approached us with a clear challenge: to speed up the process from an emergency occurring to launching a donation page. Their goal was to put donors at the heart of their strategy, simplify the emergency appeal process, and maximise their reach when it mattered most. We were tasked with building a completely new appeal page and donation flow that could be quickly updated with emergency information and easily receive donations. This helped reduce delays and increased their impact when it mattered the most.

Our task was to build a more efficient and engaging platform that could quickly convert traffic into donations. Working closely with World Vision Canada’s Emergency Response Product Owner, who was committed to speeding up the launch process, our role was to:

• Improve the user experience, streamlining the donation process
• Engage a variety of donors, whether they respond to emotional stories or clear statistics
• Leverage media coverage to maximise awareness and boost donations

Understanding donor behaviour

We started by conducting in-depth research into donor behaviour, learning how different audiences respond to emergencies. We identified two key segments - those preferring numbers and data, and others connecting more deeply with personal stories and imagery. These insights helped shape the strategy, ensuring the new platform could engage donors on both an emotional and practical level.

Strategy and design

Working closely with the World Vision Canada product team, we developed an emergency appeal section that aligned with their new workflow and overarching strategy: reducing the time it takes to get an appeal page live, and improving the donation process for users. Our goal was to create a transformative digital experience that delivered something meaningful, whilst keeping consistency, and simplicity.

We crafted a clear strategy to simplify the donation process, making it easier for users to move from landing on the emergency appeal page to making a contribution. We removed unnecessary steps and focused on the key elements that would inspire donors to make an impact through donating or spreading the word of the appeal

Building and testing an MVP

To validate our approach, we created a prototype to demonstrate the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to illustrate the entire donor journey, from initial engagement to the final donation. We tested this prototype with real users, gathering feedback to refine and perfect the experience, ensuring it was smooth and intuitive, and would provide optimum donor conversion.

While focusing on producing a product strategy and refining the Emergency Response product prototype, we also worked closely with Lauren Thompson, World Vision Canada's Emergency Response Product Owner, who tackled the internal workflow improvements. This collaborative approach ensured a well-rounded solution—a streamlined appeals page with a modular design, allowing content to be added throughout the life of the appeal. This, combined   with more efficient internal processes helped define a simple, but successful appeal page that could be launched fast. Together, we delivered a considered and validated product that allowed World Vision Canada to launch emergency appeals swiftly and effectively.

The results were significant. By streamlining the emergency appeal process, we helped World Vision Canada become much more agile in their response to humanitarian crises. Here are the results:

Strategy-led analytics:

• Time to market for the online appeal page: reduced from over 6 days to just 3 hours
• Steps in the donation journey: simplified from 5 steps to 3, making it quicker for donors to contribute
• Mandatory fields in the checkout process: reduced from 14 to 8, lowering friction and improving the user experience
• People involved in launching an appeal: cut down from 23 people to just 7, speeding up internal approval processes and reducing the overhead to deliver

Internal-driven analytics

Lauren’s internal  workflow improvements additionally resulted in:

• Time to decision-making: reduced from over 2 days to just 5 minutes
• Time to market for social media campaigns: cut from over 4 days to just 30 minutes
• Time to launch email appeals: reduced from 8 days to just over 1 day

These improvements helped World Vision Canada connect with donors at key moments, communicate emergencies more clearly, launch appeals faster, and reach a broader audience

In Conclusion

By rethinking and refining World Vision Canada's emergency appeal process, we’ve helped them act faster, engage more donors, and make a bigger impact in times of crisis. Our collaboration has enabled them to better leverage media coverage, streamline internal workflows, and provide a seamless donation experience.

We’re proud to have played a part in such an important project and look forward to continuing our work with World Vision Canada, helping them further enhance their emergency response capabilities.