You’ll find them in sports stadiums, hospitals, all over college campuses. They decorate parks, performing arts venues, and philanthropic offices. Can you guess what we have in mind? Yep, it’s donor walls.

If you lead a nonprofit organization, it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll need a donor program. And once you’ve had a successful fundraising campaign, you’ll probably want to do something to commemorate it. People want to know that their gifts actually make a difference, after all. Donor walls are one of the best ways to make sure everybody who contributed gets properly recognized.

But, useful as they are, donor walls can easily look a bit…bland. (It’s all right to acknowledge it.) When you have so many names to incorporate, winding up with a long list of names is just hard to avoid. Unique donor walls are possible, though. What’s more, they come with some impressive benefits.

Unique Donor Walls Catch Attention

Donor walls obviously have significance for the people involved in the project. A casual visitor to your space, though, will probably look straight past a plaque covered in names. And that’s too bad, considering that one point of a donor wall is to make sure your donors get recognized by the community enjoying the space.

A creative donor wall, though, does a better job of catching visitors’ eyes. Whether you choose a unique layout, contrasting colors, textured materials, or some combination of those, the unexpected design will stand out and make people want to take a second look. Creative donor walls can almost become wall art in themselves. Just look at the donor wall we crafted for Saginaw Valley State University — the wavelike shapes might remind people of the nearby Saginaw River, and the contrast between the blue-green acrylic and the warm wood brings out the colors of both.

Unique Donor Walls Show Appreciation

Besides catching visitors’ attention, creative and unique donor walls can improve your relationships with your donors themselves. Taking the time to create out-of-the-ordinary donor recognition certainly makes your donors feel appreciated. It’s a way to show your donors how important they are to your organization.

But it could also be a way of engaging new potential donors. One article about donor walls gives anecdotal evidence that a polished, unique donor wall could inspire people to give more. Good donor walls show that you respect your donors’ generosity, after all. Who woudn’t want to give to an organization they believe in that also honors their contributions?

So next time you have a fundraising campaign to celebrate, think about going the extra mile with your donor wall. The internet has hundreds of examples of creative donor walls to get inspiration from, or you can look through our portfolio archives to see some of the donor walls we’ve created for organizations right here in Mid-Michigan.