After the pandemic forced the university to send students and employees home last spring, we quickly made the decision to pivot our flagship annual donor reports—the Harvard University Report of Giving (reportofgiving.com) and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Leadership Report (fasleadershipreport.com)—from print-only to digital-only publications for the first time. While budgetary savings were a major driver, this transition wasn’t merely a financial calculation, nor was it as simple as making the print reports available online. Rather we embraced the opportunity to reimagine how we planned, produced, and shared content to make the best use of the digital format to engage donors and track their engagement in ways we never could with print to inform future communications. We also crafted messaging and told stories that showed how the university was meeting the moment, illustrating the power of philanthropy to lift up members of the Harvard community during a time of crisis, and empower them to help address urgent and persistent problems facing the world today.
From the Judges
Harvard’s Digital Donor Reports feature excellent design at great cost savings. The stories were well told, contained good imagery, and were easily navigated.
