Giving to Maryland, rebuilt on Craft CMS.
Giving to Maryland is where alumni, parents and friends of the university make a gift online. It takes in thousands of gifts a year, across several thousand funds that span colleges, programs, campaigns and athletics.
Craft CMSGiveGabLaunched September 4, 2024
At a glance
At a glance · Year over year
- 01 / Revenue
- +278%
- online giving revenue, nearly 4x
- 02 / New users
- +51%
- new users on the site
- 03 / Sessions
- +35%
- sessions on the site
- 04 / Key events
- +29%
- completed donor actions
05 / For the teamNew campaigns and fund pages without waiting on a developer.
The challenge
A site the team could run themselves.
The previous site had served UMD for years, but it had become hard to keep current. The giving team wanted a modern, on-brand site that matched how the university shows up everywhere else, and one they could run themselves.
Finding the right fund
Finding the right fund wasn't easy for donors.
Changing a fund
Adding or changing a fund took more effort than it should.
Years of content
They wanted a partner to help redesign the site, build it out and move years of content over.
In October 2023, UMD's giving team reached out through the Craft Partner network. They knew what they needed.
What we built in Craft CMS
Built for the team that runs it.
Most of the day-to-day work on a giving site is small: launch a campaign, add a fund, feature a different set of funds for a college or a giving day.
A site the giving team can run
Now the giving team does it themselves: spin up a campaign page, choose which funds appear, and send donors a link with the fund already picked. Funds stay in sync between the site and GiveGab. Short training videos help new staff.
Tools for the rest of campus
Colleges, schools and departments all have funds, stories and campaigns to represent. We built tools that let them request new information and updates, so requests reach the giving team in one place instead of scattered emails.
Giving that feels simple
Donors give right on the site, through GiveGab, with the form set up for the fund they chose. Search and clear fund pages help them find the right scholarship, program or team.
A creative fix for athletics
Many athletics gifts carry benefits with a fair market value that affects what's tax-deductible. Working with UMD and GiveGab, we show donors their giving level, benefits and fair market value up front, and carry it through to the receipt.
Keeping old links alive
Years of links to the old site lived in emails, print pieces and partner sites. With UMD's IT team, we redirected them to matching new pages, so UMD retired the old site in April 2025 without breaking anything.
Reporting the team uses
We connected gift data to Burrow, our reporting platform. The giving team gets regular gift reports by email and can log in any time to see donations alongside site analytics.
Before and after
The old site, and the new one.
The stack
- Craft CMS
- GiveGab
- Burrow
Watchtower
We wanted better functionality, a better experience for donors, and a lot less time spent maintaining the site behind the scenes. Siebird delivered all three. Our team can launch new campaigns or change which funds we feature without waiting on anyone, and departments across campus have an easy way to send us updates. They even solved our athletics fair market value challenge, which we hadn't seen on giving forms before. It's simply a much more pleasant site to work in, for our donors and for our team.
The results
The results · Google Analytics
+278% online giving revenue year over year, nearly four times the prior period
Nearly four times the online giving.
New users rose 51%, active users 49%, and sessions 35%. Key events, the completed actions donors take on the site, were up 29%, and average engagement time per session rose 27%.
Credit belongs with the campaigns.
Credit belongs with the giving team's campaigns first. The site's job was to make that work easy to run and easy for donors to finish.
- +51%
- new users
- +35%
- sessions
- +29%
- key events
More results
A much more pleasant site to work in.
Launched September 4, 2024
With athletics and follow-up releases that fall.
Run by the giving team
The giving team creates campaigns and chooses which funds appear on their own.
Several thousand funds
Kept in sync between the site and GiveGab.
Athletics fair market value
Shown before the gift and carried through to the receipt.
Old site retired cleanly
In April 2025, with legacy links still working.
Ongoing care since launch
The live site
Giving that feels simple, on every screen.
