The Newman Center
OmniAlly built a touchscreen digital donor board for the Newman Center at St. Agatha–St. James, a Catholic campus ministry serving Penn and Drexel in Philadelphia, with no prior donor recognition.
“We didn't have a method to replace — that was the problem. We're a campus ministry inside a parish with a history going back well over a century, and there was nowhere in the building that acknowledged the people who built it. What forced the issue was a family approaching us about a significant gift honoring their great-grandfather, who was part of the Newman ministry as a student at Penn in the 1800s. We wanted to honor him properly and realized we had no place to do it, and no way to tell anyone who he was. That's what led us to formalize the Legacy Society and give it a home.”
Amy Burghardt
Development Manager
Recognition Challenges
The site was an octagonal room on the lower level, between the Newman Center building and the church, under a gold-leaf drop ceiling. A beautiful space carrying almost nothing — a couple of frames, a couple of pews, and a lot of bare wall.
Key challenges included:
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No existing recognition of the individuals and families behind more than a century of ministry
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A Legacy Society spanning historic figures and living plannedgift donors, each with a story rather than just a name
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An original hand-built Gothic arch concept quoted at roughly three times the available budget
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An octagonal room whose geometry would amplify anything oversized
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A need to honor named individuals now while leaving room for the society to grow
Choosing a Partner
Three companies were in the running
"One of them essentially offered us a screen on a wall, and then added travel, hotels and meals to fly their people out to install it, which is an unusual thing to ask a nonprofit to absorb. We'd also priced a pair of handcrafted Gothic arches, and that came back at roughly three times what we had available.
What set OmniAlly apart was that they designed to our building rather than handing us a catalog. Our church is traditional and Gothic, and they took the ceiling, the colors and the rose window and built the piece around them.
The other thing, and this mattered to me as the person signing, was that we saw real numbers before we committed. No surprises halfway through. When you're spending a donor's gift, that matters."
Raul Espericueta
Chief Development Officer
Our Solution
A single large-format display in a hand-finished frame, sized to the wall rather than pulled from a catalog. An octagonal room magnifies whatever sits in it, so a larger installation would have competed with the space instead of completing it.
Materials answer what was already in the room. The frame picks up the goldleaf ceiling in a matte sand finish rather than a metallic one, so it reads as a quiet echo instead of a second source of shine. The scripture line beneath is cut in stained wood and mounted proud of the wall. A rose-window motif drawn from the church itself is laid onto the wall in soft tan.
The wall is interactive. Visitors browse by touch, which means a grandchild can walk up and find their grandfather's photograph and story directly, rather than waiting to see whether it comes around in a loop.
Accessibility was designed in rather than added on. Mounting height and an on-screen reach control let a visitor using a wheelchair navigate the whole system.
Beyond a List of Names
The display holds two libraries: Ways to Give, covering dedications, endowment gifts, the Legacy Society and active campaigns; and Our Story, carrying the Newman Center's history, its notable chaplains, the current team and the FOCUS missionaries serving Penn and Drexel.
"The wall works something like a history book. Each dedication carries a photograph, a written story and a QR code, so a visitor can read why that person mattered rather than seeing a name on a list.
We were deliberate about the balance. Our Legacy Society is small by design — these are major and planned gifts — so rather than a long list sitting there permanently, those names surface periodically alongside other stories. We built out our own history too: a timeline, our notable chaplains, the current team, and our FOCUS missionaries, so students see themselves in it and not only donors. And we use it for live campaigns. During Giving Tuesday we ran the goals for Penn, Drexel and the parish right on the screen."
Patrick Trevors
Newman Director
Interactive Donor Lists — Search tool feature included
Special Dedications — a donor's photograph, story and QR code.
Campaigns & About Foundation — Giving Tuesday, Legacy Society, Our History, Our team.
Who Keeps It Current
Content is scheduled and updated by the Newman Center's own team, using templates built for them during the project. When a donor's family is expected, their page can be set to appear before the visit and step back afterward.
None of that is a technical problem. A screen will carry whatever it is handed. What keeps it worth looking at is somebody deciding what it says and keeping it moving, which is why naming who owns which part of the content was part of the project rather than an afterthought. It is the difference between a wall people check and one that quietly becomes furniture.
“A display like this is only worth having if your own people can keep it current without calling a vendor every time. For an office our size, that was the difference between a system we'd use and one that would quietly go stale.”
Patrick Trevors
Newman Director
Made for the Room
The pieces around the screen do as much work as the screen itself. A matte gold frame against a gold-leaf ceiling. Wood letters that throw a real shadow. A rose window borrowed from upstairs and laid down in the palest tan the wall would hold.
“It would have been easy to put something in there that overwhelmed the space. The restraint is what makes it work, and that came out of the back and forth rather than the first sketch.”
Patrick Trevors
Newman Director
The Return
"We're a small organization, so every dollar gets looked at closely. The way I'd frame it is that the wall does several jobs at once. It honors people we owed recognition to. It gives us a concrete way to open a conversation about planned giving, which is difficult to start cold. And it turned a room people used to walk through into a place where they stop.
For us the value is less about acquiring new donors and more about deepening relationships we already have, and having something worth showing a family when they come to visit."
Patrick Trevors
Newman Director
