Case study · Design

Purposeful Philanthropy

Three connected guides that help advisors start charitable conversations and help donors define a giving vision and a family legacy. 84 pages in total across English (Purposeful Philanthropy) and French (Philanthropie raisonnée).

Role
Graphic designer: collection system, covers, worksheets, information design and bilingual production MISSING: Austin to confirm exact role and credits (copywriting, photography).
Tools
Adobe InDesign. MISSING: confirm other tools (Illustrator, Photoshop, mockup source)
Client
Wealth management foundation (Raymond James Canada Foundation)
Year
MISSING: year
Wall of Purposeful Philanthropy guide covers in three photographic designs, laid out on a deep blue background.
The three cover directions, tiled in English and French.

English covers

English cover with a dark lakeside photograph, subtitle An Advisor’s Guide to Charitable Conversations.
Dark lakeside: An Advisor’s Guide to Charitable Conversations
English cover with a dock and rowboat at sunset.
Sunset dock
English cover with a misty lake and reeds at dusk.
Misty lake

French covers

French cover with a dark lakeside photograph.
Lac sombre
French cover with a dock and rowboat at sunset.
Quai au coucher du soleil
French cover with a misty lake and reeds at dusk.
Lac brumeux

The brief

Raymond James Canada Foundation’s Charitable Giving Fund needed a guide suite that advisors could use in real client meetings: one for advisors (conversation prompts), one for donors defining their giving vision, and one for involving family and the next generation.

The challenge

Philanthropy is personal and the content is heavy with exercises: worksheets, journeys, budgets and shortlists. The suite had to feel calm and premium, make interactive pages easy to fill in, stay on brand inside a regulated industry, and exist in two languages with matching layouts, even though French runs longer.

The process

  1. Build one collectionSet a shared system: a calm sunset-and-water photographic cover language, a navy palette, one type family and a clean white base for the foundation lockup. Each part gets its own photograph so the three read as a set.
  2. Design the working pagesTurned questions into usable layouts: a four-step giving journey, a values mosaic, ranked focus areas, budget grids, shortlists and a family roles framework, all with room to write.
  3. Make the French editionsRebuilt every part in French (Philanthropie raisonnée) with matched grids and type so the two sets look identical, then produced print versions with bleed.
  4. Present the setCreated angled cover mockups, a tiled wall of covers and a collection graphic for each language to show the suite together.
Wooden dock leading to a rowboat on a calm lake at sunset.
The photograph behind the sunset-dock cover.
Collection graphic: Purposeful Philanthropy, 3-Part Collection, with three angled covers on blue above the Raymond James lockup.
English collection graphic
Collection graphic: Philanthropie raisonnée, Collection en trois volets, with three angled covers on blue.
French collection graphic

Part 1: An Advisor’s Guide to Charitable Conversations (6 pages)

English interior page, Section 1, Connecting Life Experiences and Personal Identity, with prompts and call-out boxes.
English
French interior page, matching layout with the same prompts and call-out boxes.
French

Part 2: A Roadmap to Your Giving Vision (20 pages)

English page The Giving Journey, a four-step journey graphic from motivation to impact.
English: The Giving Journey
French page, the four-step giving journey graphic.
French: Le cheminement d’un don
English Values Exercise page with a honeycomb mosaic of values.
English: Values Exercise
French values exercise page with the honeycomb mosaic.
French: Exercice sur les valeurs

Part 3: A Framework for Lasting Legacy (16 pages)

English page, Involving the Next Generations, with worksheet columns and a framework of questions.
English
French page with the matching worksheet layout.
French
English page, Planning for the Future of the Charitable Giving Fund, a diagram with four planning areas.
English: planning diagram
French page with the planning diagram.
French: diagramme de planification

The result

A complete, three-part, bilingual guide collection with print and web-ready PDFs.

3guides in the collection
42pages per language
84pages in total, English and French
6cover designs

MISSING: Austin: confirm the three-part order (Advisor’s Guide, Roadmap, Framework) is correct.

MISSING: Austin: confirm year, how the guides are used, and any real result (advisors reached, downloads).

MISSING: Austin: the Word drafts contain unfinished designer notes, so no copy from them was used. Please confirm the descriptions above.

MISSING: Austin: the brief, challenge and process on this page are drafted from the work and your resume. Please correct or add detail.

More work

All work