Meharry Medical College: Digital Donor Wall
Bringing Donor Recognition to Life with an Interactive Digital Experience
As Meharry Medical College celebrated its 150th anniversary and launched its ambitious Campaign 150: Forever on the Path, the institution set out to raise $500 million to support its mission. While the campaign was achieving significant success, there was one challenge: there wasn’t a compelling way to recognize the thousands of donors making that success possible.
Working with CTI, Meharry transformed an idea into an engaging, interactive digital donor wall that celebrates philanthropy, tells donor stories, and creates a lasting connection between supporters and the campus community.
The Challenge
Campaign 150 represented a defining moment for Meharry Medical College. As donor support continued to grow, the Institution Advancement team wanted more than a traditional plaque or donor recognition display. They envisioned an experience that would showcase the generosity of donors while inspiring students, faculty, staff, alumni, and visitors.
The goal was to create a permanent destination on campus where the impact of philanthropy could be seen, heard, and experienced. One that reflected both the history of the institution and the people helping shape its future. The project also needed to support long-term higher education donor recognition by creating a dynamic experience that could evolve alongside the campaign.
“We’ve had a lot of success with the campaign so far, but we haven’t had a way to share with our donors the success that we’ve had,” explains Colin Finn, Campaign Director for Institutional Advancement, Meharry Medical College.
The Solution
CTI worked closely with Meharry’s advancement team to turn their vision into a fully customized digital donor recognition experience.
Rather than delivering a standard display, CTI collaborated with the college to determine how different technologies could work together to create the experience they imagined. The finished installation, an interactive donor wall, continuously celebrates donor generosity.
The digital donor wall features:
- Interactive touchscreen navigation
- Multimedia stories highlighting donors and alumni
- Dynamic recognition of campaign supporters
- An engaging experience designed for students, faculty, staff, alums, donors, and visitors
“We started out with a vision when we were talking to the CTI sales team, and they brought that vision to life,“ says Finn. “They helped us understand what we could do, what we couldn’t do. We knew we wanted one aspect of it to be touchscreen. We knew we wanted volume on another piece, and they put it all together and executed tremendously.“
A Productive Partnership
From concept through deployment, CTI worked alongside Meharry to translate ideas into an engaging experience that aligned with the college’s goals.
By helping the team explore design possibilities, user interaction, and technology choices, CTI ensured the final solution reflected the institution’s vision while remaining intuitive and impactful.
“It was amazing to work with CTI—for them to bring our vision to life, and then have our donors see it and be thrilled with what they saw,” says Finn.
The Impact
The digital donor wall has quickly become one of the most visited and talked-about spaces on campus.
Unveiled during the college’s first board meeting following installation, the donor recognition wall immediately resonated with many of Meharry’s most generous supporters, including board members whose own stories are featured within the experience. Since then, students, faculty, staff, alums, visitors, and prospective donors have continued to gather around the display, exploring the stories behind the people whose generosity supports the institution.
“The digital donor wall was something that was highly needed here at Meharry,” says Dr. Juan McGruder, Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement. “One of the things that’s so important to us is to always make sure that we recognize and really commend the donors that we have, the wonderful support that we get from thousands of donors on an annual basis.“
Beyond recognizing donors, the installation has become a showcase for the college itself, and an outstanding example of higher education donor recognition. Administrators from across campus regularly ask how the project came together, while visitors continue to describe it as a unique and memorable feature of Meharry’s campus.
“This donor wall represents everything that our donors have done for us,” says Dr. McGruder. “The reaction by our donors and really our campus community has just been phenomenal.“
Education
CTI played a crucial role in bringing this vision to life by providing expertise in video wall selection, installation, and system integration—components beyond the capabilities of the university’s internal staff. The collaboration between WSU and CTI was seamless, with CTI’s project manager ensuring smooth execution at every stage, from design and quoting to installation and testing. As a result, WSU now has a state-of-the-art digital storytelling experience, replacing outdated projection systems and offering a powerful, modern way to engage prospective students. The project reinforced CTI’s reputation as a trusted AV partner, ensuring that the technology not only met but exceeded WSU’s expectations.
Testimonials
“The biggest challenge going into this was to make sure that our capabilities were always working. Working with CTI, there was never a pause.”
“The attention to detail that CTI gave us, you’re able to put your head down at night and know that tomorrow’s everything’s gonna work.”
Working with CTI, we’ve completely re-engineered and built an entirely new technology foundation so that we can support every media company around the world.
CTI has become not only partners, they’ve become great friends. And it wasn’t just, ‘hey, this is what we want,’ and CTI went ahead and executed it.It was ‘hey, here’s what we want,’ and CTI coming to us saying, ‘Okay. We hear what you want. Have you tried this?’ It was, ‘let’s collaborate and figure out the best way to accomplish that.’
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