Recognizing Donor Generosity

At St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Davison, Michigan, parishioners are rightly proud of their beautiful community center. Yet the facility didn’t come about by magic. Making it possible were donations large and small from hundreds of people community-wide.

How best to recognize their generosity? St. John’s invited SignGraphix to design the center’s donor recognition area. The challenge: to devise just the right signage—elegant yet affordable, noticeable yet unobtrusive, and fitting with the building’s spiritually influenced architecture.

Opportunity presented itself in the form of a squared-off indentation along one wall of the center. The SignGraphix team transformed this into a gently curving alcove, mounting 15 glass panels, each five feet high by one foot wide, side by side across the width of the space.

Names of donors at varying levels of contribution are screen-printed onto the panels. When there are additions to the donor lists, the structure’s support mechanism allows the panels to be easily removed, updated, and replaced. Across the top of the panels, this Biblical passage sets an inclusive tone: “In my Father’s house, there are many rooms. All are welcome.” (John 14:2)

The donor recognition area is at the center’s entrance, so it naturally draws the eyes of people as they enter. But it also stands outside of the hallway’s normal traffic patterns. In this way it provides prominent tribute to donors, while not obstructing the center’s day-to-day activities.

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