How charity: water Designs Experiences That Create Lifelong Donors

Written By Dave Raley

What if the most powerful fundraising tool your organization has is not a landing page, an email campaign, or a social media strategy, but a room?

In this episode of Sustainable Giving, host Dave Raley sits down with Brian Seay, Experience Lab Director at charity: water, for a rich conversation about what it truly takes to move people from passive awareness into active, lasting generosity.

Brian brings more than two decades of experience designing live events that inspire action, first on the artist relations and live events team at Compassion International, and now leading one of the most innovative donor experience spaces in the nonprofit world: The Experience Lab, a free, immersive exhibit housed at The Factory at Franklin, just outside Nashville, Tennessee.

Brian and Dave dig into the architecture of transformation, the psychology of the ask, and what separates a moment of emotional inspiration from a genuine long-term commitment.

Key Topics They Cover:

  1. What The Experience Lab is and why charity: water built it

    The Experience Lab is a guided, 60-minute immersive tour of the global water crisis, housed inside a converted factory in Franklin, Tennessee. Brian describes the space in vivid detail: a life-size holographic front door featuring the Ugandan family at the center of the story, a 95-degree room with a built-in treadmill where visitors walk alongside a young girl collecting water, a virtual reality film narrated by a 10-year-old named Grace, and a working water pump that triggers the sound of a cheering African village. About 60 percent of visitors arrive with no prior knowledge of the water crisis, which makes the deliberate design of the experience all the more critical.

  2. The architecture of transformation: Problem, Solution, Action

    Brian unpacks the intentional three-part structure behind every tour and explains why the sequence is everything. The lab first immerses visitors in the weight of the problem before moving to the solutions charity: water and its local partners deploy around the world, and only then invites people into action. Brian explains what goes wrong when organizations rush to the solution or the ask before a donor has truly felt the problem.

  3. The psychology of the ask and why slowing down matters

    While the Experience Lab moves visitors through the space at a steady pace, it slows down significantly at the give shop, an action area built around three beautifully designed giving stations. Brian talks about narrative transportation, the social science of pulling someone so deeply into another person's story that empathy increases in measurable ways, and why pressure tends to produce one-time gifts or dropout while space and clarity invite real commitment. He also draws on a key insight from Made to Stick: never assume donors know what to do next.

  4. What it takes to move people into recurring giving

    The Spring, charity: water's monthly giving program, currently has 50,000 donors. Brian reflects on what he has seen across two decades of live events: people commit to recurring giving when they see themselves in the story, not when they are guilted or pressured into it. Dave weaves in the story behind The Spring itself, including Scott Harrison's famous answer to the "January 1st problem," the experience of reaching December 31st and then waking up on January 1st back at zero.

  5. The role of artists and influencers in expanding a cause

    Brian shares a candid story about a high-profile influencer trip to Africa that resulted in only five child sponsorships, not because the influencer did a poor job, but because the audience had no existing connection to the cause. The lesson: bigger is not better. Influencers whose audiences are already oriented toward giving and making a difference, people like Carlos Whitaker, who has worked with both Compassion International and charity: water, are far more effective than those with massive but misaligned followings.

Key Resources:

Special thanks to our team at Sustainable Giving: Tom, Kirsten, Victoria, and Abigail.

Dave Raley
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