Dartmouth Impact Explorer

Visualizing a multibillion-dollar fundraising campaign

Overview

The Dartmouth Impact Explorer is an interactive tool designed to showcase the data behind Dartmouth’s Call to Lead campaign, which raised over $3.5 billion to support students, faculty, and institutional initiatives. The client needed a visually impressive platform to explore donor data dynamically, engaging users with compelling, data-driven storytelling.

The Challenge

The client wanted an interactive, visually striking experience that could filter and represent donor demographics through dynamic visualizations. The tool needed to integrate real-time data queries, run smoothly in the browser, and maintain high performance despite rendering complex animations and 3D elements.

My Role

As tech lead, I determined the tech stack and architectural approach. I collaborated with Periscopic’s data engineering team to design the data schema and worked closely with the design team to balance aesthetics with performance constraints. Technical Implementation

Technical Implementation

• React.js, Vite & TypeScript: Chosen for a modern, fast development environment with optimized build performance.
• Three.js & React-Three-Fiber: Built a custom particle system to represent donor data dynamically, reacting to user-selected demographic filters.
• GSAP Animations: Created smooth motion transitions to enhance interactivity.
• GraphQL & SQLite: Optimized queries for real-time data-driven visualizations.

The final product is a visually engaging, interactive platform that transforms complex fundraising data into a compelling digital experience.