ASPIRE
Sustainable Nonprofit Website
responsive web design + user research
Roles
Web Designer, Content Strategy
Skills
Responsive Website Design, Content Management
Situation
ASPIRE is a non-profit located in Boston dedicated to building and empowering a community of Asian American women leaders through identity development, mentorship, and education.
The organization was at a point where the existing mission and programs were failing to reflect the true why that attracted volunteers to the organization. Similarly their website was a non-responsive static HTML site that belched and groaned every time something needed to be changed. It hasn’t been updated for ages and needed to meet the needs for a responsive, easy-to-use website that people have come to expect.
Goals
- Create a web strategy to reflect the new direction
- Redesign responsive website to prioritize users on easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor.
1. Research and Strategy
Personas
By looking at past ASPIRE supporters and members I was able to make sense of our demographic and figure out who we need to reach out to. Each of these personas visit our website with their own set of expectations about what kind of information need be accessible.
The ASPIRE Pipeline
ASPIRE's decade-long efforts has affected multiple generations of Asian American girl and women. I evaluated existing supporter and alumni outreach efforts and the volunteer onboarding and offboarding process within the website and email communications. I noted areas that needed to reinforced and am designing an ASPIRE pipeline where past alumni and members can stay connected and expand and reinforce their network through ASPIRE.
Volunteer Onboarding
One of the efforts include making the volunteer onboarding process easier and find roles more tailored to each volunteer's skillset.
The accessible and responsive volunteer form makes the volunteering process much more approachable. When the form is submitted an automated feedback email is sent so the volunteers can sit tight waiting for the volunteer coordinator to reach out knowing they have been heard.
Sustainable CMS
The previous website was static HTML loaded directly onto a server that was only accessible only through a FTP client - this prevented a lot of changes we would have otherwise made to the website. After this traumatic experience we decided to go with a WYSIWYG platform that was also responsive-friendly. The crux to the website's survival would be an easy-to-use CMS that could be picked up by volunteers without too much formal training.