nonprofit and foundation websites

Description
As the sole designer on a small, collaborative team, I own the design process across our client engagements from early discovery through launch, partnering directly with clients and working closely with our developers throughout the process. That ownership can include translating organizational goals, complex content ecosystems, and audience needs into information architecture and user pathways; establishing visual direction and reusable design patterns; designing accessible, responsive experiences; and supporting implementation through developer handoff and launch.

The projects below span everything from new organizations establishing their first digital presence to established nonprofits rethinking how their websites help people find information, access services, take action, and support their missions.

Nature and Health Alliance

Nature and Health Alliance is a network of dedicated researchers and practitioners committed to the intersection of nature and health, with a mission to educate and train the next generation of nature and health researchers, practitioners, and advocates.

Work Produced: Branding and complete website build

Problem: As a newly established organization, Nature and Health Alliance needed a digital home that could serve as a central resource for research on the health benefits of nature while supporting researchers, policymakers, and advocates.

Solution: Created the organization's visual identity and designed a complete website around clear pathways for its different audiences. Developed a centralized, easy-to-navigate research hub pairing peer-reviewed articles with concise research briefs to make information easier to discover and use.

Outcome: The project established a lasting client relationship: a key stakeholder later returned to work with our team on a new conservation initiative.

Audience: Scientists, policy makers, and advocates

Concept: Science and nature | connections/friendly

Typography: Jost

Humane Pro

Humane Pro, formerly known as the Animal Sheltering Organization, operates as a segment within the Humane Society of the United States. It serves as a dedicated source of valuable resources for organizations and individuals actively involved in working or volunteering with animals.

Work Produced: Website rebuild

Problem: A large library of pages, resources, and overlapping tags had made the site increasingly difficult to navigate. The redesign also needed to support two substantial experiences within the larger ecosystem: a digital magazine and an annual professional expo.

Solution: Overhauled the sitemap and navigation, organizing content around four primary pillars and introducing a secondary navigation layer for high-value resources, events, and magazine content. Created reusable visual patterns to maintain consistency across a large content ecosystem without making pages feel repetitive.

Designed dedicated systems for the digital magazine and annual expo, including structured breakout sessions, supporting resources, and difficulty-level indicators.

Audience: Groups that work or volunteer with animals, i.e. shelter staffer, rescue volunteer, animal services officer, veterinary professional, etc…

Concept: n/a

Typography: Freight Sans Pro

The Children’s Movement of Florida

The Children’s Movement of Florida is a nonprofit, nonpartisan movement of Floridians insisting on a strong start for all Florida children, with advocacy and awareness work focusing on three pillars of early childhood: early learning, health, and parent support.

Work Produced: Branding refresh, website rebuild, various print work

Problem: The organization's growing content had become difficult to navigate, with information feeling crowded and disconnected. The redesign needed to clarify the site structure, create a more engaging way to explore the organization's history, and make the overall experience feel brighter and more approachable.

Solution: Restructured user pathways and created a more contemporary, engaging experience. Refined the existing color palette for accessibility, expanded it where needed, and updated the typography to balance friendliness with the credibility of the organization's advocacy work.

Audience: Individuals and advocates wanting to make a change at the legislative level for children in Florida

Concept: Guided/expanding from point, pebble effect

Typography: Proxima Nova

Greater Pittsburgh Art Council

The Greater Pittsburgh Art Council supports the time, talent, and work of artists, culture bearers, art educators, art workers, and arts organizations — reinforcing an environment so that ambitions, imagination, innovation, and risk taking can thrive in the Greater Pittsburgh Region.

Work Produced: Website rebuild

Problem: Important resources had become buried within a static, difficult-to-navigate experience. The Council needed clearer pathways to advocacy, grants, resources, and other high-value content while staying within its established brand.

Solution: Reworked the site architecture and navigation around key audience needs, elevating advocacy and grants and creating clearer pathways from the homepage. Simplified embedded forms and introduced more expressive visual patterns to better reflect the creativity of the community the Council serves.

Audience: Artists, arts administrators, donors/supporters, students, and government funders

Concept: n/a

Typography: Myriad Pro

REI Cooperative Action Fund

The mission of the REI Cooperative Action Fund is to create a more equitable outdoors by bringing together the collective strength of our community.

Work Produced: Database and homepage refresh

Problem: A new fall campaign was expected to increase the Fund's grantee network tenfold, beginning with approximately 300 new organizations. The existing experience needed to scale dramatically while making individual grantees easy to discover and maintaining REI's established brand system.

Solution: Designed a scalable, searchable grantee database that made the expanded network easier to explore, with featured content highlighting individual organizations and their impact.

Audience: REI co-op employees and clientele

Concept: n/a

Typography: REI Stuart and Graphik

Pacoima Beautiful

Pacoima Beautiful is a grassroots environmental justice organization that provides education, impacts local policy, and supports local arts and culture in order to promote a healthy and sustainable San Fernando Valley.

Work Produced: Website rebuild and brand refresh with new logo

Problem: Pacoima Beautiful is deeply embedded in its community, but its website wasn't communicating the breadth or impact of that work. The organization needed clearer pathways into its initiatives, events, and opportunities for community involvement.

Solution: Restructured the homepage around flagship programs, using them as primary pathways into deeper campaign content and opportunities to engage. Refreshed the visual identity around environmental justice, community, and youth leadership, including developing a distinctive “Pacoima green” rather than defaulting to a conventional environmental palette.

Audience: San Fernando Valley community, policy makers, and advocates

Concept: Community and interconnectedness

Typography: Mulish

Albert Shanker Institute

The Albert Shanker Institute is a nonprofit organization established in 1998 that promote four foundational principles—vibrant democracy, quality public education, a voice for working people in decisions affecting their jobs and their lives, and free and open debate about all of these issues.

Work Produced: Website refresh, 25th anniversary logo, and print work

Problem: The engagement began with the Institute's event experience, where upcoming events could feel sparse and past content was difficult to organize. After the initial work was well received, the project expanded into an incremental refresh of the broader website and supporting design work.

Solution: Redesigned the event experience to bring current, upcoming, and past events into a clearer system. From there, modernized the homepage, strengthened pathways into articles and other priority content, and continued improving the site section by section rather than requiring a disruptive full-site rebuild.

Audience: Influential leaders and thinkers from business, labor, government, and education from across the political spectrum

Concept: Erudite ("to instruct, educate, cultivate")

Typography: Lexend

The Campaign Workshop

The Campaign Workshop is an advocacy and nonprofit consulting firm that create solutions for strategy, training, digital advertising, and political direct mail.

Work Produced: Website design refresh

Problem: The existing site felt visually heavy and made it difficult to understand the firm's range of services. The client's goal captured the scope perfectly: “fix the paint on the house, but not tear down the walls.”

Solution: Clarified user pathways and simplified the visual experience while preserving the established brand. Refined colors for accessibility, introduced blog search, and created a flexible way to feature priority content without requiring a full site rebuild.

Audience: Users in the nonprofit space looking for digital and print advertising, direct mail, trainings, and strategic advice

Concept: n/a

Typography: Clarendon and Poppins

Lever Fund

Lever Fund supports programs and initiatives that empower youth, with a mission is to propel youth from low-income families in the National Capital Region toward their first, well-paying job by leveraging donor funds for maximum impact through their expertise.

Work Produced: Website rebuild, design refresh

Problem: Lever Fund needed more than a visual refresh: the site needed to better explain its model, demonstrate the impact of leveraged philanthropy, and move away from generic imagery toward a clearer story about the organizations and young people its investments support.

Solution: Restructured key content around how the organization works and why its model matters. Created a visual explanation of how funding is leveraged to expand opportunity and redesigned grantee content to make the impact of those investments more tangible.

Audience: Investors looking for a foundation with a focus on grantees in the National Capital Region area

Concept: Empowerment

Typography: Source Sans Pro

Power Shift Network

Power Shift Network mobilizes the collective power of young people to mitigate climate change and create a just, clean energy future and resilient, thriving communities for all.

Work Produced: Website rebuild

Problem: The site's outdated navigation no longer reflected the organization's current initiatives, while the homepage lacked clear pathways into its most important actions. The redesign needed to make resources easier to find while encouraging young people to join and participate in the network.

Solution: Reworked the sitemap and user pathways around discovery, membership, and participation, with a clearer emphasis on tools and opportunities to engage. Created a more dynamic visual experience and expanded the existing palette and typography to feel more approachable, energetic, and contemporary.

Audience: Young people wanting to make a difference in the world and climate change activists and organizations

Concept: n/a

Typography: Montserrat