web design portfolio WCADV

The Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence came to us with a project to build a web site that would not only serve public information needs, but internal organizational communication also. The non-profit coalition assists a state-wide network of domestic violence programs, and supports numerous local and state-wide efforts, from health care to legal reforms. We saw this as an opportunity to take some time out from commercial projects and contribute to a non-profit engaged in work with critical social benefits.

We suggested to WCADV that we build a content management system and publishing engine that would not only serve up a public website, but also allow staff to manage outreach without having to build up internal web experience. The solution would be a combination of intra/extranet site functionality.

The content management system we are building is written in Cold Fusion, and will allow the organization to post jobs, announcements, press releases, links, and downloadable resources through an interface accessed by staff. Where the content management system we designed for the Yoga Journal is intended to handle large numbers of pages, this one is geared more to the needs of information dissemination. We wanted to make it easy for the staff to draw attention to organization activities. To that end, page templates have been designed to call attention to show what's fresh in the site without staff having to change any html. New grants, jobs, and other announcements can be added to the site and instantaneously appear throughout relevant pages of the site.

This project is a good example of the ways in which web technology can be brought to bear on non-profit needs and concerns. As stories in the press have noted, non-profit fundraising and management often consumes a large part of an organization's resources. Insofar as non-profits are engaged in outreach, we think that the web, and email, can be of substantial assistance. To that end, we would like to deploy this kind of publishing solution for other organizations in the future.

The project is on-going and should launch early summer.