The advent of responsive design over the last five years has provided a rare opportunity for organizations to strengthen the distinctive qualities of their brands and engage a wider audience.

Yet, because of budgetary constraints or a lack of human resources, when nonprofits wanted to make the leap to the modern web, many of them fell into one or more of the traps along the way.

Instead of identifying what's unique about their work and sharing it through memorable stories and design, the voice and the visual language on their new sites are often a collection of lifeless clichés.

Lacking a coherent creative concept built around the organization's strengths, they've not only become impersonal and forgettable, but sometimes also unintuitive and cumbersome to navigate.

This turns away first-time visitors, and weakens the commitment of core supporters.

Why were the last five years such a watershed?

What makes the transition difficult for nonprofits?

Read our analysis to learn more.

The Opportunity

Over the past five years, for the first time in the Internet's short history, the way the web looks and functions has been thoroughly transformed.

The advent of mobile browsing has led to the near-universal adoption of a new kind of layout: vertical and long, with vast white spaces and vibrant full-screen images framing a handful of carefully selected statements.

Every detail is labouring to grab and hold our attention, and make sure the key takeaways sink in and lead to action.

Those who have adapted to the trend well, are able to engage a wider audience—people with only a casual interest and a shorter attention span.

Those who have not, are now competing in an environment where audiences are significantly more impatient and harder to impress than they were even five years ago.

Many organizations are struggling—because the challenges of the transition are genuinely difficult.


The Challenges

It's tricky to condense your complex activities into a few short sentences. It's even trickier to see yourself from the outside and identify the qualities and the stories that will resonate with your visitors and create attachment.

Similarly, when you're used to thinking about your website as an all-inclusive repository of your press releases and blog posts, it's hard to switch perspective and compose user journeys that your visitors will want to walk.

Also, this new layout often calls for your images to take the lead—however, if you've never focused on photography, you'll need something more than your snaps before you can make full-screen visual statements.

Most importantly, when every detail is enlarged, you need a bold and distinctive visual language that feels like a natural extension of your brand. But the people who can actually create that are difficult to get—and their fees tend to be steep.

It's a lot to handle. Especially for NGOs, whose typically small communications staffs and budgets were never meant to navigate seachanges in trends.


The Problems

While some NGOs adapted their distinct identities to the new format successfully, most simply tried to squeeze what was on their website into the first more or less decent Wordpress template they could find.

Because the structure did not fit the content, their new websites ended up being more cluttered and harder to navigate than before—instead of delivering the clarity that the transition promised.

Adopting the standard clichés of responsive templates uncritically also resulted in looks that are bland and messy at the same time, eroding many previously strong nonprofit brands.

When visitors find relevant and engaging content on a site that conforms to the most common visual trends, after only a day they struggle to recall where that content came from. Research also shows that when brand identities become less distinguishable, even the commitment of long-time supporters can weaken.

There are also those who haven't yet made the leap. There may be many reasons for this, but to most today, the lack of a modern website is a signal that there's something wrong with the organization.

Moreover, the majority of surfers are on mobile now, and the difficulty of navigating a non-responsive site usually results in "bounce"—leaving instantly, without interaction.


Our Response

Our team got together to discuss how we could

A. Accelerate the transition of organizations who are still ahead of the switch, and save them from the clichéd, unprofessional, clumsy websites that most NGOs are getting stuck with.

B. Reinvigorate the online presence of those who've had an ill-advised redesign early on and are willing to consider a new, better planned refresh.

We decided to reach out to designers and developers whose work we loved, talk with them about our cause, and find out if they'd like to contribute. Their responses were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and several of them ended up joining us full-time, enriching our agency with exceptional talent.

We've also began to set aside half of our profits for the program, which today enables us to give discounts to organizations on a small budget.

We are proud to have pulled this together. If you have any doubts about your online presence, explore what our program can offer on the next page, and feel comfortable to reach out for more information or a free consultation.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at betterweb@windandway.org.

If you'd like to book a free consultation, please send a note about your organization's needs along with a rough timeframe and a ballpark budget to the same email, or fill in the form below. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

We've set out to help nonprofits emerge from the transition to responsive design with brand identities that are attractive, distinct, and easy to identify with, and websites that convince a wide variety of people to get involved.

Our initiative has drawn accomplished designers and developers from diverse backgrounds across culture, entertainment, and corporate branding.

Our new team offers creative excellence and a strategy-driven process. We deliver a fusion of content and aesthetic that stands out not only among nonprofits, but also in the wider web, where countless high-budget advertising campaigns vie for attention.

How can the web do more for you?

Explore our principles and our process to find out.

Dig Deep

Most non-profits contract small web design studios which tend to have a narrow, technical focus and lack the interest or the expertise to explore the bigger picture.

What is unique about an NGO? What are the most intriguing stories and images that capture the essence of its work? What are the niches that it could occupy in its market? What gains and losses would come from pursuing them?

Who can the organization reach beyond its current audience? And how can those people be made to care?

We are thrilled by these questions. And we know that a captivating web presence can only be crafted around the right answers.

We lay the ground for the design process with thorough audits, in-depth research, and strategic planning that is meticulous and creative at the same time.


Stand Out

These days it feels as if every other person you meet is a designers or a developer—yet most websites look dull and messy. The reality is that it's hard to find people with both talent and experience, especially at low to mid-range firms.

Wind & Way attracts a gifted and seasoned workforce partly because there's a purpose to what we do—but mostly because we're just as passionate about craftsmanship as about using it in service of the right causes.

Our management is obsessed with excellence in design. We recognize outstanding work, respect colleagues who deliver it, and go out of our way to keep them.

That's why no matter how small a job is, the result will turn eyes—even in a space saturated with brilliant for-profit brands and campaigns.

These are the foundations that we build on. If you go on to look at our process, you'll see that for nonprofits, we offer some special benefits on top of this.


Be Personal

As an agency specializing in impact work, we understand the market you're operating in, and there's a good chance that everyone engaged with your project is personally committed to your cause. This puts us in a good position to

1. Learn everything there is to know about you, your brand, your goals, and then

2. Learn as much as possible about your current and desired audiences, their habits, preferences, interests and specifically about how you might affect their lives and their wider world.

Based on this information,

3. We create a series of typified, imaginary audience members with personalities, and look at design decisions through their eyes.

4. We research and observe your organization's activities closely to find the stories and thoughts that are most likely to surprise, excite and engage this audience.

5. If there is a need for it, we help you distill your content into fresh copy that resonates with your target groups, and helps them spread your stories.


Look Ahead

6. We think carefully about structuring your content, and we design pathways that allow people to find what they're looking for without effort, while drawing them deeper into your activities, and encouraging them to commit to your cause.

7. Since our company is fueled by a passion for design, we will not stop until we give you a unique and compelling aesthetic that strengthens your brand as well as your content's impact.

8. Catching up with the changes of the last 5 years would still leave you at the tail end of the industry. We're constantly exploring the trends and technologies that will define the next 5 years.

We want other non-profits to cite you as their ideal when they discuss how their website should function and look. We want your supporters to feel that you're an exceptional organization that is pointing the way forward for the sector.

9. All the while, we will make sure your website is accessible on older and newer devices alike.

10. Even if we use the latest technology, we will embed it into a CMS that you're comfortable with.

11. Nonetheless, if you feel there is a need for it, we will also train your staff.

The best thing is that all of this is most likely within your budget. Please go ahead and take a look at our Discounts section.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at betterweb@windandway.org.

If you'd like to book a free consultation, please send a note about your organization's needs along with a rough timeframe and a ballpark budget to the same email, or fill in the form below. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Our aim is to allow movements and NGOs of any size to take advantage of creative services usually reserved for advertising-intensive companies. To achieve this, we are allocating 50% of our profits to discounts for organizations with smaller budgets.

We've also become aware that many NGOs did not attempt a redesign because they could only afford freelancers, and did not have the time or experience required to manage them.

As a boutique agency, we offer comprehensive services and turnkey solutions, with minimal strain on our clients' time and human resources—and our discount rates may very well be on par with those of freelancers.

Discounts are based on need and on funds currently available in the Program.

When you book a free consultation, tell us about the budget you have in mind, so we can see if we still have enough to suit your needs.

Please feel confident to get in touch—we'll do our best to make this happen.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at betterweb@windandway.org.

If you'd like to book a free consultation, please send a note about your organization's needs along with a rough timeframe and a ballpark budget to the same email, or fill in the form below. We will get back to you as soon as possible.