The Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa is a place of connection where generosity and community action meet to create powerful impacts, improving the quality of life for all people.
CFNEIA’s website was difficult to navigate, making it especially challenging to sort through the many funds it supports. Outdated information, inconsistent messaging, and inefficient functionality further added to the confusion. We started this project with a research phase that engaged key CFNEIA stakeholders, then dove into sitemap changes and refined messaging.
CFNEIA faced two key challenges in communication. Similar to many nonprofits, its initial challenge was communicating diverse information to varied audiences. We began by defining our key audiences and organizing content accordingly. Confusion arose about CNFEIA's aid and recipients due to their Black Hawk County base and wider multi-county service area. To address this, we created a dedicated affiliate page for Black Hawk County, mirroring the existing pages for 19 other counties, while keeping the rest of the site's content broad. For new visitors, our homepage prioritizes clear and concise communication. We minimized text, relying on design to convey our message consistently and in a scannable format.
Branding
Next we moved on to branding. While CFNEIA did not need a full rebrand, we did tweak a few things. We revamped the CFNEIA website design for a more unified aesthetic to resolve branding inconsistencies across platforms. This included updating the logo and website fonts for a modern, consistent look, creating user-friendly social media templates to reinforce brand identity, and translating the brand guide into an engaging website design that ensures visual harmony and a seamless user experience.
We also identified key pages (the homepage and a few interior pages) and designed them to accentuate the written content that would be there, making it easy to read and navigate. Using color blocks, consistent typography, and icons added to the cohesive, uplifting feel they were looking for in the design.
Website
The bulk of the project with CFNEIA was designing and developing their website, which took several months. As mentioned in the messaging section, nonprofits face the challenge of having three distinct audiences. This often means needing three separate landing pages within the site that still feel like one cohesive. To address this, we built a custom WordPress site on Oxygen. In addition to navigation–there were two big issues we needed to address. The first was that many communities didn’t even know that CFNEIA was active in their area. We addressed that by putting an interactive map showing their area of influence on the homepage. The second was management of the grants and funds they service. There are literally hundreds but the previous filtering system wasn’t getting the job done. The fund search is much easier to use and more intuitive now, making it easier for donors to search for, and give to, exactly what they want.
As part of fully realizing the CFNEIA website project, we captured custom website photography through a series of headshots and photoshoots, ensuring a cohesive and professional visual identity that authentically represents the organization.
CFNEIA
“Before working with IFC, our website was built on an unsupported platform, and its design, content, and functionality no longer reflected the growth or complexity of the Community Foundation. We needed a site that was intuitive and could serve as a true resource for multiple stakeholder audiences, which was a significant challenge.
IFC helped us meet that challenge with a comprehensive, collaborative approach. Together, we created a streamlined, user-centered experience for all our audiences.
The IFC team listened closely, embraced our ideas, and problem-solved creatively to bring them to life. We are thrilled to now have a website that is visually stunning, enhances user experience, and makes it easier for people to connect with our organization, engage in philanthropy, and achieve their personal goals. We look forward to continuing our partnership with IFC.”
Jake Byers - VP of Marketing & Communications
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