Cool Culture
Brooklyn, NY | Advanced Website

Mission: Cool Culture’s mission is to help low-income families access and enjoy New York City's cultural life, in order to provide educational experiences for children and to strengthen parents' capacity to serve as their child’s first educator.

Project: As a website grows and becomes more complex, maintaining its effectiveness becomes ever more challenging. This project gives an existing website the additional expertise and tools the organization needs to succeed in building a larger and more sophisticated web presence.

The volunteer team working on this type of project delivers:

• Discovery interviews with a range of the nonprofit's staff
• A creative or requirements brief that details their needs and the suggested approach
• A website architecture that can be used to scale the new website
• Design templates for 3-6 key html page types
• Creative elements (e.g. drawings, type faces) that can be used to create a coherent site that reinforces the nonprofit's brand
• New or refined navigation and copy for several key pages
• Training on how to implement the new materials and update the site

Institute for Student Achievement
New York, NY | Key Messages & Brand Strategy

Mission: We improve the quality of education for youth at risk so that they can succeed in our society. We partner with school districts to create new small schools or to transform large existing high schools into smaller, more effective learning environments that respond to the academic and social needs of youth from poor, underserved communities.

Project: Successful marketing and fundraising efforts - events, mailings, phone solicitations - speak with a singular voice. This project helps an organization articulate its brand strategy and key messages, which once created, drive and unite all its communications.

The volunteer team working on this type of project delivers:

• Interviews with a range of the nonprofit client's key stakeholders
• Competitive audit to evaluate the visual identity and positioning of organizations that compete with the client
• Audit of the organization's current marketing/communications materials
• Brand strategy, which includes positioning, core attributes, brand personality, and key audiences
• Key messages, which extend the brand strategy into concise language for both general and specific audiences
• Recommendation regarding whether the organization should keep or change its name and visual identity
• Requirements brief for name and visual identity, which outlines the creative direction and goals for a new name and visual identity based on the brand strategy (as needed)
• Training for board members on brand strategy and key messages

New Alternatives for Children, Inc.
New York, NY | Advanced Website

Mission: NAC’s mission is to provide innovative, high quality services in support of birth, foster, and adoptive families who are caring for children with special needs. Working primarily with children whose birth families live in poverty, NAC seeks to enable them to remain in or return to their homes whenever possible, or to be adopted by loving families.

Project: As a website grows and becomes more complex, maintaining its effectiveness becomes ever more challenging. This project gives an existing website the additional expertise and tools the organization needs to succeed in building a larger and more sophisticated web presence.

The volunteer team working on this type of project delivers:

• Discovery interviews with a range of the nonprofit's staff
• A creative or requirements brief that details their needs and the suggested approach
• A website architecture that can be used to scale the new website
• Design templates for 3-6 key html page types
• Creative elements (e.g. drawings, type faces) that can be used to create a coherent site that reinforces the nonprofit's brand
• New or refined navigation and copy for several key pages
• Training on how to implement the new materials and update the site

The Bridge Inc.
New York, NY | Naming & Visual Identity

Mission: The Bridge assists New Yorkers with serious mental illness, the homeless, people with substance use disorders and HIV/AIDS to live independently and productively in the community--through a comprehensive array of recovery-oriented mental health, rehabilitation and housing services based on best practices.

Project: An organization's name and visual identity can help communicate with key constituencies and the community, or be a burden of confusion and obsolescence. This project revaluates an ineffective name and provides the organization with a name and visual representation that more strongly resonate with its core audiences and the community.

The volunteer team working on this type of project delivers:

• A creative or requirements brief that details key attributes of a new name and visual identity, and suggested approach
• A new name and visual identity
• Instructions for printing and use of the selected name and visual identity
• Guidance on how to legally register the new identity
• Extension of the selected name and visual identity to business papers (e.g. stationary & business cards), with guidelines for printing and use of the visual identity