The Pelham
Building websites for a Local Charity and Community Hub
Project overview
We had the honour of working with The Pelham resource hub centre to create a new online hub for the local community. As a Christian-based organisation, the mission of The Pelham is to provide a safe space for the East Sussex region complete with a coffee lounge, weekly activities, a youth-focused centre, mental health support, and more.
Digitally, they needed a hub to communicate their message. Their team wanted a way to capture the historic nature of the centre by highlighting its place as a community landmark.
Features
- Used community images
- Booking form
- Donation form
- Mailing list implementation
- Designed for mobile
The challenge
• Their team needed a way to provide a resource website that works for the local community, providing others with insights into activities at The Pelham.
• As website design has changed significantly over the past several years, The Pelham team needed help modernising the current website to be reflective of current user behavior.
• To further increase the reach of their mission, Pelham staff wanted to create an online space for resources to be downloaded and accessed by non-tech people. This needed to be easy to understand with a simple UI and straightforward approach.
• As The Pelham is staffed by volunteers, often who don’t understand the complexities of website maintenance, the site needed to be relatively easy to update and add new resources.
• The Pelham provides community events that are constantly changing. Website visitors needed quick access to this information and the capability to sign up for any number of activities.
• Non-profit operations still have expenses that need to be paid for somehow. We worked with them to add an easily accessible donation capability to increase giving and support.
• As mentioned, the charity is fully staffed by volunteers. The administrative team needed a way to increase volunteer recruitment by communicating the need to the community.
Testimonial
I would thoroughly recommend Hum & Whistle due to Aydee’s great vision for our website, and the ability to execute it so well. His eye for detail as well as the bigger picture was so helpful along the way and we kept in almost contact dialogue along the way. We now have a website we are proud of and one that I am sure Aydee is pleased with too!
Ollie
CEO The Pelham
Our process
• We held various Discovery Sessions to establish a clear path for the project. Through these meetings, we developed a plan to address.
each of their pain points, specific needs, and how we would keep the message of The Pelham alive while building a well-thought-out website strategy.
• With our plan in place, we then scheduled photography sessions with the community. This allowed us to build a content repository of professional imagery.
• Before we began coding the site, we also worked on finalizing the new branding guidelines. This established a new font set and colour guide so that all marketing materials were uniform and on message.
• We collaborated with each of the various departments within the organization to hear challenges and how a new website would best serve their community.
• All the while, we focused on usability. This was of utmost importance for stakeholders, as everyone on The Pelham team wanted to establish a clear UX/UI guide for website visitor.
Our work
Through our efforts, The Pelham saw a significant increase in volunteer recruitment. This allowed them to continue to grow their focus on providing developmental resources to the community.
• The new website lead to increased donations through a page tailored to achieve The Pelham’s budgetary goals. As the community became aware of the mission, they supported it through this online portal.
• The image content repository helped to grow the community hub aspect of the centre, keeping the focus squarely on those being served by The Pelham’s mission.
• To facilitate involvement in events, a booking calendar was implemented and routinely utilized by website visitors.
• We proactively added projects and the history of the facility for both funders and supporters alike to gain a deeper understanding of the centre and its historical place in the community.
• As narratives help to communicate the mission of an organization, we added a section specifically to highlight the success stories of the centre project.
• Responsive design was top of mind for the entire project. We ensured that the new website was completely accessible on all types of mobile devices.
• We worked with The Pelham team to build a mailing list, helping them further their goal of proactive and routine communication with the community.
Results
Increased engagement with the community
Increased mailing list sign-ups
Increased donations from users
An online hub for booking information and resources
Thoughts
At the heart of this project was The Pelham’s focus on serving the community. We ensured that, despite the updates to their website, this mission would continue to be clearly communicated throughout the site.
In the end, the new web platform’s role as a digital hub for The Pelham has served them well, increasing donations, volunteering, and overall community involvement while also allowing them to further expand their programs via this newfound and growing support.
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