The Situation
For more than 100 years, United Way of Greater Rochester has focused on harnessing the power of collective giving to unite community members, businesses and local leaders in doing good as they raise their hands, open their hearts, and share resources to build a thriving region for all. The organization, originally founded by George Eastman during World War I as the Community War Chest, has grown to connect and support a broad network of human health and service organizations, community initiatives and innovative strategies to address the most pressing local challenges with impactful solutions.
The Challenge
United Way has faced multiple challenges during its history, but leadership recognized that one of its biggest communication tools could help the organization overcome many of its current obstacles. United Way needed to reinvent, reinvigorate, and redesign their website. They came to Envative for help, because United Way recognized that their site was dated in its looks, technologies and usability. Nor did the site work properly on mobile devices or provide United Way with ways to reach important marketing goals—increase page views, provide unique audience segments with targeted content, update news items quickly, and develop an altogether more navigable site. In the interest of saving costs over time, United Way’s team also wanted to learn how to update and maintain their own website.
The Envative Solution
To meet these goals, the Envative design team carefully evaluated United Way’s long-term needs and objectives through collaborative meetings. The team also reviewed competitors’ and other industry sites to develop a highly functional and engaging design.
A new, more appealing and flexible website was designed and endowed with current technology and tools using Envative’s SmarterCMS solution, which leverages design and content management expertise with a powerful and robust CMS platform. Using Envative’s biweekly sprint meetings, the team migrated existing content to the new design. With its new, intuitive and user-friendly admin interface, United Way’s team quickly learned how to administer new content and maintain their new, multifunctional website.
The Envative team, working in concert with United Way’s team, brought the organization’s website current in its looks and functionality. Not only did Envative seamlessly transition United Way’s website to the new design, but the team also helped United Way meet its mission of promoting support from the community and increasing donations to the agency through video, social media and events that tell the stories of all those the agency serves. United Way has reported that SmarterCMS is a more user-friendly content-management tool that saves their team a lot of time and allows them to maintain their own website, saving considerable cost.
More recently, United Way of Greater Rochester has merged with United Way of the Finger Lakes, which required an updated iteration of the website to consolidate what were once individual entities. Envative was again chosen for this work and the new United Way of Greater Rochester and the Finger Lakes was launched in July 2021.
