Guiding Nonprofits Through Digital

The Client

CASA of Adams & Broomfield Counties assists children and youth who are involved in the judicial system as a result of being abused or neglected. CASA recruits, trains, and supervises volunteers from the local community who serve as Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) to advocate in court for children and youth as their cases are reviewed, heard and brought to a final decision—one that has lifelong repercussions for the children, the families involved, and the volunteers.

Incorporated in 1999 and serving the 17th Judicial District of Colorado, the organization is part of the National CASA Association for Children, which supports a network of 950 CASA programs in 49 states and the District of Columbia.

Its partnership with the U.S. Judicial System is a unique and necessary merging of the public and private sphere, providing children with one of the most valuable resources they can have during their time in the court system—a stable, consistent adult who cares.

CASA’s leadership team knew the organization needed an updated, professionally designed website to replace the bare-bones site they had relied on for years. They wanted to include compelling content that would tell the authentic and powerfully heartfelt stories of the people they serve as well as visual assets that reflect the diverse racial and ethnic makeup of the children they assist—and the type of volunteers they wanted to attract.

The leadership team also wanted to better understand and implement all the ways a well-designed site can in itself function as a powerful marketing and recruiting tool for this mission-driven organization.

Our Solutions

Issue #1: The client’s existing website was a mess—disorganized, cluttered and lacking visual interest. Like many an aged website, it had become a hodge-podge of links to external resources, many of which were obsolete or out of date. Its navigation required too many clicks to get to the intended destination, and made it difficult for users to get to the information that they needed to sign up for training or to make a donation.

Issue #2: The website lacked visual content and compelling stories that conveyed CASA’s life-changing impact in people’s lives. See above.

Issue #3: With a shrinking volunteer base, it was increasingly a challenge to attract and recruit new volunteers, especially individuals from diverse backgrounds who reflected the variety of ethnicities of the children CASA serves. The existing website added to the perception that CASA recruited only volunteers who were older/retired, affluent, and white.

Issue #4: Funding support, especially from smaller donors, relied heavily on in-person events. The organization enjoys strong brand recognition and positive standing in the local community and the court system. While offline fundraising efforts have been successful, the lack of a robust and secure website made it difficult to solicit smaller donations from individuals, which had negative consequences during the pandemic, a downward trend that continued even after in-person events resumed.

Issue #5: The organization lacked reliable data to help them understand their audiences and how to better reach them with SEO strategies. CASA’s existing website was not linked to google analytics, which can provide crucial information and insights about how users interact with a site’s content. The site also neglected to employ key phrases that might help elevate the organization in search results—one of the fundamental strategies in building awareness!

Our Team

• simplified the site’s navigation to help CASA achieve its top goals: 1) have users quickly understand the mission of the organization, 2) highlight what the organization has achieved in the community, and 3) how people can get involved (e.g., sign up to receive training to become a CASA volunteer, make a donation, connect to additional resources).
• designed a site that more closely aligned with the national organization’s branding guidelines, including logos, typefaces, color palettes, taglines and lexicon.
• “humanized” the site with compelling imagery—large, full-color photos of happy children, families and real volunteers—that spur an immediate, emotional connection. We were intentional in selecting subjects of different ages, ethnicities and races to reflect the communities CASA serves.
• included compelling stories about real CASA volunteers and the children and families they have helped. To keep the site fresh, we also made it easy for CASA staff to post videos and update content, as well as archive or delete dated material.
• designed a staff page that demonstrates the human side of the people running the organization. We employed a rollover feature on each employee’s and board member’s current headshot that “melts” into a second photo of the individual’s childhood portrait. The feature injects a sense of playfulness as well as empathy, demonstrating that we were all children once and that we all have the capacity to understand a child’s experience of the world.
• strengthened the donation page with a donor management software (Kindful) that makes online donations easier to execute, track, and cultivate.
• established SEO strategies that can increase an organization’s visibility and enhance its outreach efforts. This included setting up monthly reports from google analytics and providing training to staff on key metrics that they can use to understand how users interact with their site’s content. These insights inform SEO strategies like keyword searches to push the organization into top search results. We also set up the organization to benefit from free keyword ads Google offers to nonprofits, so that, for instance, a search for “volunteering opportunities near me” will include CASA in the top search results.

Outcomes

The proof of a successful web redesign can be seen in the numbers, over time. Since launching its new site, CASA has seen marked improvements in:

• Engagement with the site: Over 17,000 visits over the first 12-month period
• Volunteer inquiries and sign ups: currently, about one-third of registrations for CASA 101, the monthly informational sessions offered to individuals who want to learn more about volunteering, are being done directly on the website
• Direct inquiries by email and phone
• Search results

And, in keeping with the CASA experience, we have deepened our relationship with the organization. Our team continues to consult with CASA’s leadership team on digital marketing strategies. On a more personal level, Mrs. Usman, the spouse of Usman Group Founder/CEO Naveed Usman, signed up to volunteer with CASA. She completed the 30-hour training course and was matched as an advocate for a child in the court system. She reports it’s been one of the most challenging and fulfilling experiences of her life.