United Way of York County, SC

CLARIFYING THE MISSION

Nearly everyone has heard of the United Way, but few know what they do or who they serve. Our task was to help the organization look at itself through the eyes of someone that may never have heard of the organization and make them understand quickly with a modernized and user-friendly website. With clarity on the organization’s mission, who it serves and how community members can help the cause, we developed a design mockup that simplified the key messaging which the organization was having difficulty getting across in its prior website.

With minimal scrolling on the homepage, users quickly ascertain the problems (the WHAT) facing underprivileged families in York County, the mission of United Way of York County (the WHY), and how the organization and others can support the mission (the HOW). This messaging was far different than the prior website which began with an obtrusive pop-up asking users to donate before they could ever learn anything about the organization or the problems which it is trying to solve. This new design is focused on getting to the heart of the problem by cutting out anything that may detract from the WHY, WHAT and HOW.

LOCALIZING A NATIONAL BRAND

The United Way is a universally recognized nonprofit organization which is positive in terms of brand recognition, but negative in terms of potential donors’ perceptions of how much the local chapter actually does for the community. Because of this misperception, it was important that we drove a local message to show that the United Way of York County is rooted in the community made of people that understand local issues and have a heart to help.

SIMPLIFYING EVERYTHING

In the world of web design, many businesses want to present themselves as modern with every whiz-bang feature from parallax to pop-ups and we felt that would be the wrong play for this project. The desire of the client was to ensure nothing took away from its core message which is PEOPLE. Our design concept was to showcase a vibrant, but clean design spotlighting happy people and families (the desired outcome of United Way’s mission).