Comprehensive foundation website redesign, CMS re-platforming, ongoing support
Some programs are about helping students get into college. Others are about helping them stay there. The Posse Foundation is about changing the face of American leadership.
Urban youth are being systematically excluded from pursuing educational opportunities, often due to limited access to high-performing schools and college preparatory experiences. Those who do go on to college are more likely to drop out compared to their suburban peers. This unique nonprofit foundation makes a lifelong commitment to each student taken under its wing—and the members of Posse extend that same spirit of mentoring and giving back when they enter the workforce.
- Services
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Analytics, Design, Development, Strategy, and UX
- Industry
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Social Impact and Education
We have had the benefit of working with Posse on a number of projects. The first was a redesign of the original Posse website in 2007, when fixed-width and small type was all the rage. Our first redesign was, in spite of its age, still serviceable, still functional, still useful. But the site is very much a product of its time, and shared the issues of its time. Content was dense and deep and sometimes organized strangely, presumably for want of places to put it. The architecture was oriented toward audiences, a popular way to architect websites in 2007, rather than actions or tasks. But Posse has become older, wiser. This time, our work was a redesign of our redesign—the very first time we’ve been done that.
There were many goals for our redesign. First, the old website was not responsive and other aspects of the design and code were outdated, so bringing our decade-old work to the modern era was a given. Additionally, the legacy site was powered by an out-of-the-box, outdated version of ExpressionEngine, so re-platforming to a modern CMS was also a big to-do (we chose Craft CMS).
Our strategic recommendations for the redesign, assisted by information architect and structural content strategist Lisa Maria Martin, prescribed that the redesign be built upon a narrative experience through literal storytelling, showing more (without necessarily telling less), and being authentically Posse.
Nobody in the U.S.—and perhaps the world—is doing what Posse's doing. Our bold redesign (of our redesign) helped them proclaim that fact from the rooftops.
