Work

Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF) is a significant community foundation working toward a vision of Milwaukee as a vibrant, economically thriving region with welcoming, inclusive communities that offer opportunity, prosperity, and a high quality of life for all. GMF sought a website aligned with their updated strategic plan, which aims to address racial, ethical, and socioeconomic disparities in the Milwaukee area.

Setting the Stage for Collaboration

Given the foundation’s size—with over 60 staff members and an 18-member board—our first step was to establish a RACI matrix. This clarified roles and responsibilities, helping us identify key stakeholders and their optimal points of involvement throughout the project. This approach ensured smooth collaboration, giving everyone clear roles in the decision-making process.

A pivotal factor in our success was working alongside Paula Perez, the foundation’s dedicated project manager. Paula excelled as a liaison, skillfully bridging the gap between our team and GMF's stakeholders. She ensured that feedback was gathered efficiently and communicated clearly, helping to maintain momentum and alignment as the project progressed. Her ability to balance details with the bigger picture was instrumental in keeping the project on track.

Discovery Phase: Audits & Insights 

The discovery phase kicked off with an in-depth content and data audit, which uncovered the vast and complex structure of GMF’s digital ecosystem. We cataloged hundreds of pages, newsletters, and printofferings that, while functioning like databases, were configured as static pages. GMF’s web presence was not only page-heavy but also text-dense, presenting a valuable opportunity to explore ways to streamline digital communication and boost engagement.

The Challenge: Balancing Legacy and Modernizations

Our core challenge was to design a modern, visually engaging website that showcased GMF’s history and legacy who has been around providing a wealth of support and resources to the Milwaukee community while making spacing for a contemporary, image-forward approach to storytelling. It was essential to strike a balance that communicated the weight of GMF’s contribution and role in the community while also pushing forward and representing themselves with a contemporary feel. 

Audience Discovery 

Audience research became a foundation of our strategy. To do so, we started with audience research to build empathy and capture the diverse audience needs. We identified 13 audience types interested in GMF as an organization, their offerings and resources, ways to involved and financial outcomes.

Doing so, gave us a deep understanding of the audience and their need from which we strategized a content strategy and messaging for the site to better communicate the width and depth of GMF’s initiatives and offerings and tell the story of GMF to its range of audiences. Through persona development, we identified content for major audiences and ways to best communicate GMF’s wide and deep ranging initiatives. 

Striking A Balance Between Content & Layout

Equipped with a nuanced understanding of audience needs, we crafted a content strategy that encapsulated GMF’s legacy and breadth of its initiatives.  Using a “website-as-nexus” approach, we developed an information architecture that treated GMF’s data as interconnected resources rather than isolated pages. 

High fidelity wireframes were created with real content promoting GMF’s team to visualize and actively shaping their online storytelling. Our iterative design process ensured the final product effectively communicated GMF’s story, legacy and ongoing impact. while also putting a strong foot toward in the contemporary digital landscape.
 

Design Phase

The design phase aimed to extending GMF’s brand in a way that highlighted their impact while embracing their identity. Drawing inspiration from the GMF logo—a tribute to Lake Michigan—we created a fluid, wave-inspired motif that symbolized GMF’s dynamic role in the community.

The Unusual Navigation 

To create a sleek and simplistic website for GMF, the navigation was the key solution. A thoughtfully designed navigation system was pivotal in meeting usability goals while ensuring the content and imagery remained at the forefront. We explored various options, from overlay menus to traditional headers, and ultimately landed on a side navigation system. This approach was both simple and effective, providing visitors with a consistent and intuitive way to explore the site while maintaining a focus on GMF’s messaging and visuals. The navigation became the backbone of the site’s design, balancing elegance with usability.

Navigating Above-the-Fold Challenges

During the design process, we encountered challenges with above-the-fold layout choices. GMF’s team initially preferred simplified text-over-image layouts or video without supporting content. However, we helped them see the value of web design versus billboard design:

• Web vs. Billboard Design: We explained that website visitors expect layered, skimable content that reflects GMF’s multifaceted role in the community. Over-simplification would risk diminishing GMF’s distinctiveness.
• Accessibility Concerns: We also discussed accessibility challenges with large text over images, which might be legible on desktops but could become unreadable on smaller screens. Instead, we prioritized accessible, consistently readable text for all devices.

By crafting custom graphics and images, we infused the site with visual vibrancy while keeping it universally accessible.

Continuous Content Collaboration and Recommendations

To further support GMF’s web strategy, we collaborated closely on content creation best practices. We provided guidance on crafting impactful website copy and introduced GMF’s team to page structuring techniques. As GMF developed content for core pages, we provided layouts to visualize and optimize their narrative, ensuring that each element served a strategic purpose.

The design included layouts for secondary and tertiary level pages, and more special layouts such as grants, news & press, board and staff profiles, and other key sections, with unique layouts for special pages like foundation history and timelines. We optimized each page for mobile, tablet, and large screen viewing, enhancing GMF’s accessibility across all devices.

As GFM went live with their content, they continued to build out their site content and whenever they needed, we were there to help to think about content and build new layouts and elements to support their content. 

Conclusion

Our process-driven and collaborative approach enabled us to deliver a website that successfully balances GMF’s legacy with the demands of modern digital engagement. From the outset, our use of a RACI matrix allowed us to streamline collaboration and decision-making, ensuring that the right voices were engaged at every stage of the project. This clarity fostered efficient teamwork, keeping all stakeholders aligned and invested in the site’s evolution.

Through thorough discovery and persona-driven insights, we identified ways to reimagine GMF’s extensive content ecosystem, carefully curating their database-like resources into a coherent, story-driven structure. The “website-as-nexus” concept helped us transform GMF’s content-heavy site into an engaging, interconnected resource hub. This approach allowed us to meet GMF’s goals of accessibility and inclusivity without compromising on depth, delivering a digital experience that enables users to easily explore the foundation’s wide-ranging initiatives.

In the design phase, our team worked hand-in-hand with GMF to extend their visual brand, adapting their logo and legacy color palette into a dynamic, wave-inspired motif that pays homage to GMF’s roots and their aspirations for Milwaukee’s future. By advocating for a web-first approach, we helped GMF embrace layered, skimable content structures that promote exploration and discovery, supporting the diverse needs of their audience.

The resulting website is a compelling blend of modern design and purposeful storytelling, bridging GMF’s storied past with an accessible, future-focused online presence. Ultimately, our collaborative methods empowered GMF to align their strategic goals with a revitalized visual identity, yielding a digital platform that communicates their impact and ambitions in a way that resonates with and inspires their community.