Nobody makes it unless we make it together. The Gary Community Investment Company (GCI) and The Piton Foundation blend business and philanthropy to create opportunities for those who need it most. GCI leverages a full spectrum of financial tools to help address the issues facing Colorado’s low-income children and their families. The Piton Foundation, powered by GCI’s sustainable investing, funds initiatives that increase access to early childhood and youth development opportunities and foster healthy family and community environments.
Our discovery process revealed GCI and Piton’s top website priorities. We quickly realized the highest priority was explaining the relationship and identity of the organizations. Next the site should provide information on GCI’s investments and Piton’s initiatives. The site should also provide history of the organizations and educational resources and tools central to the their mission. It was also important to match GCI and Piton’s new brand, logos, fonts and colors.
Our User Story and Wireframing process helped us identify their audiences and understand how users would interact with the site. The goals and users stories are synthesized into website features. The home page is compelling and emotional. The user is immediately presented with an informational video created by our production team that matches the aesthetic of the site. The video and simple infographics below make the organizations and their missions accessible.
We built an interactive visualization to help further explain GCI’s Theory of Change. The “What We Invest In” section describes concretely their investments. The Tax Help Colorado application helps Coloradans find the closest tax help center to them. In the future, an interactive timeline will give an immersive history of the organization. The best part is, the whole site is maintainable by these organizations without calling a developer.
GCI and the Piton Foundation’s web presence imparts who they are and the importance of the work they do. The sustainable technology provided by the Open Media Foundation will be an enduring foundation on which future technology can be easily built. Combined with a passionate and experienced staff, the Open Media Foundation leverages open source tools and provides a 50% matching grant to ensure that the expense and complexity of web technology is not a barrier to any organizations’ mission.
