Omaha Community Foundation
A giving collective that connects philanthropists with the people and nonprofits who are doing the most good.
The new website for the Omaha Community Foundation is where donors, advisors, and nonprofits can go to support the vision of a vibrant and equitable place for everyone. The site is meant to show that this is a community worth investing in.
The site was designed to speak to several difference audiences, to connect the big vision with the day-to-day, and to highlight this community, which we all love, in a very people-centered way. To build the brand, to function across an ever-changing web environment, and to be easily managed by a communications team who doesn’t need to waste time worrying about technology.
Community Building
A positive force for good in the philanthropic world, the Foundation has created projects like Omaha Gives! and The Landscape to engage people in support of nonprofits and to use data to understand the community’s current state. They also created Voices of the Landscape that asks residents to share their experiences about living in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro.
The Foundation sees itself as collaborative. For donors, it’s there for impactful giving with understanding, knowledge, and management. For nonprofits, it’s there to help maximize impact with capacity-building programs. For advisors, it’s there for client relationships with charitable giving support. Because of sound financial management, the Foundation understands complexity, community needs, and how giving helps. With strong leadership and clear strategy, these experts in finance, accounting, and investing help the community reach a high level of long-lasting impact.
The following images are some of the design directions we explored. Some stuck, others didn’t. In the end, photography was a key driver of the design.
Foundation Design
Going into the design process, the team knew we had a solid brand to work with. With a promise to inspire a culture of giving so we can grow a stronger community for all, we utilized a full color palette, professional type families, and their illustration library in a new way to bring the brand to life online. And on a personal note, I fell in love with Garamond all over again.
To show what a stronger community looks like, we decided to invest in creating a photo library with images from locations all across the metro. We set out to capture photos of people gathered, interacting and engaged. Volunteering, celebrating, building, or simply living their lives in the various ways people do here. A casual approach that created some really powerful imagery of real people doing real things.
The following mockups offer a high level overview of quite a large website. Lots of content, lots of pages, many PDFs. The structure was key. As was uniform versatility. But isn’t that how it always is? And what’s behind it all? Wordpress, of course.
When you invest for impact, what does that look like?
What does a thriving community look like?
What does “together” look like?
The answers to these questions are as varied as the different types of people in any particular city. The hope for the website is that it can be an accurate reflection of this place. And to be a source of inspiration as committed individuals and nonprofits work hard to create a vibrant and equitable community in whatever ways they can, however big and small.
The Team
Justin Kemerling: Direction + Design
Daphne Eck: Strategy + Writing
Adam Casey: Photography
Andrea Trew: Iconography
Omaha Community Foundation: Strategy + Project Management
Plumb: Website Development
2018–2019: Brand, Community, Photography, Web
More from the Foundation:
