Gilroy Foundation is a community foundation serving Gilroy, California since 1980, facilitating philanthropy and connecting donors with local nonprofits.
With over $18.5 million in grants and scholarships awarded, they work to establish a lasting legacy of giving by empowering individuals, families, and corporations to make meaningful impact in their community.
Gilroy Foundation’s outdated template and difficult backend content management system prevented their team from making timely updates to critical information about grants, scholarships, and community programs.
The website lacked a cohesive professional brand that reflected their four decades of community leadership and stewardship of millions in philanthropic dollars.
Confusing content organization with contradictory and duplicative information made it difficult for visitors to quickly understand their programs or navigate to relevant resources.
The core questions we tackled for this project included:
How do you transform a confusing, outdated community foundation website into a streamlined platform that supports both donor engagement and efficient content management for staff?
Our Nonprofit Beacon assessment helped us understand Gilroy Foundation’s unique position in the local philanthropy landscape and identify the specific needs of their diverse audiences — from individual donors and corporate sponsors to grant seekers and scholarship applicants.
Through strategy and alignment workshops with their team, we explored how to translate their four decades of community trust and stewardship into a cohesive digital experience that would resonate with each user type while supporting their operational needs.
We focused on creating a user-friendly content management system that would allow the Gilroy Foundation team to easily update grant information, scholarship deadlines, and community impact stories. The content was reorganized for quick scanning with clear navigation that helped different user types — donors, grant seekers, and scholarship applicants — find relevant information efficiently.
A strengthened brand identity brought professional cohesion that better reflected their established community leadership.
The transformed website now provides a professional, cohesive digital presence that matches Gilroy Foundation’s established reputation in the community.
Streamlined content organization makes it easy for visitors to quickly understand their programs and find relevant information, while the improved backend system allows staff to keep content current and accurate.
The foundation is now equipped with a platform that effectively supports their ongoing mission of facilitating meaningful philanthropy in Gilroy, CA.
“Our board was delighted with the results. We love it, and we’re so very grateful.”
– Vicki Campanella, Director of Development at Gilroy Foundation
Over just a few months and within budgetary constraints, we helped Gilroy Foundation transform from a confusing, hard-to-manage website into a streamlined, professional platform that effectively serves their community while empowering staff with easy content management.
Ready to create a website that reflects your organization’s established impact while making content management simple? Book a call with us to explore how strategic design can support both your mission and your team’s daily operations.
Schedule a free 20-minute strategy session with Austin and Andrea. We’ll talk about where you’ve been, where you’d like to go, and how your website can help you get there.