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At PICnet, we provide a unique environment for non-profits to build their online presence. Our high-touch, high-quality service is what separates from the crowd and keeps our client list expanding. Interested in joining our team as a Project Manager in our San Francisco office? Read on!
What I like best on this site is the humanistic feel the homepage design presents. Lisa Mattei-McDonald, my client contact at BI, was introduced into this project midway. After her predecessor left, Lisa did an extraordinary job catching up quickly to all things web related. I applaud her success at keeping the project cool and calm even during her own discovery of her role and the unforeseen requirements that the project took on. It was a full blown effort with four vendors involved! Boston Interactive hired PICnet to implement their design. Strategy and communications firm M+R was also involved. And Democracy in Action came in at the very end to help The Smart Campaign’s constituents active on the site. The Government Accountability Project (GAP) wanted an update to their outdated website – for being the greatest representative of whistleblowers in our nation’s capital, they wanted to have a site that demonstrated their force when reckoning with the bullies. Dylan Blaylock, my point of contact at GAP, was a very proactive client. He was so prepared that he delivered the site’s wireframes to me instead of the other way around! While these provided a great starting point on which to consider layout, we worked extensively on the site navigation. I once again was confronted with a communications challenge – I didn’t initially present the solution in a visual way. (This is becoming to be a common thread among my clients. I can’t help it- I’m not visual! I see things logically. Forgive me, people!) In addition to the common website hurdles, Dylan and I had to reckon with DC Snowmaggedon RIGHT. BEFORE. DEADLINE. And this deadline was extremely important: “On February 17, 2010, GAP teamed up with Participant Media and the Paley Center for Media for a fantastic and unique event – the first-ever televised, long-format special that details and analyzes what whistleblowers are, the six stages of whistleblowing they typically experience, and their lack of legal protections.” Read more about this event on GAP’s Blog. So while all of Dylan’s coworkers were at home trying to organize the event when all DC offices were closed, Dylan trudged into work amidst the horrible weather to make this site complete — all by himself! He really did a great job. Between his iPhone and my ski vacation breaks over President’s Weekend, we worked hard to troubleshoot and resolve all outstanding issues before the big event. Dylan gave us some props himself: “Thanks for everything with the Web site again. You and Ryan did an amazing job.” Through the new website, advocates and constituents alike can contact congress on initiatives, using an advocacy platform through DemocracyInAction (DIA). Online donations are processed through Network for Good. About GAP GAP is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with an operating budget of around $2.5 million. Gifts to GAP are tax-deductible. The vast majority of our funds come from over 10,000 individual donors and foundations such as the Carnegie Foundation, CS Fund, Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute and Rockefeller Family Fund. Additional support comes from legal fees, settlement awards, and services provided. GAP is compliant with standards set by the Better Business Bureau, and we enjoy that organization’s stamp of approval. Founded in 1977, GAP is the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization. Located in Washington, D.C., GAP is a nonpartisan, public interest group. In addition to focusing on whistleblower support in our stated program areas, we lead campaigns to enact whistleblower protection laws both domestically and internationally. GAP also conducts an accredited legal clinic for law students, and offers an internship program year-round. The Prevention Institute wanted to overhaul their website, which was a combination of a few different sites, but all had different site architectures. Working with our design partner and neighbor, FreeRange Graphics, PICnet streamlined the site’s navigation, making it more SEO and user friendly. Prevention Institute was founded in 1997 to serve as a focal point for primary prevention practice—promoting policies, organizational practices, and collaborative efforts that improve health and quality of life. As a national non-profit organization, the Institute is committed to preventing illness and injury, to fostering health and social equity, and to building momentum for community prevention as an integral component of a quality health system. Prevention Institute synthesizes research and practice; develops prevention tools and frameworks; helps design and guide interdisciplinary partnerships; and conducts training and strategic consultation with government, foundations, and community-based organizations nationwide and internationally. The entire staff at Prevention was super during the development process. I especially worked well with Annie Lyles, my main point of contact on the project. Annie is much more of a visual person than I am, so in order to communicate effectively, we even set up our own language to refer to the tools on the website. Because the timeline of the project was quite long, I definitely was able to establish a fun relationship with the team at Prevention.
Here are a few highlights from the project and the website:
And now a word from Free Range Studios designer Kathi Bahr: “It was truly a pleasure collaborating with an organization that’s doing positive (and tangible!) work for the DC community. We were given complete creative freedom in order to build the new WeatherizeDC brand from start to finish, beginning with a logo design and then website design. It’s rewarding to know we were part of a team that established a creative tool that community members will see and interact with directly.” In summary – great project, great partner, a great success. Excellent job, team!
Emily Shaftel was my point-of-contact at CSPC and she was an amazing coordinator for their side. I always received a quick turnaround, clear and detailed questions and she was very technically savvy with an eye for pushing the website to its limits. She actually departed CSPC on the day of the launch to go and volunteer for a year in Thailand! Emily definitely made an impact before her departure.
This project reinforced some valuable lessons for me: 1) Sometimes it’s the little things 2) “By your powers combined” (thanks to Captain Planet for this valuable wisdom) At PICnet, we aren’t just about creating snazzy new websites with sleek design and fancy features. We’re also here to help with your website’s basic needs, like in the case of Port Jobs. We recently worked with Port Jobs’ database contractor to automate Microsoft Access reporting to display current job postings in near-real time on their Airport Jobs site. Port Jobs chose us after a competitive bid process in which they considered several firms. Our functionality and a previous relationship with the business favored us in the selection process. But the database revamping is only Phase I – we will now be working on redeveloping Port Jobs in Soapbox, under the same template. Although this is a rare example, the project was fairly smooth in part because I already understood how their old database was set up – because I had created it when I was an employee with Port Jobs. This made it a lot easier to understand the goal of the database integration, and the limitations and opportunities moving from the current ASP driven site to Soapbox. In the end, this prior knowledge proved fruitful in a great solution for the client. Recently, we helped migrate a newly designed Coalition to Stop Gun Violence to the Soapbox platform, after they were seeing diminishing service and support from their old system. The organization wanted an option to have support 24 hours a day and to build a relationship with their platform provider. And boy, did we build a relationship! As project manager, I spoke with Ladd Everitt from CSGV almost every day – as their PR/media person, he had a great personal investment in the website, and he was very involved with the decision-making and details from the start of the project. We originally were going to use the eblast system Vertical Response, tied into the Salesforce CRM to manage CSGV’s contacts. However, upon understanding the small staff they had and the technical literacy which these two systems required, I decided to look into Network for Good’s My Emma Email Now! This turned out to be both a simpler and more affordable solution for the client. Now CSGV has petitions, contact forms and surveys running through the form creation on Email Now, and they are also able to send out well-designed html email blasts through this very simple and easy to use system. I also want to give a quick shout out to Kate Purcell, the designer of the site. The relationship PICnet built with Ladd for this site was great for overall communications and for the momentum of the project. He was a great example of a smooth client-vendor partnership – always delivering on time and was available at all hours during the holidays for launch. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence seeks to secure freedom from gun violence through research, strategic engagement and effective policy advocacy. Learn more here. We recently launched another great Soapbox site, this time for Mercy Investment Services, an asset management program for the collective investment and professional management of the endowment, operating, and other funds of the Sisters of Mercy and the eligible sponsored and co-sponsored ministries that choose to participate, all of which are tax-exempt organizations engaged in religious and charitable activities. The idea behind the program is that, by combining their assets, participants may obtain lower costs for the investment of their funds and access to better performing investment managers than each would otherwise have. Here are some of our favorite, and notable features for the new site:
Mercy Investment Services is connected to the Sisters of Mercy Communities, for whom we’ve built several community sites. You can read more about those here and here. |
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