Grassroots Gardens Website Design & Brand Strategy Case Study

Cultivating Communities One Garden at a Time

Grassroots Gardens WNY is a nonprofit organization that facilitates the creation and maintenance of local community gardens and other green spaces in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and surrounding areas of WNY. The organization was approaching a huge milestone – their 30-year anniversary. To commemorate that, and after securing a grant for the project, Grassroots Gardens WNY came to us for a new website.

This was a project we took great pride in delivering, because in everything they do, Grassroots Gardens WNY embodies one of our own core values: “Give Generously”. To ensure their new website accurately and powerfully represented their mission and spoke to their desired audience, we developed their brand messaging strategy pro bono before beginning work on the site.

Deliverables

Brand Strategy
Content Planning
Copywriting
Graphic Design
SEO
Website Design & Development

In their own words:

“We were thrilled to have Renoun take the reins in helping us redesign and revamp our website. As a small nonprofit with what we felt was a complicated suite of services and limited capacity, the ability of Renoun’s staff to help us cut through the noise and crystallize our presentation of external messaging was incredible – we’ve received overwhelmingly great feedback since our relaunch, and loved working with their fun, creative team through what would normally be a challenging process!”

— Tim Chen | Executive Director | GGWNY

Strategy

Focusing the Message
to Grow a New Audience

The main priority in developing Grassroots Gardens WNY’s new brand strategy was clearly defining their many potential stakeholder personas to better communicate the organization’s mission, activities, and resources to the right audience.

We then clarified their brand promise and positioning, and created a clear and compelling brand story, bringing much-needed dimension to a complex combination of messages. This enabled the staff, volunteers, and their audience to all be having the same conversation about what’s truly important organizationally. In doing so, we didn’t just consider their existing audience; we looked to the future, identifying areas where Grassroots Gardens WNY could expand to attract new audiences – particularly around advocacy work regarding related community concerns.

Website Design & Development

A Beautiful, Intuitive, and Powerful Presence Online

In developing Grassroots Gardens WNY’s new website, improving user experience and functionality were top priorities – we looked to add functionality while simplifying navigation.

Garden Finder

A significant part of this effort involved developing the garden finder, which provides helpful, easy-to-use resources for site visitors to locate a garden near them, regardless of their computer access or experience level.

Navigation Improvements

We also improved ease of use by making it easier for site visitors to donate and help, with clearly visible CTA’s that immediately communicate options and opportunities to give, volunteer, or learn more. This focus on ease-of-use also extended to the backend of the site; every element was built with the Grassroots Gardens’ staff’s use in mind, making it easy to update pages, develop new ones, manage inquiries and interest, etc…

Custom Illustrations

An organization rooted in connecting communities with nature needed a visual flair to match its mission,
so our site designer also created custom hand-drawn illustrations for the site for a fittingly naturalistic feel.