Bright Holidays' mission is to help improve the lives of underprivileged students and their families in the greater Jacksonville area during the holiday season.
Who can't get behind helping children in need with essential supplies and a toy during Christmas? Not only does this 501(c)(3) volunteer-led public charity bring joy to so many public school students in Duval and St. John's county, but almost 100% of donations go directly to Jacksonville children. Their impact has been significant, and it's one local organization we love to support.
Way back in 2006, we donated a website to Bright Holidays. While it served a purpose for many years, the website, in our eyes, was embarrassingly out-of-date and not helping as it should. There were too many missed opportunities, negatively affecting Bright Holidays' brand, donations, and visibility within the search engines. The website desperately needed a massive mobile-friendly redesign. So, during the downturn brought on by COVID-19, Onboard Creative rebuilt the site from the ground up, implementing a new design, content management system, and donation platform.
Onboard Creative/Jon Livingston has done outstanding website development for our children's' charity, Bright Holidays. Clearly, their end product has a first-class look and feel. It also is state of the art in it's adaptability to user platform -- desktop, mobile device. What's not obvious just looking, however, is that Jon spent the time to learn about my objectives and my challenges. He is very creative with strategic business ideas, and he listens very well. So the end product was much more than just programming what I thought I wanted. It was better!
Mike Shreve - Board Chair
The old website was wordy, discombobulated, and very "matter of fact." The content centered around the public schools they partnered with and what they did with donations the previous year. While this content was necessary, the website lacked an emotional connection with visitors. The site used just a couple of images, and the long, paragraph form descriptions were hard to read.
The redesign introduced engaging photos of children on each page, as this is what the charity is all about! Instead of the previous long paragraphs, scannable sections broke up the content, making it a lot easier to read. Also, testimonials from school principals were added throughout the site, allowing others to understand the significant impact Bright Holidays was having in the community.
The previous site used an outdated PayPal button that took visitors off the site to donate. Not only was PayPal a hassle to most, but the benefits were also far less than other options.
As a way to increase online donations, Onboard Creative integrated MoonClerk's payments system. The new donation form allowed us to highlight sponsorship amounts with prepopulated tiers and add a recurring payment option, all while keeping the donation form on Bright Holidays' website.
This implementation has already made a significant increase in donations. According to Bright Holidays' Board Chair, Mike Shreve, the difference has been tremendous.
The previous site built fourteen years ago didn't have a content management system. While content changes typically were made once a year due to the charity's seasonality, the content was still a pain to update. Each update meant a web developer had to go in and change text within the code. Ugh!
Onboard Creative used Webflow's content management system. Now Bright Holidays can easily update content, from new partnering schools to testimonials and frequently asked questions.
I am so moved by the new website. It is amazing and the faces of these children are powerful. Many thanks to the designer for capturing the spirit of this work. I am blessed to be a part and have already begun working on the toy drive.
The site is brilliant and the way it encourages donations to sponsor one or more children or an entire school is fantastic! Well done!!
Requirement development, information architecture, user interface design, template development, content management integration, integration with social media such as Facebook, and web hosting.
If you want to learn more about how Onboard Creative can help your charity or nonprofit website succeed online, please get in touch.
