Big Brothers Big Sisters Public Site
Web Site Redesign
www.bigbrothersbigsisters.org
Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS), founded in 1904, is the largest, oldest and most effective youth mentoring organization in the United States. In 2005, the organization served more than 240,000 youth ages 6 through 18 in 5,000 communities across the country, in all 50 states. BBBS approached Beaconfire for assistance in redefining its Web presence and boosting brand recognition and visibility.The Challenge: BBBS, which has more than 400 affiliate agencies, wanted to enhance its customers’ online experience by displaying a clear representation of the national brand, creating a more consistent look and feel to its national Web site, and providing similar imagery and functionality across local agency Web sites across the nation. This would allow BBBS to more effectively leverage the Internet for fundraising, volunteer recruitment, customer service, and stewardship of donors.
The Solution: Beaconfire led BBBS through a discovery and design process driven by the national office and affiliate agencies. First working with the pilot agencies and national office, Beaconfire helped to identify goals and target audiences. Then, the information architecture and standardized graphic designs were created for the national and local agency Web sites. Beaconfire engaged Centralis Partners, Inc., a usability testing firm, to validate the effectiveness of the design against BBBS goals, and used the information learned from the testing to optimize the design.
Standardized Web templates were developed to meet the needs of the individual affiliate agencies, yet still support a consistent national brand. The affiliates now have a choice of five templates in which they can easily create an interactive, engaging, and user-friendly Internet presence. Each affiliate also has control over its local content enabling staff to offer a customized local experience to donors, volunteers, alumni, and other constituents.
The national office and affiliate agencies share a standardized web infrastructure that supports secure local publishing, constituent relationship management and e-mail tools, provided by Kintera Sphere.