Overview

The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) Is a trusted resource for institutional foundations and donors worldwide that seek to maximize their philanthropic effectiveness.

CEP provides a wealth of research, insights, programs, assessments, and advisory services that help foundations and major donors be more effective. In an effort to make their research and information more accessible to their target audiences—funders from large institutions and high-net-worth donors—CEP undertook a website redesign focused on content strategy and information architecture.

Over the past two decades, CEP had amassed a wealth of information and valuable insights that funders could use to make a more significant impact.

However, the organization’s website was dated and lacked an overarching strategy for the organization and deployment of content. Website copy was inconsistent and too technical, and critical information was not easily accessible. Additionally, although CEP’s focus had traditionally been weighted towards philanthropic foundations worldwide, CEP was looking to include high-net-worth donors as a target audience for the site.

CEP defined several KPI’s to help guide a website redesign initiative to make their research and content more engaging, accessible, and easily digestible to all target audiences. These KPI’s included:

• Drive a measurable increase in assessment and advisory services sales
• Increase research report downloads by at least 25%
• Increase site visits by 30% and the average length of visits to site by 25%
• Build a clearer and more accessible website that better presents CEP’s content to its users
• Create more visitor engagement and deliver content in more exciting and interactive ways

Cantina’s expertise in Content Strategy, Information Architecture, Experience Design, and Wordpress Development was integral to helping CEP meet their project goals. We performed a comprehensive brand and competitor audit to help redefine the Information Architecture, and next, collaborating closely with stakeholders, we built a cross-channel content strategy and conducted a round of user testing. This laid the foundation for a website-wide redesign and Content Management System (CMS) implementation.

Cantina’s consultants helped CEP choose a CMS that they could manage and maintain themselves with a non-technical staff. Cantina developers implemented a user-friendly Wordpress CMS, leveraging a content strategy and website design that would meet their goals. Our consultants also provided on-site coaching to CEP staff members in how to use the newly developed CMS.

The Cantina team has a rare combination of being skilled technically and also interpersonally. They went about deeply understanding our needs and communicating well with us throughout the entire process.

With a new website and a purposeful content strategy in hand, CEP is better able to help foundations and major donors maximize their philanthropic effectiveness.