The Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP) provides resources, consulting services, and fund management to help disaster relief donors maximize their impact and rebuild communities that have been affected by wildfires, hurricanes, disease, and other disasters.
The team at CDP didn’t think that their visually dated website was helping them to convey their value to their audiences. They heard from their audiences that resources were poorly organized and hard to find. And they also wanted to update their Disaster Philanthropy Playbook, which contains critical resources for practitioners who respond to disasters in real-time.
Together, we redesigned the CDP site to help their team better tell their story and convey the impact that CPD and their donors have had in helping communities to recover and thrive. We modernized the look-and-feel to position CDP as the thought leader that they are in the space, and we streamlined the user experience to make it easy for CDP’s audiences to quickly and easily find what they need. We also brought the Disaster Philanthropy Playbook into the main CDP site to ensure a consistent and cohesive experience.
Multiple Audiences, Different Needs
CDP has several key audiences who have different needs on the CDP website.
Institutional grantmakers, philanthropies and donor-serving organizations, and individual donors want to learn more about emerging or newly occurring disasters and the impacted communities, and see how they can best support their recovery. They’re looking for resources such as disaster profiles, explainers, and best practices, as well as proof (stats, impact stories) that CDP can help maximize the impact of their giving.
Nonprofit partners, community organizations, and grant seekers want quick access to information about available grants and opportunities to receive support in their local communities.
When disaster strikes, CDP needs to be able to pivot immediately, identifying needs and connecting donors to opportunities to make a difference. So we introduced a “disaster mode” feature, which the team at CDP can toggle on when needed. When this feature is on, visitors can get a shortcut to critical information, and see where there’s a need for urgent funding.
We designed the “disaster mode” version of the homepage in a dark-mode color scheme. Disaster mode also displays a critical disaster in the hero area with a bold call to donate or support. All other content on the homepage gets pushed down and takes on the dark-mode color scheme.
When needed, CDP can quickly turn on “disaster mode” to draw attention to critical disaster needs and information.
To make sure visitors can quickly identify where they want to offer their support, CDP offers detailed profiles of the various disasters they are helping donors to respond to at any given time.
The Primary “Disaster” section on the site features information about the most urgent/critical disasters right up front, allowing users to access profiles for any disaster, both current and past. These rich pages offer an overview, outline the impact of each particular disaster, call out critical needs, and show users how website visitors specifically can help.
Incorporating the Disaster Philanthropy Playbook
The Disaster Philanthropy Playbook is a comprehensive resource that offers promising practices and innovative approaches to guide the philanthropic community in responding to disasters. In particular, it helps philanthropists to be more strategic with their investments and recognize the importance of supporting long-term recovery for marginalized and underserved populations.
Teal brought the Disaster Philanthropy Playbook into the main CDP site, giving it special visual treatment and an established section within the site that makes it easy for CDP’s team to direct potential donors and funders to these resources.
Teal incorporated the Disaster Philanthropy Playbook into the website, giving it a distinct look-and-feel, and providing quick and easy access for funders who need it.
With climate change advancing and disasters increasing in intensity, the work that CDP does is more critical than ever before. Through our partnership, Teal and CDP are advancing that work by helping CDP to clearly explain their value and demonstrate their impact, and making it easy for donors and funders to quickly find the resources and tools that they need most.
