It’s time to look back on the previous year and celebrate new website projects! Like past years, this post isn’t just to toot my own horn but to see the impact of the work done by all the great nonprofits I get to work with every year!

I encourage you to pick a site that looks interesting and visit it to learn about what that organization does. Maybe even sign up for their newsletter or make a donation to support their work!

When people think about “building websites”, they often only think about the design and coding work that I do, but there are absolutely critical efforts played by the organizations and other consultants that helped with graphics, strategy, writing, content entry, and more. A great nonprofit website is never a solo endeavor.

Baby #2

We “launched” our second child out into the world in February 2022! I took a couple months off over the course of the year to spend time caring for and bonding with our newest family member. If you notice this post is shorter than last year’s, that’s one of the many reasons why!

I was incredibly grateful to all the clients who supported my need to take time off, and they were all rewarded with cute baby pictures!

King County Nonprofit Compensation Tracker

In March, Jesse Snyder of Rasika Consulting and I launched a new tool to help people explore the data from a survey of nonprofit salaries in King County. This project was years in the making, and I think the result was quite good.

The tool helps anyone explore salaries for a single job or compare salaries of multiple jobs. Given the example of a similar tool and dataset, we selected the technology and created a design for the project. This was my first professional project with the Vue JavaScript library, and it felt like the right tool for the job. The “report builder” provides instant* access to data 172 different nonprofit jobs with the option to view by organizational budget, organizational size, or field.

* In fact, the data refreshes so quickly, we almost wonder if it’s confusing. If you try it out, let me know what you think!

Overall, it’s important to note that many of these salary numbers are low and most nonprofit staff deserve to be paid significantly more, especially in a high-cost area like King County.

Civil Survival

Civil Survival works with people impacted by the criminal justice system. It supports them in transitions out of incarceration, with ongoing work and life resources, and to lobby for transformative changes in state policy. Civil Survival is an incredible organization and team of people that I was privileged to work with on this project.

Working over most of a year, we re-envisioned the content, features, and styles needed for a website that would truly represent their organization, community, and work. The results are great and the site is now both more powerful and easier to manage than their last one.

Lymphedema Therapist Directory

Achieving a long-term goal for their organization, I helped the Northwest Lymphedema Center launch a directory of over 200 lymphedema therapists in the Pacific Northwest. Before the launch, there was no similar list. This new critical resource will help support those seeking treatment connect with the medical professionals best suited to provide care.

This project added to the existing site I helped launch in 2020, and was only possible after countless volunteer hours spent collecting and confirming the information. I supported the work by designing the tool and creating an automatic import process that makes it easy for their volunteers to continue managing the information on the site.

WTA Hiking Guide Improvements

Working with long-time client Washington Trails Association, this year we set out to improve the usability of key pages like hike descriptions and trip report submission forms. WTA supports hikers across Washington State access nature and responsibly use and maintain trails that benefit everyone.

The revised hiking guide page—like the one pictured for Snow Lake—launched in July. It came about after intensive work with WTA to prioritize the information hikers needs most when choosing a hike. This included a new hike difficulty estimate, a prominent summary of the hike, and larger and clearer hike stats and features at the top of the page.

As we collect more information about the impact of our changes, we hope to return for a second round of revisions and improvements.

Consortium for Service Innovation

The Consortium for Service Innovation supports companies in improving how they support their customers and employees. After helping this organization redesign their two sibling sites a few years ago, this year we completed a three-phased project to merge the sites, add new event features, and completely redesign the merged site. The final result is a fun and engaging design that is also highly usable and accessible!

With that work complete, the site now addresses the needs of the Consortium’s current and potential members along with others seeking training and support. With a highly engaged core membership, the transition to the new website went extremely smoothly and it’s already serving site visitors better than before. You can read more about that project in my portfolio.

And a big shoutout to Amy Weiher from Weiher Creative! Amy worked with the Consortium to redo their logo, create a new style guide, and do some early website visioning work to set this project in motion. The website would not look as good as it does without Amy’s work on the logo, brand, and graphics.

Accessibility Audits

I started and ended my year with two major accessibility audit projects. The first was for the website of Dumbarton Oaks and the second was for three sites maintained by SEIU Healthcare 1199NW Multi-Employer Training Fund. I did this work in partnership with Jazkarta and Mike Brogan Consulting, respectively. These projects were both notable for fun collaborations with great people!

Accessibility audits can be painstaking at times, and the work isn’t always obvious or easy to approach. But these projects have resulted in massive wins for site visitors even if fixes are ongoing and further auditing and testing may happen in the future. As one example, both clients had sites with inaccessible navigation menus for people using keyboards to navigate. We’ve resolved (or are about to) those issues and that will make a huge difference to many site visitors in the coming years.

Accessibility work never ends—you’re never done because sites are never “done”—so it’s interesting, challenging, and important work that I’m happy to support people with.

Thanks to every person this year who was a collaborator, contributor to an organization I worked with, or supported my work in any way big or small. I love the network of people and causes my business interacts with and supports.

And here’s to a 2023 that I hope is filled with positive and supportive relationships, personal and organizational growth, and fun design and coding work.