Chicago Community Trust

Here’s how Mightybytes helped Chicago Community Trust, a well-known community foundation, serve nonprofits, donors, and residents who strive to make a difference and create lasting change in our region. We have delivered multiple projects during our partnership.

Our first collaboration with Chicago Community Trust (CCT) , the former Arts Engagement Exchange, was launched in 2009.

Several years later when CCT’s main website had recently undergone a major redesign we delivered a microsite to refine data retrieval. When the Chicago Mayor’s Office announced plans for a neighborhood revitalization project based on CCT’s data, the organization realized the data needed an upgrade.

• Data facelift: Important data from the organization’s Chicago Neighborhoods 2015 project existed on the updated website but was difficult to navigate and visually unimpressive.
• Anticipated increase in traffic: The potential increase in traffic meant visitors to the site would need a better experience, so CCT stakeholders decided to create a microsite to house the results of the neighborhood study.

We invited CCT team members to our office for a discovery workshop that gave us important background information on the data and its intended audiences. Workshop topics included:

• the website’s design,
• user experience, and
• written content, which we improved for clarity, grammatical accuracy, and keyword use.

At the end of a full-day working session we had already created a working prototype of the microsite in WordPress.

We used the rest of our timeline to finish the WordPress development, fine-tune the design, and transfer data and graphics from the old website to the new microsite. In all, it took us two weeks to plan, design, code, and launch the microsite—well within CCT’s launch deadline.

In early 2016, Mightybytes became an agency partner for CCT with the goal of helping them advance the organization’s digital strategies.

• Regular communication: Quarterly strategy meetings and weekly calls helped guide the CCT’s digital efforts on everything from better hosting practices to improved accessibility across their digital products.
• Strategic Projects: Our partnership included a variety of projects, such as their online annual report and updates to their organizational website.

In November 2016, CCT partnered with Kurtis Productions to release the film What You Do Matters, which spotlights the spirit of philanthropy and the everyday generosity and passion of Chicagoans. Mightybytes created a promotional website to highlight the film’s trailer, share stories of local philanthropy, and showcase the work of key partners, such as Unity Fund and organizations like World Bicycle Relief, 366 Random Acts, Canine Therapy Corps, and others featured in the documentary.

CCT is rooted in the Chicagoland area as a 100-year old community foundation dedicated to improvements through strategic grant making, civic engagement, and inspiring philanthropy. On the Table is their annual forum designed to elevate civic conversation, foster new relationships, and create a unifying experience across the region. Thousands of Chicago-area residents gather in small groups to share a meal and discuss the challenges and opportunities we face.

The Trust had tried two event management platforms to support On the Table, but neither delivered an easy-to-use registration process. As a result, their staff spent a lot of time supporting registrants by phone and email, and many participants just skipped the registration process altogether and dropped out of the event. The site had also become a warehouse for content, making key information hard to find. Mightybytes was hired to both redesign the site and overhaul the event registration process so that it would be scalable/usable for years to come.

Our first step was to identify how to improve the registration process. For event registrants, the top requirement was the ability to create and manage multiple events. For the CCT staff, the key challenge was to capture host and guest contact information then funnel that data into Salesforce.

We determined Action Network, an online organizing platform, best served these goals. The platform made it easy to organize multiple events, and captured contact information could be sent to Salesforce automatically. To reduce support load on the CCT team, we designed a custom 4-step registration process and conducted extensive user-tests to catch and resolve trouble spots and ensure a simple, smooth registration process.

The website’s core conversion goal was registering event hosts, so we redesigned pages to drive that conversion. The new homepage design featured the event’s value proposition alongside stories from past hosts, showed how easy it was to register, and promoted the “register to host” call to action. We also simplified the site’s architecture from ten navigation options to four, which made it easier for visitors to find the information and support materials they needed.

An estimated 55,000 people total participated in the 2016 On the Table event and registrations jumped 30% from the previous year.