Have you heard of Shalom Farms? If you land on their newly designed website, the first phrase that appears is “Everyone deserves healthy food.” It’s simple, yet powerful, and very emblematic of what this nonprofit in Richmond, Virginia does for their community.
We were pleased to partner with Shalom Farms as one of our 2021 Nonprofit PIP Award recipients and create a website to support the critical work they are doing for their communities. More on PIP later, but first, let’s learn a little bit more about who they are and what they do.
More About Shalom Farms
Shalom Farms is a nonprofit that partners with other organizations throughout Richmond to provide meaningful access to healthy food. What do they mean by “meaningful access?” Their goal is to provide access to healthy food that is affordable, familiar and useful for all. With two large scale farms that span nine acres, they provide more than 600,000 servings of healthy produce annually. But their support goes well beyond the produce they grow at their farms and is deeply rooted in partnerships across the greater Richmond area. Their partnerships allow for free access through mobile markets and many other food access programs that bring needed supplies into the many neighborhoods where people face significant barriers to getting healthy food. You can learn even more about the important work they do by checking out their newly launched website!
About the Process
At the beginning of our partnership with Shalom Farms, we quickly realized their passion for reaching more people in a simple, yet impactful way, was critical to reaching their food access goals. They view their website as another way for them to engage partners and expand their reach. It also had to have an easy-to-navigate mobile interface so those looking for produce could find it quickly nearby. These critical aspects helped drive the creative decisions we made when developing their site.
During our design we also benefitted from the beautiful and purposeful photography they shared, which is another compelling aspect of their site. When you engage with their Who We Are and What We Do pages, the photos tell their story and portray the real impact they are making.
DESIGN TIP
For anyone looking to update or create a website, great photography is a powerful way to tell your story! Visitors love visuals, so investing in this is also an investment in your brand.
Shalom also asked us to create a real-time map and location solution for those visiting their mobile markets daily. We love a challenge and were able to add a user-friendly plugin so they could easily update where their markets will be and get this information quickly to their communities.
Working with Shalom Farms was much more than a project for us; it was a partnership that we know will have a tremendous impact on our communities and, we hope, is the beginning of a long-lasting relationship. We were especially happy to hear the feeling is mutual when we received this feedback from the former Executive Director, Dominic Barrett:
“Of all the things that will have a lasting impact on the stability and sustainability of the organization, seeing our new website complete is near the top.
It is the only pro-bono project/award in my 12 years where I 100% felt like an actual client getting all of the support, quality, and responsiveness we would expect if we were paying top dollar. It has been impressive from beginning to end. You all exceeded my expectations in every way! Thank you all again so much!”
More About PIP
At Red Orange Studio, we work with companies who do good things. And that inspires us to #GoDoGood. That concept is the foundation for our outreach initiative. The PIP Project has provided thousands of dollars worth of pro-bono design, development and marketing services to Virginia nonprofit organizations and start-up businesses. And In 2020, we brought on new partners to help provide a wider array of services and create an even bigger impact for nonprofits and small businesses across Virginia.
Want to be the first to know about next year’s application or learn more about the PIP Project? Sign up below to stay in the loop!