The School Garden Network supports garden-based learning programs in more than 20 schools in Sonoma County, Calif. Built in the model of Alice Waters’ project in Berkeley, The Edible Schoolyard, the organization aims to promote healthy eating habits and a respect for the environment. SGN’s needs had outgrown its previous website, and it approached Keller & Faber to expand its online offerings and to update its image.

The development of the website faced central questions at the outset that are common to many non-profits. How could visitors be encouraged to donate and get involved? With limited technical resources to rotate and add grants, news, and workshop schedules, how could SGN continue to maintain the site after it was built?

We approached these questions by dedicating a stage of the project to the website’s strategy, so we could learn about the organization and its core goals and how these could be reflected online. The benefits of these talks extended to every part of the site. Visually, this meant putting the kids who benefitted from the organization’s program front and center. It meant designing a system that made it exceedingly easy for visitors to sign up for membership and volunteer positions. And our understanding that the site would need to start small and expand outward allowed us to form a long-term plan for the site, complete with a custom content management system that allowed various members of SGN to update and add content to much of the site.

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