Projects / Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay

Digital Resources Empower Environmental Mission

PROJECT SCOPE

  • Website Design
  • Website Development
  • Website Management
  • Website Training
  • Marketing Collateral Design
  • Email Marketing Design

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The Client

The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay is a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring local action and forging partnerships to protect the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The organization works with individuals, businesses, and governments to increase environmental awareness and restore local lands, streams, and rivers.

The Alliance offers hands-on volunteer opportunities as well as technical training to help enterprises and leaders improve water quality throughout the Chesapeake Bay.

The Challenge

The nonprofit originally needed help building its Businesses for the Bay website as a functional tool to connect local enterprises with efforts to preserve the Chesapeake Bay. The program was being launched from scratch and required a dynamic web presence to retain and recruit members.

Later, the organization lost a staff web developer and was looking for immediate support to maintain and modernize the Alliance’s main website. Beyond that project, The Chesapeake Network, one of the Alliance’s community sites that links like-minded advocates, did not work well: It loaded slowly and was riddled with errors.

In the following years, the Alliance cultivated several programs needing effective websites to reach target audiences passionate about the environment. These diverse websites and email marketing efforts had to align with the Alliance’s evolving strategic plan.

“I immediately felt like Digital Ink and I had great working chemistry. They were able to explain things very easily so I totally understood.”
MARISSA SPRATLEY
COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, ALLIANCE FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

Project Highlights

  • Redesigned and redeveloped portfolio of sites to improve functionality and brand alignment.
  • Optimized email marketing efforts boosted subscribers and potential donors.
  • WordPress trainings educated and empowered staff.

The Solution

Digital Ink began working with the Alliance in 2015, designing and developing the Businesses for the Bay website as part of the its launch. After that successful collaboration, the relationship between the Alliance and Digital Ink grew and the firm began managing the Alliance’s main website. This included WordPress support, troubleshooting, and development services to maintain and expand the site.

Since then, Digital Ink has designed and developed additional program websites for the Alliance, including:

  • The Chesapeake Network: A community-powered website that allows organizations and individuals dedicated to protecting the Chesapeake Bay Watershed to share events, job openings, development ideas, announcements, and resources.
  • Reduce Your Stormwater: A resource for helping homeowners and businesses reduce harmful stormwater runoff.
  • The Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative: A resource that provides technical and outreach support to integrate volunteer-based water quality monitoring data into the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership.
“The team at Digital Ink is flexible and relatable. They’re willing to work with us to help meet our goals, whatever they are.”
MARISSA SPRATLEY
COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, ALLIANCE FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

Results

Digital Ink has become the go-to partner for the Alliance for all of its digital marketing efforts, including email marketing, website hosting, training, and more.

Digital Ink was hugely influential in shaping the voice, look, and direction of Businesses for the Bay, creating a clear, organized web presence. The firm was also able to rebuild the Chesapeake Network site architecture to eliminate bugs and improve loading speed and functionality. These crucial site improvements brought back the roughly 2,000 users who had abandoned the previously hard-to-use site and attracted new users.

Digital Ink also improved the efficiency of the Alliance’s Mailchimp outreach by integrating email lists across Alliance sites to boost subscribers by 6,000 and enable the nonprofit’s newsletter to reach more committed supporters.

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MAILCHIMP SUBSCRIBERS
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RETURNED SITE USERS

The firm’s accessibility and responsiveness – even after-hours — resolved a glitch in a key email newsletter donation campaign scheduled to be sent over a long holiday weekend.

Website management by Digital Ink ensures the Alliance employs online trends and best practices, and the firm conducted a WordPress training for Alliance staff. The organization’s cohesive portfolio of websites convey the mission, vision, and values articulated in the new strategic plan.

"They’re a great local business: easy to work with, fun to work with, and affordable.”
MARISSA SPRATLEY
COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, ALLIANCE FOR THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

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Digital Ink is a creative team of web designers, graphic designers, and digital marketers who partner with organizations on a mission. Everything we design and build is created with you in mind.

We’re honored when an organization thinks highly enough of our work to ask us to contribute to their mission. Let’s talk and see if we can add value to your project.

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