Projects / Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Washington

New Website Champions Jewish Giving in Greater Washington

PROJECT SCOPE

Website design
WordPress development
Website strategy
Website management

The Client

Philanthropy looks different for every donor. With so many possible ways to give and countless deserving causes, many donors turn to advisory organizations for help connecting their vision of giving to their values.

The Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Washington (JCFGW) helps donors in the Greater Washington Jewish community become the philanthropists they aspire to be.

Their work involves:

Advising donors on aligning their giving with their values
Managing the logistics, such as setting up and processing grants
Providing learning opportunities for philanthropists
Elevating partner nonprofits by sharing their stories and connecting them with new supporters

The Foundation evolved from the United Jewish Endowment Fund (UJEF), the endowment arm of The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. As donor participation and community needs evolved, the Fund transitioned into a community foundation model with a broadened mission within the Federation.

Today, JCFGW continues to help philanthropists make meaningful impact both within and outside the Jewish community — distributing more than $24.5 million in grants in 2024.

The Challenge

Information about JCFGW originally lived on a subpage within the Federation’s website. But as the Foundation’s impact continued to grow, it became clear that it would soon need its own digital home.

A single page was no longer enough to tell the Foundation’s story and support the donors, staff, and partner agencies they serve.

Jannah Yutkovitz, Senior Director of Philanthropic Impact at JCFGW, shared, “We have a fund for women and girls, a Donor Advised Funds matching program … the single subpage was turning into a lot of scrolling. We also had newsletters, blog posts, and all of this content starting to happen, but there wasn’t a good mechanism to house it at the time.”

Philanthropic education and guidance are central to JCFGW’s work. To fully carry out its mission, JCFGW needed a dedicated online space to educate, connect, and empower donors.

“We needed to tell the story of the Foundation — what it is, why you should engage with it, and how it supports your philanthropy. That was hard to do on just that one page. It needed a dedicated digital space and expanded brand expression.”

Jannah Yutkovitz

Senior Director, Philanthropic Impact, The Jewish Community Foundation

Project Highlights

Created intuitive pathways to make key resources and pages easy to find
Aligned website strategy with user and community goals
Built upon brand guidelines with additional brand assets
Leveraged audience insights to inform a user-centric strategy
Conducted industry research and drew inspiration from peer foundations
Empowered internal team to manage the new website through training

The Solution

Having partnered with the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington for more than 15 years, Digital Ink already knew the organization’s structure, brand, and audiences well. When the Federation reached out about a new website for JCFGW, we were excited to jump in.

Over the following months, Digital Ink worked closely with the Foundation and the Federation to develop the website’s strategy, content, and visual direction.

Turning a single page into a full website requires a thoughtful, scalable site structure. We developed the sitemap and wireframes to organize the Foundation’s resources in a way that was easy to navigate and also build upon.

Research guided our process. We analyzed similar community foundations and brought insights to the project team around:

How peer organizations told their stories
Helpful interactions offered on peer sites
What would resonate with JCFGW’s community

Simultaneously, the team conducted user research to understand what donors, staff, and community members needed from the new website. These insights helped us outline the website’s navigation, ensuring top goals like opening or managing a fund were accessible with just one click.

“One of my favorite parts of this process,” Jannah shared, was the training that happened along the way. “I’m not a web designer, but I needed to know how to use the website. There was a lot of teaching that took place. I now feel like I understand the backend enough to create a new page, add blog posts, swap images … I can also pull up the resources Digital Ink created to help me make updates.”

Our collaboration gave the Foundation the platform and internal know-how to tell their story for years to come.

“Digital Ink was really helpful in building the capacity of our Foundation team to add pages and do some of those rapid updates.”

Jannah Yutkovitz

Senior Director, Philanthropic Impact, The Jewish Community Foundation

Results

JCFGW’s website launched in March 2025 to positive feedback across the community. Donors, staff, and partners all appreciate how easy it is now to access information.

“What’s been really helpful about this new website from a business standpoint,” Jannah says, “is it’s a one-stop-shop for both our staff and folks at the Federation when explaining how we work.”

Philanthropists have many options when deciding how they want to give. Now, Foundation and Federation staff have resources like the Plan Your Giving page to help donors carry out their philanthropic vision.

This chapter is far from the end of the Foundation’s story. Since launch, the team has continued expanding JCFGW’s brand presence, carrying over design elements from the website to other ongoing projects.

With the face of the brand in place, the Foundation is ready to keep inspiring donors to “Give Jewishly” and help shape a thriving world.

“This website is our strongest brand asset. Digital Ink did a wonderful job of bringing it to life.”

Jannah Yutkovitz

Senior Director, Philanthropic Impact, The Jewish Community Foundation

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