We’re excited to share Heifer International’s new site, which shows how they’re working systemically to end hunger and poverty in a sustainable way.
We worked around the clock last week so we could launch the site at Heifer headquarters in Little Rock during our sixth annual Hack Week, the culmination of a months-long effort between our two teams.
Typically, Hack Week is a time we devote to brainstorming and tackling Heifer’s dream projects. This year, we hunkered down to make sure the ultimate dream project – a site that rethinks donor interaction – was complete before the holidays, when Heifer gets the bulk of its donor revenue.
We built a robust strategy to tell Heifer’s story and to better serve donors through dynamic publishing, our specialized method of serving up content based on users’ backgrounds and needs.
“When we started the project, there were a lot of moving pieces,” said Jordan Savant, our lead back-end developer. “We knew this was going to be one of the most technical and challenging projects that we were going to do for Heifer.”
The design of the site is modern and sophisticated, reflecting the breadth of Heifer’s initiatives – from using training to increase women farmers’ incomes in Nepal to implementing renewable energy to make cooking easier and cleaner in Senegal.
Many people know Heifer as the organization where they can buy a goat to help a family, but the 75-year-old nonprofit’s approach is much more nuanced and far-reaching than that. As a developmental organization, they provide the tools, training and connections to empower farmers and ultimately, to lift up entire regions.
“We believe that smallholder farmers are the future – and connecting them to markets and systems where they have the ability to sell their products gets them to living incomes,” said Christy Moore, Heifer’s Senior Vice President of Marketing.
We knew speed to launch was important in order for Heifer to capture donors during the holiday push and in turn, fund critical projects around the world to help people in need. So we launched an aggressive timeline and hit our target of launching during Hack Week.
“Before I left for Little Rock, I sat down with my kids and told them, ‘We’re doing something pretty remarkable, and at the end of it, I hope you guys take a look because it’s going to be really impactful,’” said Phillip Blackmon, Lifeblue co-founder and Chief Experience Officer.
We hope you’ll take a look, too.
