26.2 Foundation.

HOPKINTON, MASSACHUSETTS, USA · NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION

The 26.2 Foundation supports and promotes the sport of marathoning as well as health, wellness and economic development. On the day of the Boston Marathon (quite by chance), Bruce MacDonald, Director and Board Member of the organization spoke to us about the new website project and working with Sustainable Digital.

Services provided: Web Design · Web Development · Search Engine Optimization

What challenges prompted you to relaunch your website?

“We had a decade-old site using old language and an old management system. Being a small and tightly resourced (largely voluntary) organization this was a challenge, as any changes and updates we needed to make became extremely slow and difficult. We needed a more elegant solution that was quicker and easier to use, cheaper to run and whereby we could make our own updates as needed.

“In addition to engaging more effectively with schools, communities and internationally with the town of Marathon in Greece, specifically we needed a much better site that would position us well for the capital campaign we were looking to run. The campaign’s goal was to raise 35 million dollars for the building of a new International Marathon Centre, housing a museum, hall of fame and conference center. We were, and continue to be, reaching out to very sophisticated and wealthy potential donors, so the website definitely had to look the part - to communicate very clearly our proposition, vision and mission and establish credibility among our target audience.

“Bob and the team at Sustainable Digital came highly recommended to me as experts in website design and creation, for the non-profit sector. Apart from the skills in Squarespace, it resonated with me that the organisation had the same sort of value set as us and that they understood how to make us ‘look bigger’ than we are.

“We got started on the planning and development and the team anticipated all of the issues and challenges that came up. We worked closely together, iteratively to ensure that we put everything in place to look professional, credible, current - critical when you are looking to approach very influential and wealthy individuals, policy makers and organisations.

“We also worked hard to get the look of the site right; to reflect the essence of Marathon, and the history and democracy that has come out of ancient Greece and to appeal to the Greek American Community.”

What do you like about the Sustainable Digital approach?

“Not only did the team at SD get where we were coming from, they are incredibly service focused - it felt literally like four times the service I was expecting.

“The team worked incredibly hard, with great patience as we worked through design iterations to get it exactly right; having worked in marketing roles with various suppliers in the past I expected resistance but that simply didn’t happen - there was only positivity and support and I am deeply grateful for that.

“The Sustainable Digital team is highly responsive - I never had to wait, always got thorough answers. I have worked on web projects before and others don’t work this way - I couldn't have had a better experience, they are just a delight to work with.