Nonprofit branding
When the pandemic began, I played a key role in co-founding A2Helps, a grassroots non-profit dedicated to addressing the challenges faced by healthcare professionals and local businesses in the wake of COVID-19. As the organization's designer, I created marketing and brand materials, as well as conceptualizing and developing our website.
Timeline:
Apr '20 - Dec '20
Teammates:
The challenge
I was drawn to the initiative when Joe Malcoun, a familiar figure in the Ann Arbor tech community, put out a call: “Who can build it with me?” Scanning the subsequent discussion, it was immediately apparent that they needed a devoted designer.
The Slack message where Joe Malcoun, the founder, pitched A2Helps for the first time
While Taylor Gabrish, a talented peer, had designed a wonderful logo for the initiative, more work remained.
The A2Helps logo and logo icon, by Taylor Gabrish.
Designing a nonprofit
The organization's needs were varied: creating a website, designing social media graphics, producing explanatory diagrams, developing a style guide for the press, and providing assets for an animation studio that had generously offered their services for free. Seeing the chance to utilize my skills for my local community, I joined the team.
The website
Our website needed to be a central hub for three primary functions:
- Explaining the mission and purpose of A2Helps.
- Facilitating the collection of donations.
- Assisting healthcare workers to redeem the gift cards we distributed.
With the support of my team members Emma and Jack, who expertly crafted all the website’s copy, I was able to concentrate on creating a seamless user experience. As our engineers Jim and Dylan set up the fundamental structure of the React app, I fleshed out the design details in Figma. Once the groundwork was laid, I dove into the codebase to style everything with CSS.
The A2Helps website home page.
Social media
In addition to crafting website copy, Emma skillfully penned our social media content, focusing on garnering donations and keeping the community informed of our progress. With the copy under control, I was free to concentrate on creating engaging illustrations and graphics.
Graphics we posted on social media celebrating that we'd handed out 350 and then 600 gift cards to healthcare professionals.
Diagrams
Understanding the complexities of A2Helps was no small task. To clarify how all the components fit together, we decided to include an infographic on our website’s home page. After several iterations, I developed an infographic that effectively conveyed our process and added a touch of charm with some custom illustrations.
Diagram illustrating the flow of donations from A2Helps to healthcare professionals and local businesses.
Style guide
Lastly, to ensure consistency across all collateral, we needed a style guide. This would be particularly useful to the animation studio creating videos for us and any press requiring our logo. I put together a shareable document encompassing all the styles and assets I'd utilized on our site and in other graphics.
The A2Helps style guide
Impact & lessons learned
By the time we began to wind down operations, A2Helps had raised over $200,000 in donations. These funds were then converted into gift cards and distributed to over 1,000 healthcare professionals in our community. This not only assisted those on the front lines but also directly supported over twenty local businesses during a challenging economic period.
Being a part of A2Helps was a rewarding and transformative experience that allowed me to use my skills to make a tangible difference in my community. The success of this venture served as a powerful reminder of the potential impact of collective action and grassroots initiatives. It was a silver lining that emerged from the challenging circumstances of 2020, and it reinforced the need for empathetic and people-centric design solutions that address real-world problems.