Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

The McKenzie River Gathering Foundation is a wonderful Oregon funder that focuses on racial and economic justice, peace, environmental protection, and LGBTQ rights. Each year they have a fundraiser party, and it’s always quite a shindig. This year performers include Spoken Word artist Toni Hill and Afro-Cuban musician Virginia Lopez. More info here.

This year Blue Mouse Monkey is sponsoring a table of ten. The party’s at the Ambridge this Saturday April 21st, starting at 7:00. Get your ticket here and support an amazing local foundation. See you there!

This study, by M&R Research Labs and NTEN, is beautifully organized and elegantly laid out. It’s packed with the latest trends in online messaging, fundraising, advocacy, mobile communications, and social media. AND, IT’S FREE! Download the 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study.

Some of the most interesting results include:

• There was a 19% increase in online revenue from 2010 to 2011, driven almost entirely by a 20% increase in the number of gifts (average gifts held steady).
• Advocacy response rates increased by a whopping 28% in the same time period.
• Although one-time gifts are still the mainstay of nonprofit fundraising, monthly giving grew faster than one-time giving.
• Facebook fan pages grew by 70% in 2011!

Blue Mouse Monkey is thrilled to announce the launch of the new YourEconomy.org website. Your Economy, a project of the Edward Lowe Foundation, is an interactive resource center designed for users to explore and analyze economic activity in their own regions and nationwide. YE houses more economic data than the U.S. census bureau, and it can depict the dynamic journey of business communities evolving through time. However, the existing website was so complex and confusing that the YE founders had to train users in how the system worked, and they were compelled to manage a continuous flow of queries about usability.

Blue Mouse Monkey rose to the challenge to make the YE website user-friendly to a wide range of audiences, including the White House, state governors, economists, industry analysts, economic development experts, and the media. An intensive audit of processes, and analysis of user-experience requirements led to a complete redesign of the information architecture, user experience, look-and-feel, and written content. And the bright orange and yellow color scheme is a conscious departure from the stereotypical “blue for business” palette.

The Northwest Health Foundation wanted a new website to support their work in public policy advocacy. Built on the concept of a video magazine, each issue of Points of View covers a topic germane to the work of the foundation, with a short introduction and a collection of videos that reflect the point of view of the NWHF, along with the many points of view represented by their diverse community partners.

Formerly the Community Health Priorities project, this site has been given a fresh new look as it has morphed into The Conversation, the blog of the Northwest Health Foundation. The blog encourages Oregonians to participate in surveys, share feedback, read news, peruse resources, and apply for grants. Since its inception 2008, participation has climbed steadily, and the site returns data that the Northwest Health Foundation can bring to the state legislature.

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch

Suzy Vitello and I are distantly “related” in the literary world by virtue of our involvement in separate writing groups that sprang from the ur-group, Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writing. While we’ve never sat at the same writing table, we’ve chatted at parties now and again, and we’ve worked together in our other lives — in the world of communications, branding, and websites. Suzy is an editor and copywriter, and I’m a web designer, and we have delightfully collaborated on many projects together over the years.

And she edited the text on my Parts Per Million website!

And I got to redesign her new author website!

And she interviewed me on her blog! Check out Writers and branding: an interview with Julia Stoops for our discussion on the importance of author websites, the effect of DIY technologies, and the impact of art, teaching, and creative writing on my branding and web design practice.

It’s difficult to share the work we do behind the scenes of organizations, but at least we can show a screenshot. The Northwest Health Foundation needed an internal portal. They were tired of communicating via long email strings, and tired of piecemeal distribution of information. They needed an easy archive-and-retrieval system for their meeting materials from their multiple committees. Plus they wanted a central space for announcements, and an internal blog. Additionally, they needed to control granular access to this material: it was important to allow some committee members full access, and others access only to the minutes, materials, and blog posts relevant to their specific area of work.

We created an interface design based on NWHF’s public website, to make the new portal familiar and friendly to the staff who use it. We also used Expression Engine’s membership tools to allow granular access at different levels of membership. Named “B0utros” after a staff-member’s dog, the new portal has become the lively, always-accessible home to the foundation’s communications and record-keeping.

The Urban Mamas redesign project has been rolling out incrementally for a while now, so it seems odd to announce it as a “launch”. But looking back at how much has changed on this dynamic online community for mamas who want to share tips, advice, reviews, ideas, fun, and challenges, I see it’s time to put out the announcement. The UrbanMamas team came to us with an already successful multi-page blog that needed its content restructured and a design facelift. A combination of owner- and user-generated content made for some interesting challenges as we shuffled the information around in this heavily-trafficked site. The new design reflects the hip mamas style of the site owners.

The Tobacco Free Coalition of Oregon (TOFCO) is revitalizing anti-tobacco advocacy in Oregon through a grassroots movement and outreach to communities most impacted by the harmful effects of tobacco use. Blue Mouse Monkey is proud to have worked with TOFCO to create a website that acts like a virtual staff member. The site provides relevant information to community advocates and decision makers, builds the tobacco-free movement support base, increases efficiency, and elevates TOFCO’s presence in the community at large.

We were privileged to work with Portland non-profit PlayWrite, Inc. to recreate their website from scratch. PlayWrite works with youth ‘at the edge’ to create original plays, powerful vehicles through which their voices are heard. The young participants collaborate with theatre professionals throughout the process of crafting a play, from character development to directing professional actors. In the process, the participants learn to trust, manage, and heal their own emotional experiences; to work collaboratively; and to contribute positively to their communities.

PlayWrite’s old website didn’t communicate the good work they do, and it contained almost no evidence of the artistic output of the participants. It was also hard for staff to update. Blue Mouse Monkey’s overhaul of the website includes a new look and feel, expanded and organized content, and a complete archive of all plays and songs, with image and video support. The easy to use CMS (content management system) enables staff to keep the site as a alive as the work they do.