Nourish California Action Center

Creating an Action Center for Grassroots Support

The Challenge

An established organization with a long track record of success, Nourish California shapes programs and policies that help people and communities gain fair access to nutritious, affordable food. In early 2020 they began to see an uptick in interest from grassroots supporters as an opportunity to expand engagement.

Based on a previous communications strategy collaboration, we determined that designing and building an Action Center would be an effective strategy to engage grassroots supporters and deepen connections with aligned organizations.

The Outcome

The Action Center gives Nourish California a platform for engaging people in their efforts to address food insecurity across the state. More than a fundraising platform, the Action Center connects people with Nourish California’s deep policy and food advocacy work. Here they can launch campaigns for their programs and offer ways for people to get involved. Working synergistically with their informational website, the Action Center is the manifestation of their dedication to connecting with all Californians who care about food equity and justice.

Multiple Engagement Paths

The Action Center’s homepage presents current campaigns and offers numerous easy ways for people to engage beyond donations and feel part of the bigger movement — an approach central to Nourish California’s grassroots strategy.

The homepage also highlights proof of success — an important requirement for anyone considering supporting a nonprofit.

Expanding the Audience

Historically, Nourish California has primarily focused thier efforts on working with legislators and developing food policies, while helping direct service organizations have a voice in those conversations. In light of COVID-19, there was a clear desire for individuals to get involved.

Our communications strategy works to attract a grassroots audience in addition to deepening collaborations with their existing partners.

Engage and Inform

Nourish California needed a way to court grassroots support that their traditional informational site wasn’t best structured to accommodate.

The combination of an educational main site and an Action Center helps the Nourish California team point grassroots supporters at a platform where they can take immediate action or provide them with in-depth information.

Clear Action Pathways

Clicking on a campaign introduction on the homepage leads to a Campaign Overview page that promotes a Featured Action. This lets people quickly get involved.

Each action on the overview page leads to an individual Action page designed to enhance conversion by removing distractions. Action pages are free of navigation and contain minimal written content which helps keep supporters on task.

Moving People Up the Engagement Pyramid

The Action Center is designed to deepen supporter engagement. When someone takes an Action, they are shown a Thank You page that expresses Nourish California’s appreciation.

The Thank You page also surfaces additional Actions, selectable by the staff, that they can take. Each action taken moves support up in the engagement pyramid.

Read our article on How to Increase Supporter and Donor Action Using an Engagement Pyramid.

Campaigns linked to single Actions

Leveraging Social Media

The Action Center gives Nourish California a place to send people to take action from their social channels. It also allows for social sharing in a way that’s significantly easier than the informational site. These strategies are designed to promote audience growth and increase awareness.

In addition, Thank You pages include a Welcome section that utilizes social media posts to help a supporter feel connected to a community of grassroots advocates aligned with their values.

Building on an Existing Brand

When developing strategies for expanding Nourish Califronia’s reach, we incorporated their existing color pallete and brand treatments. This makes for a coherent brand experience between the new Action Center and their existing website.

One example is the social media assets we created for them. As the Nourish California team ramps up their outreach efforts via the Action Center, they will be using social media more than ever.

We helped them get out the gate strong, by providing ready-to-go assets for Fabebook, Instagram Stories, and LinkedIn.

A Library of Social Media Assets

Optimizing Experiences

Technically speaking, the Action Center is built using Craft CMS. This platform makes the backend content entry experience nice and easy.

We use the JamStack tech stack to enhance website performance so that pages load fast — a vital aspect of increasing user delight and keeping people on the site.

The site was built to seamlessly integrate with EveryAction. This drops forms and other elements into the Action Center so that supporters get a smooth experience when taking Actions.

Action Center Playbook

Adopting a new platform can be daunting. To make the lives of the Nourish California team easier, and to help new employees learn how to use the Action Center, we created a detailed Playbook. The Playbook helps them: