Activating an Active Community

The SCMTS Digital Hub marketing site and Action Center acts as a loop to inform the community about the organization, get people to engage with their mission, and encourage volunteers to take both real world and virtual actions.

Our collaboration began with a detailed discussion about the organization’s origins and their gradual transformation. We aligned around how we could best build the digital and communication tools they need to move their organization into its next phase.

In order to understand them from a client and community perspective, we interviewed land managers they work with as well as long-time volunteer community members. We also explored similar land stewardship organizations to discover where SCMTS sits within the space.

The Results: Strategic documents that lay out our insights and recommendations along with a roadmap for the design, writing, and development of a community-centric digital hub.

The organization pivoted from being a mountain biking advocate organization to one focused on outdoor stewardship. The overall brand strategy involved encouraging their long-term volunteers to embrace this change in perspective.

Our stakeholder interviews included land managers, trail building and maintenance volunteers, and leaders at partner organizations. Together they provided us with a holistic view on SCMTS and their impact in the community and the region.

The Action Center and Digital Hub act synergistically. Visitors to the Hub learn about the organization and get context for taking Actions. The Action Center refers visitors to the Hub if they lack context when they arrive there. Together, they give SCMTS a design system with all of the tools they need to engage their audiences, make it easy for them to volunteer, and also demonstrate to land managers the capabilities of the organization.

The site is written using simple digestible headlines and with a professional yet casual tone that matches the way the executive team writes and speaks.

The mission is communicated on more than just the About page. It is also strategically placed throughout the Action Center so that people who arrive there first understand the organization.

To reduce friction for visitors, we kept the copy light, succinct, and to the point.

Best practices were employed to make Actions on the Action Center quick, clear, and easy. Each action prompts a call for deeper engagement. For more on this, see our article on how to increase supporter and donor action using an engagement pyramid.

The action flow moves supporters quickly and easily from multiple choices to a clear and concise action.

Because events play a large part in supporter engagement, the site allows the SCMTS team to build custom pages for any fundraising campaign or raffle. They keep core brand elements while allowing for distinctively different pages.

For people new to the organization, the Digital Hub marketing site includes additional information about their mission, the projects they’ve completed, as well as the trails they’ve built and the ones they maintain.

People support an organization not only because of what they do, but who they are and what they believe in. The Digital Hub provides potential supporters with messaging that tells their story and demonstrates the organization’s place in the community.

SCMTS began their journey to outdoor stewardship as a mountain biking advocacy organization. Their core audience is bikers and they continue to serve the community that provides the vast majority of supporters and volunteers.