case study: rebranding the stittsville village association
the stittsville village association has been building community since 2001. it runs the parade of lights, canada day, arts in the park, and music and movies in the park. it holds monthly public meetings, publishes board minutes as official records, maintains sponsor relationships, and advocates with municipal councillors on planning, youth and seniors issues.
it is run entirely by volunteers.
the quote below is from the client's own google review.
the problem was not how it looked
the old site did not reflect an organisation with two decades and four annual village events behind it. that was the visible problem. the fatal one was underneath it:
every update had to route through someone technical.
for a commercial business that is an annoyance. for a 100% volunteer organisation it is terminal. volunteers turn over. the person who knew how to post an event moves, or steps off the board, and the events page stops updating — not because nobody cares but because the path is blocked. within a season the site is stale, and a stale community site is worse than none, because residents check it, find last year's canada day, and stop checking.
so "can a volunteer with no technical background do this in five minutes?" became the test every decision had to pass.
the information architecture follows how people actually arrive
we built the structure around the three reasons someone lands on an association site:
- looking for the next event — so events are browsable and prominent, organised by year so the archive accumulates instead of being overwritten.
- wanting to volunteer or join — a path that exists rather than an email address buried on a contact page.
- checking what the board decided — meeting minutes published as official records, structured from the start, because retrofitting five years of accumulated documents is real work nobody budgets for.
sponsors get genuine recognition rather than a logo strip at the bottom, because sponsor relationships are how an association like this funds four events a year.
and a dismissible banner lets the team push a time-sensitive notice — an agm, a cancelled event, a road closure — without touching code. small feature, disproportionate value: it is the thing most likely to be needed at 9pm the night before.
the visual rebrand sits on top of all of that. it was the reason they called; the architecture is what decides whether it still works after the board that hired us has rotated out.
how the work went
"yash! she has been extremely responsive and accommodating. very professional, down to earth and takes the time to understand needs and make recommendations. was very pleased with the final result and will be recommending nanushi to my peers."
— damon cox
"takes the time to understand needs and make recommendations" is the part worth drawing out. a volunteer board usually knows precisely what is not working and is not sure what to ask for. arriving with a fixed package and fitting the association into it produces a site nobody maintains. the useful work is understanding how the group actually runs — four events, monthly meetings, rotating board — and recommending accordingly, including saying when something asked for is not worth the money.
if you run a community association
the questions we would ask you, and would suggest you ask anyone quoting you:
- who updates this in two years? if the answer is a named individual rather than a role, the design is wrong.
- what does it cost annually? associations run on memberships and sponsors. a surprise renewal is a genuine problem. it should be small and predictable.
- can you export everything? minutes, member lists and event history belong to the association, not to a platform.
- what happens when the board turns over? the domain and the accounts should sit with the association, not with whoever set it up. this one bites people years later.
we work with ottawa-area community organisations. if your association is stuck with a site only one person can update, that is a common and entirely fixable problem.