- Strategy
- Web
One Webflow CMS for 30 years of river restoration
- Industry
- Nonprofit · River restoration, water conservation
- Duration
- 6 months
- Launched
- May 2024
About
The Deschutes River Conservancy is a Bend nonprofit founded in 1996. It restores streamflow and water quality in the Deschutes Basin through voluntary, market-based programs. Tribal, environmental, and irrigation interests formed it together. It has restored up to 350 cfs of flow.
About
The DRC's news lived on a separate WordPress blog, and events were hard to find. We put news, events, reports, and river reaches into one Webflow site the staff can run.
The live site
The old site looked good but did not work well. Staff said the homepage was underused, events were hard to find, and navigation was cumbersome. The back end was clunky. The blog ran on a separate WordPress platform.
Constraint: the client was not open to changing its logo or brand colors.
Strategy
We organized the site around four questions a visitor asks: who the DRC is, where it works, what it does, and how to get involved. Each river reach got its own page, as the team asked.
Design
We kept the DRC logo and palette, and changed the type to Urbanist and DM Sans. The look aims for calm, trustworthy, and not "ivory tower" or cluttered, per the client's brief.
Webflow / CMS
We moved the WordPress blog into Webflow CMS. The site now holds news, press, events, technical reports, and annual reports in one place. The live sitemap lists 2,120 URLs.
The client's main goal was to help supporters learn about the river and how to help. News, events, and reports now sit in one CMS the staff manages.
In their words
Our work at the DRC is complex and fare·well helped us navigate how we tell our story in an accessible and beautiful way.
Marisa Hossick
Deschutes River Conservancy