Organize for Action WNY

Few people know this about me, but politics is my first love. I started my career as a news reporter, eventually earning my way onto the governmental affairs and local politics beats for a few different local newspapers in central North Carolina and Western New York. I spent 10 years with a reporter’s notebook shoved in my back pocket. I loved the work and have a few fun stories I’m saving for my memoirs.

Over the years since, I’ve always looked for ways to be politically active. “Get out the vote” campaigns are one of my favorite things about local politics.

Imagine my delight when I discovered Organize for Action WNY, a grassroots group run by three local women—one of whom happens to live right down the street from me. Much of Organize for Action’s work focuses on postcard writing campaigns designed to increase voter turnout in specific races across the country. I attended one of their postcard writing sessions and was absolutely blown away to see almost 200 other folks there, too.

It quickly became apparent that the Organize for Action team needed help. They didn’t have a website and were relying on posts in a crowded Facebook Group to get the word out. They didn’t have an email newsletter, either—and each week, they were tempting fate by using an Excel spreadsheet and a personal Gmail address to send hundreds of emails. They had no central events calendar and no means of seeking additional volunteers.

In short? It was chaos out there.

I knew I could help. And with grateful smiles, the Organize for Action team sat down with me one Thursday afternoon to figure out exactly what they would need.

Kind words

“Now that the website is built, we are busy watching training videos to learn how to manage it. What's that saying about old dogs and new tricks? Fortunately, our wonderful webmaster and new friend, Kristen Johnson, is standing by to rescue us when we get in trouble. We are so grateful to Kristen for creating this website for us. She is kind, patient, generous—and really good at what she does.”

The Organize for Action Team

The web design process

We quickly settled on the elements for the new Organize for Action website. We’d buy a couple of domain names, set up a shiny new email address, give the site the ability to collect email addresses, and enable the creation of a proper mass email newsletter that wouldn’t get their personal email address blacklisted for spam.

Squarespace can do it all and then some! It’s the most user-friendly platform out there, and I knew it’d give them elbow room to grow without breaking the bank.

We got to work right away, and everyone found a way to contribute. One brought to the project her talent in art and graphic design. She created a lovely logo, a mark, and a bright, bold color palette using shades of yellow, navy, and white. Another has quite a way with words and did a great job filling out the wording outline I provided and creating a “brand voice” along the way. And the third supplied some great photos from postcard writing events and an eagle’s eye with proofreading. Perfect.

From there, I had a ton of fun with design!

Because the group is part of the Indivisible network, I brought Indivisible’s font palette and bold style to the Organize for Action website. I kept the design simple and let the colorful photos speak for themselves. I used bright colors to highlight the newsletter signup areas—the site’s main call-to-action—and added some subtle animations throughout to keep the design interesting without being overwhelming. I added some custom code to create fun button hover effects and a few other bells-and-whistles.

I believe in capacity building so people can confidently manage their own website instead of shelling out hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year to have me do it for them. To that end, I finished our project by recording detailed training videos so the team would be able to add events, add weekly action blog posts, update the wording on their site, and send out their email newsletter. They were nervous at first, but after just a couple of months they’ve practically become pros. And I love it.

Take a look at their new website home page!