Plate of Love

Cold Spring Community Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose goal is to end hunger—one plate at a time. Through their Plate of Love program, they feed the less fortunate members of the community, including the elderly, unemployed, underemployed, poor, and the homeless. Their desire is that no one goes hungry, that no food goes to waste, and that no one is denied an opportunity for a meal.

Every Saturday morning and Wednesday afternoon, their volunteers are ready to serve a free, hot, home-cooked meal to anyone who wants one. Plate of Love is sustained by committed volunteers and financial support of generous donors.

Penny Beckham is not only the heart and soul of Plate of Love, she’s also the founder and executive director of the Cold Spring Community Foundation.

I was introduced to Penny by Bertholt Schroeder, a crazy talented designer and generally wonderful person who I had the pleasure of working with some years ago. Bertholt was creating a brand and logo for both the Foundation and Plate of Love and wanted to know if I could help with a website that would give them a dash of extra credibility when seeking grants and donations.

Can I help with a website? For good people like Penny and her volunteers? Darn right I can!

What a pleasure it was to give Penny and her team the web presence they deserve!

The web design process

Their needs were simple: A website that would provide information to people in need of a meal and make it easy for donors to learn more and make a donation online.

I wanted to make sure that Penny and her team of volunteers could stay focused on feeding people and not have to worry about maintaining a complicated website. Together with Penny and Tina Hoffman, one of her volunteers, we put together wording for a super simple, long-scroll landing page.

While we were working on that, Bertholt was hard at work designing a fresh, approachable, friendly brand and logo for both the Foundation and Plate of Love. He knocked it out of the park! And boy oh boy, what a pleasure it was to work with him again :)

When the time came to bring it all together, I knew Squarespace would be the perfect home for their shiny new website. I design exclusively on Squarespace these days because it’s the platform that my clients are the most comfortable taking over and maintaining on their own. There are lots of reasons why, but let me just say this: Drag-and-drop, no-code builder that works just like PowerPoint? I mean, hello.

Take a look at their new website!