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The Advocate Theme for Non-Profits and Organizations
March 08, 2018
Looking to jumpstart your organization’s digital strategy, need to launch a targeted advocacy campaign, or maybe thinking about upgrading your site to fire up your fundraising? Tectonica’s newest Advocate Theme for NationBuilder is the perfect solution for you. We created a theme tailored to non-profits and organizations that need a powerful digital action hub on NationBuilder. As part of the package, we customize the homepage and brand elements to match your organization’s strategic needs and identity.
We’ve helped people Win! and Rally!
At Tectonica, we’re no rookies at creating tools for changemakers. Our previous theme-based packages, Win! and Rally! have been enormous successes. Two years age, we had an idea to help serve political candidates that needed a high-quality site but didn’t have the budget to afford a custom site built from scratch. Using our years of experience in political work, we built a NationBuilder theme that we could use as a framework to build these sites - while adding the extra strategic and design love and attention to detailed setup that goes along with any Tectonica site. Thus was born the Win! theme, and it just blew up. From kickstarting Oregon activist Stephanie Stevens’ campaign for her School Board and contributing to her landslide victory with 76.58% of the votes to powering Democrat Matt Hagman’s recently-launched campaign for Congress, Win! has helped candidates from all around the world and with diverse backgrounds and resource make their dreams of running for office our reality.
In 2017, we realized there was a huge potential in disrupting the most traditional way of political organizing: political parties. That’s why we created Rally!, a theme-based package for small or local political parties to have an effective and engaging digital organizing hub on NationBuilder. While new, refreshing movements are emerging worldwide, they often face difficulties in organizing and communicating their message, as they don’t have the resources a traditional party has. That’s why we believe NationBuilder is the ideal solution for them, complemented with a customized visual identity that conveys their mission in a way that gets taken seriously by the public.
And we can’t say we haven’t accomplished our mission. Today, numerous political movements use our Rally! Theme. For example, Buenos Aires 3D, a progressive movement based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, used it to jumpstart their digital presence. The theme-packaged solution enabled them to transmit their refreshing ideas without exceeding their budget, allowing them to become the first organization in the country to make use of NationBuilder’s tools.
Both Rally! and Win! are extremely versatile themes, and we had the chance to work with amazing non-profits who used them for their websites. However, our experience shows us...
There’s something special in the third sector
While the political parties have to convey a project of hope and change, nonprofits and organizations organizations also need to show the need, prove impact of their particular organization, and show the value to potential supporters of engaging and giving. They need to tell a story about the world around them, not just about their history as an organization. This story needs to rely fundamentally on facts and figures, and have to make audiences feel they’re an essential part in changing this narrative.
Tectonica is no stranger to this work. In fact, we’ve completed more projects for NGOs and non-profits than any other area of work these past years. And through those many successful projects we’ve learned a mastery of online engagement methods for organizations.
We realized there’s a huge unchanneled potential in NationBuilder for non-profits of all sizes. NationBuilder provides effective ways to communicate to large audiences, contribute economically, and to take action in numerous ways -- all essential features for the website of a non-profit. However, for some non-profits we realized we realize building a full custom theme website is realistically beyond the budget they have.
With all of this in mind, we envisioned a theme that caters to the needs of those trying to make the world better and who could power their efforts through the digitals tools of a NationBuilder website. We knew it had to focus on storytelling, projecting impact, and sparking engagement, and at the same time be extremely versatile and flexible, as well as making an effective use of the non-profit’s resources.
Introducing The Advocate! Theme for NationBuilder
Inspired by non-profits organizations, we created Advocate!, our latest theme-based solution for NationBuilder. It empowers organizations by giving them the tools they need to fulfill their organizing, engagement, and online activism needs, both visually and on the back-end. We paired this up with a clean design that conveys seriousness and effectiveness but also hope and confidence, so your supporters know change is in good hands.
If you check out the demo we created, you’ll see we designed it with a clean aesthetic and relying heavily in images. However, a picture is worth a thousand words, but here at Tectonica we know a figure is worth a million. That’s why we created a modular block that showcases figures, which are essential for convincing your audiences of the worthiness of the cause. You can use statistics and illustrations to convey your organization narrative -- your history and your vision of the future -- and inspire with specific facts and statistics that prove your impact.
We also kept in mind the fundraising needs of non-profits, so Advocate! includes an effective homepage section that motivates your visitors to contribute financially, and a donation page that streamlines the entire process. At the root of this is engagement -- as we know it’s key for any organization, we created visually attractive calls-to-action, such as a “donate” button in the navigation bar and numerous invitations to join the mailing list. These features work flawlessly with NationBuilder’s built-in donation and mailing services.
We didn’t spare on activist tools, either! Advocate! includes powerful action pages, where supporters can join as volunteers, sign a petition, and make pledges. We made an effort to design this pages in a simple and clean aesthetic, so people feel safe and confident.
Lastly, we focused on stories: the core of any effort to engage people new to your efforts. Through NationBuilder’s blog feature, Advocate! enables your organization to spotlight campaigns, people, and experiences -- stories that give you a platform to communicate how you are changing the world. Laying down your organization’s abstract mission on real-world experiences does wonders at letting your supporters know your importance in getting things done. As we know how effective they are, we put a call-to-action bar under those pages, so people can join your cause as soon as they become aware of it.
We’re excited to see how organizations around the globe use Advocate! to jumpstart their digital strategy. Excited too? Get in touch with us and let’s work on helping your organization change the world.
