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Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is the largest faith-based nonprofit dedicated to helping restore a sense of home to immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. Since 1939, LIRS has helped over 750,000 people rebuild their lives in the United States.
CHALLENGE
Over its 80+ year history, LIRS has created an incredible breadth of programs and services to empower new Americans. The nonprofit provides direct assistance and resources to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers who are seeking safety in the U.S. To facilitate these operations, the website needed to clearly communicate the mission and impact of LIRS, as well as provide avenues for users to take action. Over time, and as a result of swiftly changing priorities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the strategic focus of the website had become blurry. The strength of the mission and impact were diluted by cumbersome navigation, and the content was not optimized to build relationships with key stakeholders. The content strategy needed to be rethought to better align with evolving organizational objectives, and foster lasting connections with donors, volunteers, community, and faith-based partners.
STRATEGY
Because research proves that seeing impact and results is a primary driver of donations, the content strategy for the new website placed a heavy emphasis on storytelling as a central device for building engagement. Beginning on the homepage, users are introduced to the people and families supported by LIRS programs and partners. These inspiring stories are integrated across the site in context of the specific services highlighted, and calls to donate are woven throughout to make giving simple and seamless. A thorough content audit was conducted to ensure that high-value thought leadership was preserved, while outdated or irrelevant content was removed. Site navigation was prioritized around the user journey of potential individual and corporate donors and volunteers, while ensuring that resources for those seeking safety were easy to access.
RESULTS
The new homepage immediately captures the user with powerful stories of new beginnings and invites them to join LIRS in making a difference for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. From there, visitors are able to quickly see the breadth of LIRS services and programs, and easily dive deeper into the areas that are most meaningful to them. Site content is organized around outcomes and impact, educating users on the issues central to LIRS mission, and illustrating why and how their support matters. With an eye to the future, the new site integrates with CRM, donation, volunteer and advocacy platforms used by LIRS. This will allow LIRS to gain greater insight into the user journey, so they can continually adapt marketing, communications, and content strategies to drive increased engagement and conversion of donors and volunteers on and off the site.
Impact that’s Immediate
With support from individuals and institutions across the United States, from government, to faith leaders and communities, corporate partners, and philanthropic donors, LIRS is able to provide direct assistance and resources to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers who are seeking safety in the U.S.
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Everyone has a Story
Effective and impactful storytelling is central to building lasting relationships with supporters. To allow for stories to be shared throughout the site, Vitamin created several flexible content modules to highlight testimonials, news, videos, and statistics prominently, in a way that feels natural to the user and adds richness and dimension to the content.
Navigation on a Mission
Presenting a robust breadth of content in an easy to digest format was central to facilitating LIRS’s goal to increase user engagement. The main menu was organized by focal area, with quick links allowing users to see a brief summary of the section content, and then follow a clear path to learn more, give, or volunteer.
Content within Context
For a site of this size, functionality and content management are critical. Flexible modules house a library of multimedia content that are easy to create, update, and feature in dynamic ways across the site. This allows LIRS to showcase the ongoing real-world impact of their work, while maintaining control over branding and assets to ensure web pages stay current and relevant over the long term.
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