Creating a Modern Web Presence for a National Leadership Training Organization in the Developmental Disabilities Field
The Challenge
The National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities (NLCDD) is dedicated to developing leadership at all professional levels in the intellectual and developmental disabilities field.
When we first talked about creating a new web presence, the NLCDD team were working with a very dated website composed of static HTML files, where every edit required a change written in HTML. The website was not responsive, making it hard to use on mobile devices, and the navigation was cumbersome. Information was buried, and the team knew a modernization project was long overdue!
NLCDD hosts leadership training events across the country and regularly publishes new resources online, making a static website a poor fit. The team was ready for a real content management system that staff can access and update easily.
To put it lightly, rebuilding our website felt daunting. Our small but mighty nonprofit team has a lot of expertise; none of it in website design. Ed brought the compassion, patience, and dry humor to the project that we needed to get started, and gave us a clear path and the right amount of nudging to progress. He asked great questions, made suggestions that weren’t on our radar, and partnered with us along the way. The result: a website that offers the warmth, tone, and vibe we are trying to communicate as an organization. Thanks Ed. We needed this.
Caitlin Bailey, Co-Director, NLCDD
Our Process
When we connected, NLCDD were already working with the talented Jordana Merkin at Voice for Good on refreshing copy and messaging strategy for the organization. Building on the list of webpages with refreshed copy, I conducted a detailed content audit of the existing website to uncover all the URLs that would be need to be redirected to updated pages, alongside all the resources and events that would need to appear on the new site.
For this project, we worked with Maria Guerriero at Germinate Creative to develop a new brand direction for NLCDD. Using the existing brand palette as a starting point, we updated the logo for improved readability (it’s a long name!), and provided a set of icons to use across the three major service areas.
Whenever a website has recurring content with the same structure – like events, resources, staff profiles – we can realize big gains by creating structured content types. This improves consistency, makes data entry easier, and means we can use dynamic templates that ensure all events or resources are displayed using a single layout.
This project includes custom content types for Events, Resources, and People (staff, faculty, guest speakers, and coaches). These content types power dynamic layouts across the site, including a resource library with search and filter tools, and service pages that display specific upcoming event types.
Dynamic event data on a service page 
Find Your Program feature 
Resource library with filter and search functionality 
Staff and Faculty listings using a custom content type
Results
Before:
After:
