Leave the first meeting a touch smarter than you arrived.
Success story · Not-for-profit · Colorado
One site they run themselves
The summary
UPWARD built Who Tells the Story's website pro bono. We wrote one cohesive story for the Boulder non-profit, designed and built a single site to carry it, and photographed the founders in their own community rather than reaching for stock. Two systems became one, and the founders, who both work full time, now run the whole site themselves.
The engagement
Not-for-profit
Services provided
Customer profile
The firm
Who Tells the Story is a Boulder non-profit founded by a middle school teacher and a poet and racial justice educator. The work is building bridges of understanding across difference: helping people see the experiences they have not had, so that connection and empathy have somewhere to start.
The mismatch
Both founders work full time, which left almost no hours for the website. What existed was split across systems, one running the site and another running the blog, with no single story holding it together. Deeply positive work, effectively invisible.
Why UPWARD
Who Tells the Story does work that deserves to be seen clearly: building bridges of understanding across difference, told through the people actually doing it rather than stock imagery of somewhere else. Its founders had the mission but neither the hours nor the tooling to tell it. What existed was split across two systems, one running the site and another running the blog, with no single story holding the two together. UPWARD wrote that story, designed the site and did the photography together, the same full attention UPWARD gives any engagement.
The work
UPWARD built this one pro bono. The organization deserved attention it was not getting, and the barrier was time and tooling rather than conviction.
We wrote one cohesive story, designed and built a single site to carry it, and photographed the founders in their own community rather than reaching for stock. The two systems became one, so publishing no longer means remembering which platform holds what.
From the shoot · 4 of the organization's library
On location in Boulder with the two co-founders. Open any frame for who, where and the story behind it.
The full library
The partnership
They run the whole site themselves now, which was the point: a non-profit should never have to pay a vendor to post its own news.
The work is out in the world. Go see it.
Keep reading
The ask
A conversation
One conversation, with the two of us. No account manager between you and the people who'd do the work. And if you're happy with what you've got, that's fine too.
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