Global Fund for Women
Feminist Funder

Here is the website before the redesign.

We wanted to help the team design and launch a new website that would be helpful to all of its users: the worldwide audience, donors, grant seekers, and internal Global Fund for Women team.

I led the UX research, strategy, and wireframing work. Our team included a senior visual designer: Ashley Newcomer, a junior product designer: Hee Je Wi, and a project manager and content writer: V Pan. We were later joined by a wonderful product design intern: Dariel Davis. Ritik Dholakia oversaw the overall strategy and project.

We worked closely with the internal departments of Global Fund for Women to understand their different needs and requirements. We wanted all teams to be heard and have the website serve each well.

We also sent a survey out to our audience and had a great response.

Based on our audit, research, and stakeholder interviews, we were able to identify the main issues.

We focused on simplifying the site information architecture and sharpening the navigation terminology. The navigation at the time proved to be confusing, tools and information were hidden, and page content did not always match what users expected to see.

We created five main landing pages that would serve all of our different users, plus a 'latest' page for news.

In terms of strategy and content, we advised the team to create messaging that works well on web and mobile: simplify long-form content to be more digestible, use simple language, and back up approach with examples.

One section that was challenging to tackle was the grantee section: the part of the site that explains how the grant application works. I met with the grants program team several times and learned from them what the detailed process was. We spoke about the pain points in their day-to-day work and listed all of the information that potential grantees often ask for. I then redesigned the application explanation page to predict our users’ needs. The goal was to answer all of their questions ahead of time so we could lower the quantity of email assistance needed.

Towards the end of 2020, I stepped in as project manager (to fill in for the lovely Nicole Crossley who went out on maternity leave early) and led the Dev and QA process with Wave Motion Digital.

The new site launched in July 2021 and the Global Fund for Women team was thrilled with the outcome.

Helping them refresh and relaunch their web presence was very fulfilling. Now they are able to share their story and the stories of the gender justice movements they help fund around the world.