Chalkbeat

Refining the face of education journalism

Background

Chalkbeat is fighting the hard fight – informing the public of what is going on in our schools nationwide! They are a non-profit dedicated to education journalism. Chalkbeat has been a long-standing client of ours over the years. We love our continuous partnership with them and watching their needs change and grow as their organization does.

Mission

Continually position Chalkbeat at the technological forefront of Education Journalism. Chalkbeat is right where the action is in our schools and in our government. We are here to help them to not only have the right publication tools to make their jobs easier, but to aid in expanding their reach.

Goal

Because we work with many aspects of their organization, we continuously help them with many goals. Chalkbeat has many different cities that they focus their work in, but want to still keep a local feel while having a cohesive national presence. Small goals include increased donations, increase social likes, and increased newsletter sign ups both locally and nationally.

Solution

We helped them merge their multi-site install into one main site, and worked on having individual location pages. We worked with them to refine and update their typography, layout,  branding, and mobile presence. We implemented an end of the year campaign to raise money for the organization. We developed a robust “Best of” plugin to give editors control of showcasing their article via curation and analytics.

Result

We’ve increased brand awareness, newsletter sign ups, donations, the site is easier management for the CB team and CB tech team, and the user experience has dramatically improved. We continue to work with the Chalkbeat crew on various design elements and campaigns.

Sara Cannon is a Design and Digital Strategy Consultant, UX/UI Designer, Creative Director, & Artist.
Have a project I could help you with? Contact me at sara@saracannon.com.