The Healthcare Ad Awards began forty years ago as a national competition to recognize the field of healthcare marketing and advertising. Today, the industry has matured into a sophisticated and competitive field. For the 40th Annual Healthcare Advertising Awards, over 4,300 entries were received, making the awards the largest and the most well-recognized healthcare advertising awards competition. A national panel of judges was engaged in reviewing all entries based on creativity, quality, message effectiveness, consumer appeal, graphic design, and overall impact. 

This year, Forum One took home three gold, two silver, two bronze, and one merit award in the website, apps, and interactive, and annual report categories. Read below to learn more about each of the Healthcare Ad awards projects.

Support Children’s Colorado Foundation

Gold – Website 

Established in 1978, Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation is dedicated to advancing the mission of Children’s Hospital Colorado through family-centered care and cutting-edge research and treatment. The goal of the Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation is to care for and cure children through the provision of high-quality care, education, research, and advocacy.

The Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation came to us with the goal of rethinking its digital ecosystem from the ground up and optimizing how they attract, engage, and grow their target audiences, including donors and supporters. To achieve this, Forum One conducted a comprehensive landscape analysis and full audits of their technical ecosystem, communications, and analytics as well as stakeholder interviews. All of this work ultimately informed the redesign of the Support Children’s Colorado Foundation site which now helps the organization to understand the organization better and see the value of digital philanthropy.

Compass by March of Dimes

Gold – Apps and Interactive

As part of March of Dimes’ mission to fight for the health of all mothers and babies, March of Dimes came to Forum One with the goal of being the digital leader in providing families across the birthing continuum with comprehensive support at the right time to meet their needs. To achieve this, March of Dimes and Forum One worked together to develop Compass by March of Dimes. Compass is an app designed to support parents in their journey from pregnancy through postpartum by providing answers, resources, and compassion at every step.

City Health Dashboard

Gold – Apps and Interactive

The City Health Dashboard’s goal is to improve the health and well-being of people in communities throughout the United States. To do this, the dashboard provides city leaders and communities with an array of regularly updated data that is specific to neighborhood and/or city boundaries. Forum One designed and developed the City Health Dashboard with NYU Langone Health’s Department of Population Health to share and compare data on 37 measures of public health across more than 500 U.S. cities.

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps

Silver – Apps and Interactive

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, uses data to show how where we live matters to our health. For the past 11 annual Rankings, Forum One has developed responsive, increasingly sophisticated data visualizations and maps that let users explore and compare detailed public health information across more than 65 health factors and outcomes for more than 3,000 counties.

AARP Livability Index

Silver – Apps and Interactve

AARP is the nation’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. Within the organization, the AARP Public Policy Institute maintains the AARP Livability Index, a key tool in their mission to promote the development of sound, creative policies to address common needs for economic security, health care, and quality of life. Forum One helped the AARP Livability Index meet the needs of their audiences with an easier-to-use website and accessible data that informs consumer and policy decisions nationwide.

2022 State of Babies Yearbook (Zero to Three) 

Bronze – Annual Report

Zero to Three works to ensure all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life. Their annual report, the State of Babies Yearbook, frames rigorous research, unbiased analyses, and clear communications to influence decision-makers positioned to improve public policies and interventions in support of children and families. For the second year in a row, Forum One developed a brand-aligned design that was both easy to read and inviting. This 157-page report created a useful tool for Zero to Three’s advocacy at any stage.

March of Dimes

Bronze – Website

March of Dimes is dedicated to leading the fight for the health of all moms and babies. Their goals are to end preventable maternal health risks and deaths, end preventable preterm birth and infant death, and close the health equity gap. Their work includes research, education for families and health professionals, support for families directly affected by the maternal health crisis, and advocacy. Forum One partnered with March of Dimes to consolidate their more than 40 web platforms to develop an easy and streamlined experience for audience members to engage as they like, as well as create a website that could clearly communicate their mission.

Washington All-Payer Claims Database

Merit – Website

Forum One designed the brand identity and built the web application for the Washington All-Payer Claims Database (WA-APCD), a Washington State Governor’s initiative to bring greater transparency to healthcare costs in the state and give residents powerful tools to make data-driven, informed decisions that maximize healthcare quality and value. The database provides actionable information and best practices for patients, providers, hospitals, and communities to understand the state of healthcare in Washington, and continuously improve healthcare quality and value through performance benchmarks and metrics. 

We are honored to receive recognition in the 40th Healthcare Ad Awards and proud of the impactful work done by our teams and client partners.

You may be facing the challenge of how to realign your digital strategy and modernize your technology while juggling many other shifting priorities in operations, advocacy, or programs. You’re not alone. So where do you start?

Think about the goal before the technology

Every digital or communications activity your organization undertakes should be strategically aligned with the mission and goals of your organization and the wants and needs of your key audiences. 

Whether you’re working on your overall strategy or a particular campaign or event, always start with clarifying the goal that you’re working toward and making sure that your entire team is on the same page. You won’t know whether launching a new TikTok presence or reigniting a dormant email campaign is the right choice until you’re clear on what you’re trying to achieve and who you’re trying to reach. 

Forum One recently partnered with Easterseals NH to define a future-ready strategy for their digital ecosystem, including opportunities for a new website, an employee intranet, and other digital platforms that could make the organization’s work more efficient and impactful. Through extensive audience and market research—such as staff interviews, staff and external audience surveys, and a comparative analysis of peer websites—along with an in-depth review of their current digital ecosystem and online user experience, Easterseals NH now has a solid foundation of data and recommendations to more effectively utilize their digital ecosystem to fulfill their mission, attract top employee talent, and increase donations.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Other organizations are facing the same challenges, and there are a lot of great technology solutions for digital engagement. Get free advice from nonprofit technology groups, attend virtual events, or sign up for a competitor’s email list to see what’s working and what’s not. 

Our work with the ALS Association details how it transitioned from the viral success of the “Ice Bucket Challenge” to a streamlined, comprehensive digital strategy that united local chapters and national audiences. The ALS Association had a national website and individual sites for each regional chapter. The challenge was that if a piece of content was updated on the main ALS Association website, each chapter website would then need to update it as well, and the risk of having outdated information on some of the sites was, understandably, a major concern due to the complexity of the disease. By implementing a new CMS and information architecture, ALS Association now has a standardized and flexible digital ecosystem to manage content, which has in turn amplified the Association’s voice and message across its 39 geographically dispersed chapters and beyond. 

Start (and fail) small

Once you have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve and what tactics might work for you, try it out before you commit. You can learn a lot about what your audience wants and where your capacity gaps are by testing out ideas.

Define who you are trying to reach and what they care about, then do a single event, a trial campaign, or a single video with a small group before announcing a series. Establish metrics that measure reactions, engagements, and your own internal successes and challenges in executing the plan—remember that staffing, budget, and organizational change management are components of your plan as well. 

Plan for the long-term, and adjust as you go

A successful digital strategy should be flexible enough to accommodate technology and organizational changes and specific enough to chart a clear course that the entire organization can align with.

Growing your digital engagement capacity will likely require investments of budget or time over time. Set up regular review sessions on a quarterly basis to dig into what has been working and how you can improve. These should be longer sessions that involve key stakeholders. On a day-to-day management basis, set up weekly or biweekly check-ins with key staff to ensure that you are staying on track with your strategy.

More on this topic

• Digital Strategy 101
• How to Realign Your Digital Strategy
• Mapping Your Digital Ecosystem  
• Using Service Design to Map Your Digital Ecosystem
• Seven Tips on How to Use Your Digital Ecosystem to Enhance Your Fundraising
• Rebuilding a Complex Digital Ecosystem
• Finding True ROI in Digital Strategies

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022, the company has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride filled with mass layoffs, failed product rollouts, and fears about the platform’s future. Many users—including some of the government clients we work with—have experienced outages and technical glitches with the platform, but have had a difficult time receiving support to correct the issues. For local governments that rely on Twitter for law enforcement alerts, public transportation updates, and to hear directly from residents about service requests, this has been especially problematic.

There is also a lack of moderation, a rise in hate speech, and concerns about how data is handled.  All of this has left many Twitter users and organizations to ask themselves, “What do we do now?” 

The majority of Americans who use Twitter have taken a break from the platform in the past year. Social media managers and communications professionals across industries are also reconsidering how they use—or don’t use—Twitter. For government agencies, the pitfalls and benefits may be even more pronounced as issues surrounding the platform continue to evolve. 

During this tumultuous time, we recommend taking a hard look at your Twitter strategy. Assess your goals for the platform, re-evaluate why you’re there, and decide if it still makes sense to actively use your Twitter account. 

How to evaluate what your government agency should do with Twitter

Whether you use Twitter every day to engage with constituents or only tweet occasionally to promote resources, this is a moment to evaluate why you’re on Twitter and if it’s still bringing you value. 

1. Address key questions

• What are our communications and social media goals? Does Twitter help us achieve those? 
• Are there better ways to connect with our audiences? Are our audiences still using Twitter? 
• What are the benefits and risks of continuing to use Twitter?
• Are there other social media platforms or channels that we can use instead to meet our outreach goals? 
• What are other similar government agencies doing with their Twitter presence?
• Do we have the bandwidth and resources to more closely monitor Twitter to mitigate the rise in fraud and hate speech?

2. Look at your data

Evaluate your Twitter metrics to see how much the recent changes at Twitter have impacted the number of followers you have, how often people see your content, and how engaged users are. If you notice that many of your posts aren’t seen by anyone and you no longer have meaningful interactions with your audiences, maybe it’s no longer worth engaging with the platform. However, if engagement is up, or you’re getting real questions or comments from real people, it may be worth continuing to build your interactions.

How to navigate Twitter more effectively

Many nonprofit organizations and government agencies will decide to remain on Twitter simply because it’s a way to reach a large number of people all at once. If you decide that it’s worth your time and effort to maintain your Twitter account, here are some tips to follow as well as ways you may want to tweak your tactics to fit the current state.

Make it clear that your Twitter account is the official one

With the changes to Twitter’s verified checkmarks, more fraudulent accounts are popping up. Be sure to provide a way for people to double-check that the account they’re looking at is really yours, and not an imposter. For example:

• The City of New York pinned a tweet explaining that this was their official account, and providing a link to their .gov website where people could verify the handle. 
• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau added a section to their website’s Contact Us page with links to each of their official social media accounts. 

Depending on the type of government agency you are, you may also want to use your social media accounts to educate audiences on how to spot fake accounts. 

Monitor your social media channels closely to spot and mitigate issues as soon as they arise

With the rise in fake accounts, hate speech, and technical issues on the platform, you may be tempted to ignore what’s going on with your Twitter account. But it’s actually important to be more vigilant now about what’s going on with your mentions, comments, and direct messages. If you aren’t already doing so, schedule a way to regularly check in on your account. 

• Is someone leaving spammy comments on all your posts? Delete those. 
• Are people tagging you and asking if something is legitimate? Answer those.
• Are you seeing fraudulent information being shared about your agency and/or its services? Send an official post to correct the false information. 

Overall, if you notice something negative is happening, alert your followers and audiences immediately about imposter accounts or fraudulent tweets.

Reconsider how often you post to Twitter and direct your followers elsewhere

Organizations can choose to publish less frequently or stop publishing new content entirely. Let followers know if you’re planning to post less often. 

New York City’s Metro Transportation Authority (MTA) recently announced that  MTA will no longer post alerts to Twitter and shared other channels that riders can use for reliable transit information—including their website, text alerts, and a newsletter. And while they’ll no longer be offering real-time service updates on their Twitter accounts, MTA still plans to monitor the accounts and respond to messages on Twitter. 

If you’ve decided that it’s no longer strategically valuable for your organization to distribute information via your Twitter account, it’s important to consider what will take its place. If you stop posting to Twitter, can your followers get the same information or customer experience from you somewhere else? Do you want your followers to sign up for an email list? Do you want them to follow you on LinkedIn or Facebook instead? Don’t simply abandon your Twitter followers; think through how to bring as many of your followers with you as possible, e.g., pin a tweet and update your Twitter bio to explain that you are no longer posting to the account as of a certain date, and direct users to where they can interact with you instead. 

Hold onto your Twitter handle 

If your agency is no longer going to use Twitter, should you just leave the platform entirely? While you may decide to deactivate or delete your profile, there are benefits to remaining on the site, even if your account is mostly dormant. Twitter gives users the option to deactivate their account for 30 days, which allows you to keep your handle, but means no one can see your tweets or find your profile. However, if you fail to reactivate during the 30-day window, your account will be permanently deleted. 

Deleting your Twitter account poses the risk of someone registering under your former username and impersonating you. The ability for someone to inexpensively purchase verification exacerbates this risk, as users on the platform might be more likely to believe the imposter is the actual organization.

For this reason, even if you’ve officially stopped posting to your Twitter account, we strongly recommend keeping the account active to prevent anyone from using your Twitter handle and claiming to be you. 

Continue to use Twitter for social listening and research

During this tumultuous time, it may make strategic sense to focus more or solely on social listening and sentiment tracking to follow any conversations that involve your agency’s name and brand. And again, if false or negative information about your agency is being shared on Twitter, come up with a plan to mitigate it. 

You can also continue to use Twitter as a way to interact with and keep up-to-date on important stakeholders if the platform is still central to their own social media strategies. For example, monitoring partner agencies or relevant organizations and public figures via Twitter lists can help you stay on top of what’s going on in your field. Twitter can also be a useful place for media monitoring and seeing what prominent journalists and thought leaders are saying about your agency. 

Communicate about your new Twitter strategy 

If you do ultimately decide to make a change, develop internal and external messaging that informs your stakeholders of your decision to step away from Twitter. 

• After auditing what other organizations were doing and deciding that Twitter no longer aligned with their shifting digital strategy, the Barr Foundation sent an internal memo to leadership, emailed their staff, and published a blog post explaining their rationale for leaving Twitter. They decided to focus on other platforms and directed their followers to those channels. They also trained their staff on how to better utilize LinkedIn to continue building their thought leadership on social media. 

Government agencies can similarly explain to internal and external stakeholders their plans for shifting their Twitter strategy. 

Stay focused on the bigger picture

While the news about Twitter continues to evolve daily, remember that Twitter is just one channel in your wider communications strategy. Use it if it’s helping you reach your goals, and think about how to pivot elsewhere if it’s not.

Near the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and again in 2022, Drupal extended the end-of-life date for Drupal 7 to allow more time for organizations to migrate from Drupal 7 to 10. Drupal 7 and Drupal 9’s end-of-life dates are fast approaching, on November 1, 2023. Many government websites have already made the switch to Drupal 9, in preparation for Drupal 10, or are in-process of upgrading to Drupal 10 now. Many others are planning the move now. 

If your government agency is exploring a Drupal 10 migration, a great place to start is to read through our Guide to Planning for Drupal 10. For inspiration, let’s look at a few government websites we have helped successfully move to Drupal 9 and are preparing or will soon be preparing to move to Drupal 10.

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm to School Census
• National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
• US Agency for International Development (USAID) Education in Crisis and Conflict Network (ECCN) & Global Reading Network (GRN)
• Washington All-Payer Health Care Claims Database (WAAPCD)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

EPA migrated their flagship website epa.gov from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9, with much of the migration work taking place in Drupal 8.

With thousands of content creators and over 80,000 pages of content, the EPA needs a robust, intuitive system for publishing content to advance its mission of protecting the environment. EPA started its journey to Drupal 9 as a Drupal 8 migration from Drupal 7. The 7 to 8 jump was a complex, custom migration as it needed to account for features that could not be imported one-to-one from Drupal 7 to 8. Leveraging the strength of the migration ecosystem, Forum One worked with EPA to create custom migration plugins that read data from the Drupal 7 database and transformed it for Drupal 8, allowing EPA to maintain custom Panelizer layouts in Layout Builder and content governance with Groups. 

A few months prior to the public launch of EPA.gov, the nearly-finished Drupal 8 site was able to make the jump to Drupal 9 to make the best use of the concentrated quality assurance work that was planned for launch, rather than holding off on the upgrade and repeating a QA pass. Minimal effort was required for the upgrade from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 and the result is that EPA has an up-to-date website. As they prepare to move to Drupal 10, EPA will continue to be on a supported version of Drupal and the new version of CKEditor should improve the editing experience for their content editors.

USDA’s Farm to School Census 

The Farm to School Census tracks how schools buy food from local farmers and ranchers.  With an entirely new set of data from their latest census results, USDA’s Farm to School Census teamed with Forum One to build their new website directly on Drupal 9. 

In 2019, USDA conducted the third Farm to School Census to measure progress towards reaching the goal of improving access to local foods in schools. Moving away from a previous Grav website that Forum One developed for USDA to a new 2021 site created directly in Drupal 9, the Drupal 9 platform allows them to feature previously static PDFs in interactive and expandable detail pages so that users can easily print data and results they are most interested in (e.g., see results for Montgomery County Schools, VA). The site also takes advantage of a number of other Drupal 9 functionalities, including the Data Explorer tool which launched in August 2022 and includes interactive maps.

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)

The National Endowment for the Arts website, which is a Drupal website running alongside Acquia, migrated its primary website from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 last June following a Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 migration in 2020.

As part of a full website redesign, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) migrated its Drupal 7 website to Drupal 8 in October 2020 to improve the admin experience for its team as well as to prepare for an eventual transition to Drupal 9. While Drupal 9 had already been released, the NEA website first migrated live to Drupal 8 in order to allow for new Drupal 9 modules to mature and become compatible with their needs. 

During the initial migration to Drupal 8, Forum One worked with NEA to use modules that they knew were actively being developed for Drupal 9, and avoided code they knew would be depreciated in the new release. By the time the team was ready to migrate to Drupal 9 in June 2021, they were also able to take advantage of upgrading to the latest version of Composer (2.X) which was instrumental in being able to then quickly update contributing modules in core. Finally, as the NEA site runs on Acquia using Acquia Search, Forum One worked closely with the Acquia team to find the right combination of search modules and Acquia modules that not only supported Solr but Drupal 9 as well.

​USAID’s Education in Crisis and Conflict Network & Global Reading Network

As part of USAID’s Education-Links program, Forum One helped the agency migrate two of its largest network websites — the Education in Crisis and Conflict Network and the Global Reading Network — from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.  

With both network websites having been developed using a hub and spoke model, the agency was able to migrate both easily from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9 because the sites had a nearly identical architecture and content model. The contributed modules each site used were upgraded to their Drupal 9 compatible versions. Forum One worked with both networks to update the theme, Gesso, as well as the custom modules developed for the project to remove deprecated code.  After all the pieces were compatible with Drupal 9, the core update was installed and the sites were officially upgraded.  

Washington All-Payer Health Care Claims Database (WA-APCD)

The State of Washington recently migrated its All-Payer Health Care Claims Database from its original Drupal 8 website to Drupal 9​.

Built originally as a Drupal 8 website in 2018, the Washington All-Payer Health Care Claims Database (WA-APCD) migrated over to Drupal 9 in June 2021. As a site run on Drupal 8 for 3 years, a big part of the migration work focused on removing obsolete modules and tackling any challenges around related dependencies, and managing Drupal’s composer tool for upgrades. 

A core functionality of the website is to allow users to perform geolocation searches to find the local data they need, and so one particular challenge was in ensuring that the geolocation module for Drupal 9 would work as intended. In this particular case, Forum One was about to make a custom geolocation module compatible with Drupal 9 since a newer version, not developed for the custom use case was not. Conducting a first pass on any possible trip-code issues in a Drupal 10 migration, such as the geolocation example, is especially important in establishing expectations around how simple or complex the Drupal 10 migration will be. 

And there’s more to come…

The above sites are just a small sample of government websites that are in the process of migrating to Drupal 10, or will be soon. We’re proud to see our government clients making the switch so smoothly so that they are well-positioned for long-term success.

The Vega Awards highlight the vital role that digital pioneers play in the always-changing digital landscape. They are presented by the International Awards Associate, and judged by a group of industry innovators, creators, designers, and communication professionals. 

This year, Forum One took home one platinum, four gold, and six silver awards in the categories of cultural, non-profit, science, health, and school/university websites, as well as digital branded content, arts and culture virtual experiences, and family and kids apps and software. Check out the rest of this post to learn more about each of our Vega Award-winning projects.

American Jazz Museum

Platinum – Cultural Websites

Located in the Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District in Kansas City, MO, the American Jazz Museum showcases the sights and sounds of jazz through interactive exhibits and films, and features live music in their venues, The Blue Room, and Gem Theater. We partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world. This work not only included launching a new website, but also revitalizing the entire American Jazz Museum brand as a whole. The new American Jazz Museum brand positions the museum to be a beacon of rich history and vibrancy for the community and neighborhood, and attract audiences from around the country to experience music from a range of eras and artists.

March of Dimes

Gold – Non-Profit Websites

March of Dimes is dedicated to leading the fight for the health of all moms and babies. Their goals are to end preventable maternal health risks and deaths, end preventable preterm birth and infant death, and close the health equity gap. Their work includes research, education for families and health professionals, support for families directly affected by the maternal health crisis, and advocacy.

Forum One partnered with March of Dimes to consolidate their more than 40 web platforms to develop an easy and streamlined experience for audience members to engage as they like, as well as create a website that could clearly communicate their mission.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Gold – Science Websites

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) is a multipurpose research facility operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy. Since its opening in 1962, SLAC has been helping create the future, including the launch of the first website in North America in 1991. In order to continue attracting top talent and share its mission with stakeholders, SLAC was looking for a complete redesign of its website. Forum One worked with SLAC to create a Drupal site that achieved all of these goals and more.  

National Rural Health Resource Center

Gold – Non-Profit Websites

The National Rural Health Resource Center provides technical assistance, information, tools, and resources for the improvement of rural health care. The work that the center does is crucial in rural communities, where it improves the health of rural populations and helps to keep many rural hospitals open.

Forum One worked with the National Rural Health Resource Center to design their new website in Drupal 9. This redesign took a user-centric approach to better meet the needs of the site’s users and also utilized accessible, inclusive, and scalable design.

2022 State of Babies Yearbook (Zero to Three) 

Gold – Digital Branded Content

Zero to Three works to ensure all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life. Their annual report, the State of Babies Yearbook, frames rigorous research, unbiased analyses, and clear communications to influence decision-makers positioned to improve public policies and interventions in support of children and families.

For the second year in a row, Forum One developed a brand-aligned design that was both easy to read and inviting. This 157-page report created a useful tool for Zero to Three’s advocacy at any stage.

NMAAHC: A Seat at the Table

Silver – Art & Culture Virtual Experiences

A Seat at the Table is a signature program at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture that critically examines social justice issues that impact the African American community. Participants observe a conversation on a select topic amongst an expert panel. After the conversation, diners engage in an interactive activity to consider challenging questions about race, identity, and economic justice over a meal.

The 2022 Seat the Table program examined “The Triumphs and Challenges of Black Education.” Forum One worked with NMAAHC to create a unique virtual experience that would feel almost like attendees were there in person. To do this, we found a top-of-the-line event platform, developed video assets to aid in the event’s storytelling, and even sent virtual attendees meals from local caterers. The sold-out event brought audiences from across the country to a uniquely-branded virtual experience to share a meal and create connections over important dialogue. 

AARP Livability Index

Silver – Health Websites

AARP is the nation’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. Within the organization, the AARP Public Policy Institute maintains the AARP Livability Index, a key tool in their mission to promote the development of sound, creative policies to address common needs for economic security, health care, and quality of life.

Forum One helped the AARP Livability Index meet the needs of their audiences with an easier-to-use website and accessible data that informs consumer and policy decisions nationwide. In addition to winning this Communicator Award, the relaunched AARP Livability Index won accolades for usability and design, including Gold at The W³ and Davey Awards, but the greatest impact was in meeting AARP’s goals for a user-focused, accessible tool that would truly communicate valuable information for AARP’s primary audience.

Pacific Science Center

Silver – Science Websites

The Pacific Science Center is an independent, non-profit museum in Seattle with a mission to ignite curiosity and fuel passion for discovery, experimentation, and science for people of all ages and backgrounds. Forum One worked with the Pacific Science Center to redesign and develop their website in WordPress to highlight the museum’s post-pandemic reopening and connect audiences with their expanded slate of digital events and exhibits. The site offers an intuitive and high-performing experience across devices, with a smooth ticketing process and user-centered design. The Pacific Science Center’s new website launched in tandem with the museum’s physical reopening, successfully serving a high number of visitors on reopening weekend.

The Nation’s Report Card

Silver – School/University Websites

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a U.S. Department of Education program, assesses students around the country on educational outcomes and reports the results to a wide set of stakeholders, including policymakers, education officials, and the media. Since 2012, Educational Testing Service (ETS) has engaged Forum One to design and build more engaging, interactive reports to share the NAEP results, including the most recent 2022 Nation’s Report Cards for Mathematics and Reading, designing and building interactive reports to explore NAEP data at the national, state, and district levels. We also created Highlights pages of infographics, visualizations, and data stories to summarize key takeaways, trends, and insights into the state of K-12 education, including those for the Mathematics, Reading, and Science reports.

Compass by March of Dimes

Silver – Family & Kids Apps & Software

As part of March of Dimes’ mission to fight for the health of all mothers and babies, March of Dimes came to Forum One with the goal of being the digital leader in providing families across the birthing continuum with comprehensive support at the right time to meet their needs. To achieve this, March of Dimes and Forum One worked together to develop Compass by March of Dimes.

Compass is an app designed to support parents in their journey from pregnancy through postpartum by providing answers, resources, and compassion at every step. The app includes journals and trackers to allow parents to record important information about their journey, a glossary of commonly used terms, a community and resource library, a directory of NICU family support partners, a postpartum checkup, and more.

NMAAHC: Freedman’s Bureau Search Portal

Silver – Cultural Websites

In 2016 NMAAHC launched the Freedmen’s Bureau Transcription Project in the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Since then, thousands of volunteers have transcribed hundreds of thousands of image files of the more than 1.7 million pages of documents in the Freedmen’s Bureau archive, the largest transcription project ever undertaken by the Smithsonian. To make these files as searchable as possible, NMAAHC teamed up with Forum One and Quotient, to build the Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal. Through this online portal, anyone can search the transcribed and indexed Freedmen’s Bureau Archive in one place. 

The Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal was a massive undertaking that could not have happened without the Smithsonian, multiple partners, the thousands of volunteers who transcribed the documents, and the technology that powers the portal. To date, more than 400,000 pages of records have been transcribed. If you would like to help transcribe the remaining documents, please visit the Smithsonian Transcription Center.

It’s a great honor to receive recognition via these Vega Awards for all of the amazing work done by our Forum One teams and fantastic client partners. It’s also rewarding to see our work represented in so many categories, from websites to apps and families and children to cultural institutions, it truly goes to show that there are so always and will continue to be many areas in the mission-driven space that are ripe for innovation and impact!

With a deep background in the arts and a passion for work that impacts the world, Jasmine brings in-house and agency experience to her role. Most recently Director of Digital Experience at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, she has developed creative strategies for global consumer brands, like Virgin Mobile and American Express, as well as for cultural institutions and other mission-driven organizations. 

As our VP of Design, Jasmine leads a talented team of 10 specializing in UX design and research, brand strategy and implementation, graphic design, and more. I’m proud of Forum One’s reputation for engaging design that reinforces the mission of each of our impact-driven partners, and I am confident Jasmine’s direction will bolster the look, feel, and function of our work for new and existing clients. 

I’m impressed by Jasmine’s early focus on team building and “people-first” management within Forum One and her commitment and experience counseling diverse clients on the importance of design thinking. Design thinking requires a lot of listening, and Jasmine relishes the opportunity to work across teams to challenge, experiment, and innovate in design and the overall customer experience. 

Jasmine holds a BA in Advertising, Art Direction from Temple University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young daughters, is an avid reader, and a true creator. 

I’m so pleased to have Jasmine join our dynamic design team. On behalf of everyone at Forum One, I am excited to see our design expertise grow and benefit the mission-driven organizations we support. 

The Communicator Awards honor excellence in innovation and creative work in marketing and communications. Organized by the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts (AIVA), this year’s 29th annual awards included around 3,000 entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the world’s largest awards of its kind.

Forum One received 11 awards in seven categories in this year’s awards for excellence and distinction in website and app design, development, and digital strategy across the categories of non-profits, cultural institutions, science, health and wellness, and education.

2022 State of Babies Yearbook (Zero to Three) 

Excellence – Annual Report for Non-Profit

Zero to Three works to ensure all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life. Their annual report, the State of Babies Yearbook, frames rigorous research, unbiased analyses, and clear communications to influence decision-makers positioned to improve public policies and interventions in support of children and families.

For the second year in a row, Forum One developed a brand-aligned design that was both easy to read and inviting. This 157-page report created a useful tool for Zero to Three’s advocacy at any stage.

March of Dimes

Excellence – Website for Non-Profit

March of Dimes is dedicated to leading the fight for the health of all moms and babies. Their goals are to end preventable maternal health risks and deaths, end preventable preterm birth and infant death, and close the health equity gap. Their work includes research, education for families and health professionals, support for families directly affected by the maternal health crisis, and advocacy.

Forum One partnered with March of Dimes to consolidate their more than 40 web platforms to develop an easy and streamlined experience for audience members to engage as they like, as well as create a website that could clearly communicate their mission.

Compass by March of Dimes

Excellence – App for Non-Profit

As part of March of Dimes’ mission to fight for the health of all mothers and babies, March of Dimes came to Forum One with the goal of being the digital leader in providing families across the birthing continuum with comprehensive support at the right time to meet their needs. To achieve this, March of Dimes and Forum One worked together to develop Compass by March of Dimes.

Compass is an app designed to support parents in their journey from pregnancy through postpartum by providing answers, resources, and compassion at every step. The app includes journals and trackers to allow parents to record important information about their journey, a glossary of commonly used terms, a community and resource library, directory of NICU family support partners, a postpartum checkup, and more.

Freedman’s Bureau Search Portal (NMAAHC)

Excellence – Website for Cultural Institutions

In 2016 NMAAHC launched the Freedmen’s Bureau Transcription Project in the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Since then, thousands of volunteers have transcribed hundreds of thousands of image files of the more than 1.7 million pages of documents in the Freedmen’s Bureau archive, the largest transcription project ever undertaken by the Smithsonian. To make these files as searchable as possible, NMAAHC teamed up with Forum One and Quotient, to build the Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal. Through this online portal, anyone can search the transcribed and indexed Freedmen’s Bureau Archive in one place. 

The Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal was a massive undertaking that could not have happened without the Smithsonian, multiple partners, the thousands of volunteers who transcribed the documents, and the technology that powers the portal. To date, more than 400,000 pages of records have been transcribed. If you would like to help transcribe the remaining documents, please visit the Smithsonian Transcription Center.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Excellence – Website for Science

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) is a multipurpose research facility operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy. Since its opening in 1962, SLAC has been helping create the future, including the launch of the first website in North America in 1991. In order to continue attracting top talent and share its mission with stakeholders, SLAC was looking for a complete redesign of its website. Forum One worked with SLAC to create a Drupal site that achieved all of these goals and more.  

AARP Livability Index

Distinction – Website for Health & Wellness

AARP is the nation’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. Within the organization, the AARP Public Policy Institute maintains the AARP Livability Index, a key tool in their mission to promote the development of sound, creative policies to address common needs for economic security, health care, and quality of life.

Forum One helped the AARP Livability Index meet the needs of their audiences with an easier-to-use website and accessible data that informs consumer and policy decisions nationwide. In addition to winning this Communicator Award, the relaunched AARP Livability Index won accolades for usability and design, including Gold at The W³ and Davey Awards, but the greatest impact was in meeting AARP’s goals for a user-focused, accessible tool that would truly communicate valuable information for AARP’s primary audience.

American Jazz Museum

Distinction – Website for Cultural Institutions

Located in the Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District in Kansas City, MO, the American Jazz Museum showcases the sights and sounds of jazz through interactive exhibits and films, and features live music in their venues, The Blue Room, and Gem Theater. We partnered with the Museum to launch their new brand to the world. This work not only included launching a new website, but also revitalizing the entire American Jazz Museum brand as a whole. The new American Jazz Museum brand positions the museum to be a beacon of rich history and vibrancy for the community and neighborhood, and attract audiences from around the country to experience music from a range of eras and artists.

National Rural Health Resource Center

Distinction – Website for Non-Profit

The National Rural Health Resource Center provides technical assistance, information, tools, and resources for the improvement of rural health care. The work that the center does is crucial in rural communities where it improves the health of rural populations and helps to keep many rural hospitals open.

Forum One worked with the National Rural Health Resource Center to design their new website in Drupal 9. This redesign took a user-centric approach to better meet the needs of the site’s users and also utilized accessible, inclusive, and scalable design.

Pacific Science Center

Distinction – Website for Cultural Institutions

The Pacific Science Center is an independent, non-profit museum in Seattle with a mission to ignite curiosity and fuel passion for discovery, experimentation, and science for people of all ages and backgrounds. Forum One worked with the Pacific Science Center to redesign and develop their website in WordPress to highlight the museum’s post-pandemic reopening and connect audiences with their expanded slate of digital events and exhibits. The site offers an intuitive and high-performing experience across devices, with a smooth ticketing process and user-centered design. The Pacific Science Center’s new website launched in tandem with the museum’s physical reopening, successfully serving a high number of visitors on reopening weekend. 

Support Children’s Colorado Foundation

Distinction – Website for Health & Wellness

Established in 1978, Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation is dedicated to advancing the mission of Children’s Hospital Colorado through family-centered care and cutting-edge research and treatment. The goal of the Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation is to care for and cure children through the provision of high-quality care, education, research, and advocacy.

The Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation came to us with the goal of rethinking its digital ecosystem from the ground up and optimizing how they attract, engage, and grow their target audiences, including donors and supporters. To achieve this, Forum One conducted a comprehensive landscape analysis and full audits of their technical ecosystem, communications, and analytics as well as stakeholder interviews. All of this work ultimately informed the redesign of the Support Children’s Colorado Foundation site which now helps the organization to understand the organization better and see the value of digital philanthropy.

The Nation’s Report Card

Distinction – Website for Education

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a U.S. Department of Education program, assesses students around the country on educational outcomes and reports the results to a wide set of stakeholders, including policymakers, education officials, and the media. Since 2012, Educational Testing Service (ETS) has engaged Forum One to design and build more engaging, interactive reports to share the NAEP results, including the most recent 2022 Nation’s Report Cards for Mathematics and Reading, designing and building interactive reports to explore NAEP data at the national, state, and district levels. We also created Highlights pages of infographics, visualizations, and data stories to summarize key takeaways, trends, and insights into the state of K-12 education, including those for the Mathematics, Reading, and Science reports. 

Winning awards is always something to be proud of, but what we’re most proud of is the amazing work our Forum One team members do every day to create an impact for our clients. Each of the teams behind these projects bring best-in-class skills and a passion for their clients’ missions that allow us to not only win awards like this year’s Communicator Awards but also to make an impact in our communities and our world, and for that, we couldn’t be more thankful.

Understand common efficiencies

Knowing some of the most common ways organizations build increased ROI into digital projects can help you design strategies that maximize the value of every initiative.

Reduce calls and emails by optimizing online information 

ROI: Making your most-sought information and actions easy to find and simple to access can reduce other burdens. Organizations find they answer fewer questions by phone, email, or social media when their information architecture (IA) works, saving staff time and even reducing the need for some traditional “customer service” roles that can be accomplished on an efficient site. What’s more, an improved IA makes for happy site visitors, which can improve overall impressions of your organization and brand. Positive, efficient interactions are built-in marketing.

How to do it: Every Forum One digital project includes an evaluation of the IA of the existing or planned platform. This isn’t an “extra”—it’s a cornerstone of our strategy to design for impact—but organizations don’t always think about the efficiencies gained through IA improvement. In an IA assessment, content audits and data analysis can reveal what information your users seek, how often they “give up” after navigating within the platform, and what you know about the most frequent requests among visitors. An improved IA makes your key platform purposes—to make a donation, sign up as a member, or access resources—smooth and accessible.    

Bring design in-house with templates and automation

ROI: Automation and easily customizable templates can remove the need for external graphic design support and make executing an expanded content strategy easier and more efficient.

How to do it: A new or refreshed branding project should never end with logo files alone. Taking time during a branding project to collaboratively strategize the type and format of content needs can help organizations outline templates and automated processes for content delivery. Pre-planning how a piece of content lands on the website and is quickly adapted to social media and print-friendly pieces, using templates in user-friendly software like Canva, is a holistic way to extend a new or refreshed brand and optimize internal capacity and time.  

Eliminate time-consuming tasks with process integration 

ROI: Staff time and frustration are saved when automated processes work. Team members dedicated to data entry can refocus on member services and other more personal touch points, delivering higher quality service and focusing on mission-driven work.

How to do it: Process integration—helping your digital systems talk to each other and manage tasks automatically—admittedly isn’t as straightforward as IA or design templates. It can require up-front investments of time and money to evaluate, install, and customize solutions that fit your needs. But the ROI can equally be higher. For organizations with high data processing needs, such as those serving clients with intake forms or detailed surveys, it’s a must. Organizations with advanced fundraising and outreach activities—managing direct mail and multiple ongoing campaigns—also benefit when processes like data entry, email, and touch points are automated.

How to uncover hidden ROI

Organizations generally recognize the weaknesses of their current websites, be it visual appeal, an outdated brand, or a clunky and confusing interface. But the hidden costs of processes and workflows—the time staff is spending preparing content to publish or entering data—can be overlooked. Habits form easily. We often hear “This is just how we’ve always done it” when examining how nonprofits accomplish tasks.

These are the places to look for efficiencies, but they can be hard to see on your own.

We recommend walking an outside advisor or consultant through your workflows. This doesn’t have to be elaborate and in fact, is a great way to prepare for an RFP or a new digital strategy. Explain the steps, for example, after a site visitor completes a form. How many people and systems are needed to take that single sign-up to its full action?

We’ve seen web forms feed Excel sheets, Excel sheets require cleaning before importing to Salesforce, individual records requiring updates, campaigns exported to email programs, and email analytics put back into Salesforce records! Simply explaining your methods to an outside advisor can help you realize the amount of time that could be saved with better integration.  

Beyond the bottom line: Job satisfaction

While there are financial incentives to all these optimizations, the most important ROI may be less tangible.

In a time when employers are concerned about staff satisfaction, and employees have choices for where they work, using optimization strategies to integrate and remove manual, repetitive processes can lead to happier—and ultimately more productive—staff.

Use ROI to free your teams to delve into content strategy, writing, program design, or other creative, fulfilling work. Helping teams commit to meaningful work is at the heart of the mission-driven organizations we see succeed.

Why CX is so relevant to your EX strategy

Keeping top CX priorities in mind can help you effectively focus your EX efforts. The desire for convenience, personalization, transparency, incorporation of employee feedback, faster response times, and compassion can be translated into a better employee experience.

Convenience

This can mean many different things for different employees, just as it does for the customer, but it may include offering flexible work hours; supporting a bring-your-own-device policy; providing concierge services and office perks; and prioritizing quality of work over the quantity of hours logged. Finding ways to help employees achieve a happy work-life balance by offering conveniences can encourage morale and reduce turnover. 

Personalization

As an employer, you need to consider the needs of your broader workforce. Yet, taking stock of different segments (i.e. remote vs. non-remote workers) and individual needs, and seeking to communicate on a more personalized level can positively impact employee well-being and work effectiveness. Segmentation and personalization are key to offering the employee experience needed to support people in the way that best suits them. Engaging all employees in dialogue and reaching out to connect and empathize will reap dividends.

Transparency

Involving employees in change efforts and communicating transparently can improve engagement, especially among remote workers. Further, if everyone’s voice is heard and respected, it can help cultivate a culture of inclusion and collaboration. This also extends to transparency around career growth opportunities for both current and potential employees. 

Case in point: the My DOI Career platform

Forum One and subcontractor Polydelta partnered with the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to design and develop the My DOI Career tool to provide prospective employees a glimpse of the many job opportunities and paths their careers could take and to let current DOI employees know how they can find another job within the Department and how their skillsets may transfer to other opportunities. The award-winning resource was created in order to address retention challenges, connect employees to development and growth opportunities within the Department, and recruit the next generation of DOI employees.

How to weave CX into your EX

Here are three quick and easy ways to start weaving CX into how you approach EX.

Incorporate employee feedback

Just as customers expect to see some results from their feedback, employees want to know their input matters at work. If you survey employees about culture or a new policy or procedure, close the loop by reporting on feedback findings and integrating that into the change effort. This helps to demonstrate appreciation, encourage collaboration, help people feel heard, and boost employee satisfaction.

Improve your response time

Replying to customer emails promptly can provide a competitive advantage. The same is true of employee communications. They are just as likely to feel anxious, disrespected, and underappreciated if their contact with company leaders is left unattended for too long. For staff to have a positive experience, you’ll want to automate away messages when you’re out of the office, proactively address emails you can’t respond to fully immediately, delegate to others the messages you can’t immediately address, and establish times of the day when you will consistently log in and review and respond to emails.

Show compassion

For the past three years, leaders have been shouldering a big emotional burden in helping teams navigate the effects of the pandemic. The empathy this requires is important to good leadership, but it can also lead to burnout. Compassionate leadership helps create space within an organization to make individuals and groups feel genuinely cared for. 

While there are financial incentives to all of these approaches, the most important ROI may be less tangible. It could mean a stronger sense of corporate culture and an enhanced brand purpose for your organization.  

The selection process

This year’s leaders were chosen from a panel of their peers based on six key characteristics that make up an Engage FedGov Leader:

• Exemplify Open Communication
• Evidence of Mission Focus    
• Execution as a Good Partner    
• Engage with the Community    
• Encourage Inclusivity    
• Exemplify Innovation    

Mike is a great example of all of these characteristics. He raises excitement and intrigue as a thought leader around how the latest developments in technology can make people’s lives better—from discussing ways that social media can support communities in the developing world, to how AI can improve food security. In 2019, he was already publicly posing important questions to government about the potential and pitfalls of applying AI to solve development challenges (source: USAID’s Research Technical Assistance Center).

To boot, Mike is an extremely empathetic and approachable person. He has been known to walk the halls of USDA to check in on former clients, meet new prospects, and talk openly about the challenges they are facing. Just last fall, he launched an “off-the-record” virtual roundtable series that brings leaders in government together to discuss the technical challenges and needs they are experiencing in a safe space with their peers across other agencies. The series continues this year thanks to its success and his leadership. 

Mike stands out from his peers because he prioritizes the impact of our actions, and how what we can do for our government clients will help citizens and communities on the ground. His approach is what has brought success both to Forum One as a government contractor—having secured and nurtured long-term relationships with USAID, DOI, the Smithsonian, and EPA to name a few—and the people and communities that our government clients are focused on supporting. His innovative thinking around AI greatly contributed to the development of the “My DOI Career” website which recently won an honorable mention for the 2023 HRM Impact Award. 

His overall approach to community building and support is a key contributor to our own company culture. Mike was the one who proposed an every-other-Friday off 9:80 pilot program to support staff during a stressful time in the summer of 2020. It was so successful that it is now a permanent program that over 85% of staff participate in. Beyond his company/consultant role, Mike has also been a huge community advocate for change, having worked to support Everytown work to end gun violence by volunteering to strengthen their SEO and SEM efforts, and was previously a long-time Capitol Hill Scouts leader, a troupe that includes both boys and girls in its programming.

Congratulations, Mike! We are grateful for you and all that you do!