Exploring the mental healthcare industry by providing graphic design and branding skills, plus diving further into website design, development, and management.
Vision and Mission Statement (co-written)
— We believe offering mature adults a tried and true path to change inspires the courage to embrace sobriety, health, family, and community.
— Courage to Change is dedicated to providing holistic healing for mature adults abusing alcohol, drugs, and/or prescription medications. We utilize cutting edge modalities that integrate mind, body, and spirit by treating addiction as a brain disease. Specializing in drug-free treatments empowers us to incorporate low energy neurofeedback, neurotransmitter rebalancing, CBT, motivational therapy, DBT, 12-Step principles, and spiritual/somatic therapies. Courage to Change provides a life-changing opportunity in a unique home-style environment to meet individual needs for sustainable recovery.
Website – Joomla CMS
Printed Book Series –
Each volume dives deeper into one of the 7 Program components
Overview:
In this experience, I focused on learning as much as I could about marketing, design, and how non-profits function as a whole. The goal was to earn experience in all things graphic design, and at the same time to gain hands-on experience with website development. By simply jumping in with an entrepreneurial spirit, I was able to significantly enhance the professional look and feel of Courage to Change Ranches, and network with affiliates as well.
Key Features
- Print Graphics: Designed all business collateral and created templates of each resource for future use. I also developed a book series giving an overview of each component of the Courage to Change recovery program.
- Website Re-Design: Collaboration with the original website development company enabled access to the domain name and website on their servers. Eventually, site migration and ownership transfer of these resources was obtained, and I re-developed a modern website, manageable in-house.
- Website Management: Evaluation of website content determined that content was too scientific and confusing for the average person to digest. In collaboration with company staff, we thoughtfully simplified the website to only necessary pages, and then placed keyword enriched content, along with relevant and optimized images. Then, I submitted the entire website, per Google’s specifications, and significantly raised listing rankings to top ten, first-page results.
- Online Marketing: Research and tenacity revealed that Google Ad-words and Vertical Response provided non-profits a grant for pay-per-click advertising, and email campaigns. Another critical move for brand visibility, was to obtain link-backs from multiple, high-quality sources, such as creating a Psychology Today profile for the recovery program.
Technologies Used
- Adobe Design Software: For print and digital design, and for image optimization.
- Joomla: For building a new, user-friendly, and modern-looking website.
- Google Search Console: For managing SEO, SEM, and site listing issues.
- Google Chrome & DevTools: For debugging and optimizing websites.
- Adobe Dreamweaver: For designing and coding emails and bi-weekly newsletters.
- Vertical Response: For organizing contacts and sending emails or newsletters.
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges I faced, was the fear of stepping into this unknown world as an unpaid intern. Although, because I was very eager to learn and prove my value, I was quickly moved to a full-time paid position with Courage to Change. Additionally, I learned how to build, update, and maintain a company website from start to finish, which also opened doors for networking and contract work.
Outcome
Courage to Change quickly moved forward with a new-and-improved, user-friendly website, which I designed to be managed in-house, rather than by a website company. I also created templates for all company collateral, keeping branding consistent and unified, along with simplifying future needs for digital and print materials.
This experience was instrumental in my journey to become a professional graphic designer, and I gained essential technical skills for the future projects.
