GoFundMe
GoFundMe is a community-powered fundraising platform dedicated to helping people help each other.
Overview.
I was brought into GoFundMe during a time where leadership wanted to tell a more simplified, buttoned-up version of itself. Whether that through messaging or overall brand expression. My first order of business was to own and build out their first end-to-end brand guidelines¹. I was also tasked with doing extensive OOH marketing expression R&D², and fully support ongoing initiatives like GoFindYou³ – a continued effort to built trust and support Black joy year round. I also fully owned and supported GoFundMe’s 2022 Summit⁴ presentation and swag for 400+.
Guidelines.
At GoFundMe, there were, to an extent, brand guidelines. But they left much to interpretation. When and where should we use illustration? Where and how do we use color? Is this photo too non-profity? (If you had to ask, it probably was yes). These were some of the questions among many many more that would be answered during this 3+ month process building out the end-to-end guidelines.
During this time, I worked with brand copywriter Kaley Aposporos and Senior Director of Brand, Alex Anderson to develop guidelines that could both be scan-able, or deep-divable for marketing leads to develop cross-functional brand trust. I wanted the brand guidelines to be clean and modern, pulling in elements that highlighted where we were pushing the brand like large type on landing pages, and soft edges that I was exploring with marketing expression.
R&D.
At GoFundMe I did research and development for exploring color, as well as marketing expression/brand systems. From the start, the GoFundMe Green was so bright that I knew that they needed something dark that it would both compliment and be accessible. I extensively researched secondary colors that were warm and inviting, unexpected, and complimentary, as well explored design systems that could be used as marketing expression all-up. Friendly framing, UI as language, message driven, secondary type, type developed by community, and utilizing the GoFundMe Ray as shape were some of the directions I explored.
GoFindYou.
Next, I had the wonderful opportunity to help work on a continued initiative of GoFundMe called GoFindYou. GoFindYou is a place to celebrate stories of Black joy often overlooked by grief and trauma in the media. We see beautiful stories of Black joy on GoFundMe every day, and this space is to highlight those stories of Black joy as well as act as a space for inspiration, tips, and community.
Through 2022, I took art direction from brand strategist/design agency Neon Butterfly and helped realize it from early figma mocks to fully fleshed-out pages with design systems and 1-to-1 mobile mocks. From here I built out a fully-realized prototype in Figma to hand-off to product to get UX tested, and then worked with the wordpress dev team to fully realize it into the microsite that it is today – gofundme.com/blackjoy.
GoFindYou ended up having the best conversion rate of any GoFundMe outreach program, exceeded fundraiser creation goal by 42%, a 3% increase in Brand Trust and a 4% increase in Perception of shared values—exceeding all goals and KPIs.
Summit.
Finally, in Spring 2022 GoFundMe held it’s first Summit in 4 years, along with newly acquired Classy.org in San Diego. Here, close to 400 colleagues gathered to bond, share stories, and gather with a unified mission of help.
I had the opportunity to own the swag for the Summit, working with vendors that support their community like Hippie Feet and Crown & Brim (Hippie Feet gives 50% of Net Profits to non-profit organizations serving young people experiencing homelessness; Crown and Brim is an LA owned and operated Asian American small business whom did our screen printing, hats and threading). I wanted to design sustainably, choosing colors that work harmoniously, felt modern, and kept designs simple and brand agnostic so it could be worn year-round.
I also owned and developed the summit presentation, working directly with the CEO, CMO, COO, head of product, and head of payments.
