University of Oxford
A new streamlined and intuitive website
In 2008, the University of Oxford publicly launched a capital campaign, Oxford Thinking, with a fundraising goal of £1.25 billion. As the campaign approaches the end its eighth year, it has raised more than £2.48 billion and has more than doubled its original fundraising goal to £3 billion.
Conrad Youngman is the Web and Design Officer with the central development office. He was part of the team that built and currently manages the Oxford Thinking website, in addition to supporting regular giving and marketing promotions, which are large sources of donor participation for the campaign.
In the middle of Conrad’s tenure at the University, he began working with Blackbaud to move the Oxford Thinking website from a third-party CMS to Blackbaud Internet Solutions (BBIS). The development office also enlisted a third party web designer to revisit the look and feel of the website in conjunction with on-going efforts to recalibrate the campaign. The result of their collaboration is a single beautiful, responsive and intuitive website that’s image driven and focused around impact. It is far easier for Conrad and his colleagues to manage, thanks to a significant reduction in the number of web pages hosted by the site. The streamlined website has also contributed to an improved donor journey.
Keeping content fresh with simple and intelligent tools
Even with a more agile website, keeping web content fresh and relevant over the course of a campaign that will eventually be active for more than a decade is no easy task. Fortunately for the Communications team, BBIS has provided them with a variety of tools that make keeping content fresh a far simpler endeavour.
First, they’ve built portions of their site using a Custom Content Part that facilitates smoother updates for news and photos on the website, creating efficiencies while preserving formatting consistency.
