This past fall, Northern Pride donated $2,000 in web design services to the Sparta Education Foundation (SEF). The Sparta Education Foundation is a non-profit organization committed to raising funds through events and donations, providing grants to the public school system of Sparta New Jersey. Since 2006, the Sparta Education Foundation has issued over a quarter million dollars in grants to the public schools of Sparta, New Jersey. These grants have been used to supply the Sparta schools with new computers, SMART Boards, sound systems and laboratory equipment. The Sparta Education Foundation has struggled for years with trying to keep their website up to date. The lack of a content manager and an archaic design made it difficult for the organization to update and for site visitors to navigate.
When Sparta Education Foundation approached Northern Pride requesting help with their web site presence, we felt good about donating $2,000 to the organization to cover the web site re-design costs. This donation would provide the organization with a highly functional and effectively presented new website, a site which would be significantly more informative, more visible, more interactive and user friendly for both visitors and site administrators. The creative new design would incorporate the latest coding techniques and would be cross browser, cross platform compatible. Being able to donate our services to directly benefit the children of our community is important to Northern Pride llc. Some of our programmers have children which are going through the Sparta school systems and we all want to be a part of supporting their bright futures.
In addition to the new website design, the project also included the incorporation of our North Star Content Management System (CMS), a social media package for FaceBook, Twitter and Feedburner RSS, domain administration and hosting services. The custom CMS makes it easy for the SEF organization to control all aspects of their new site, from posting upcoming events, informing site visitors of recent grants, broadcasting SEF news, displaying sponsors and being able to change any content within the site as needed. The Social Media Package we provided is fully automated to update the SEF’s social media networks on Facebook, Twitter and RSS, simplifying the process of informing its followers.
Since the launch of the new web site in late October of 2011, the Sparta Education Foundation has seen its average traffic of 5.45 visitors a day (average over 12 month period prior to re-design) soar to an average of 113 visitors a day in Nov. 2011 compared to avg. of 24 in Nov. 2010, and 79 average visitors a day in Dec 2011 compared to avg. of 8 visitors a day in Dec. 2010. This increased exposure will provide the Sparta Education Foundation with future rewards. The combination of a new site design loaded with new features, gives the Sparta Education Foundation the power to be more informative and prosperous, benefiting the public school children of Sparta New Jersey.
Our children are our future … attend an upcoming SEF event or make a donation to the Sparta Education Foundation, and watch our students blossom.
