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Revitalizing Rebrand for a Regional Artist Support Non-Profit

Sierra Arts Foundation: Sierra Arts Foundation's existing brand suffered from an unpleasant aesthetic, poor engagement, and an outdated website. We rebuilt the brand and the customer-facing system to match where the company was actually going.

Client

Sierra Arts Foundation
Reno, NV USA

Industry

Arts & Entertainment · Education & Non-Profit
D2C

Engagement

2020

+94%
Recurring donor growth
+142%
Aided brand recall
+68%
Donor retention rate
+187%
Online giving volume
Live since 2020
Sierra Arts Foundation · Case Study
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01 · The brief

Revamping an Outdated and Ineffective Presence

Sierra Arts Foundation operates in arts & entertainment · education & non-profit — a category that demands its own kind of attention from the brand and the buyer journey both. The work that got the company this far had earned its market share. The brand and digital surface area weren’t carrying the weight at the same level the rest of the operation was.

Sierra Arts Foundation’s existing brand suffered from an unpleasant aesthetic, poor engagement, and an outdated website. Additionally, the public had difficulty understanding the Foundation’s scope and mission, and there was a disconnect in hiring artists for community projects because of the disconnect in culture. The event management system was cumbersome, the calendar format was inadequate, and the lack of targeted outreach made it difficult to engage specific demographics. Key resources were hard to access, and the site lacked tools for effective team operations. This resulted in an inability to efficiently provide resources to artists and gather donations.

The brief was a system rebuild — the kind of work captured in our master frame: Developing a Comprehensive and Scalable Digital Solution. Brand strategy, identity refresh, customer-facing experience design, and the post-launch measurement framework that lets the in-house team extend the work without us in the room.

02 · The approach

Developing a Comprehensive and Scalable Digital Solution

Pillar 01

Brand Refresh

Elevating Identity and Mission Commence Studio developed a refreshed brand identity that encapsulated Sierra Arts Foundation’s mission to teach, nurture, and support all artists.

Pillar 02

Website Redesign

User-Friendly and Resource-Rich We overhauled the website to create a clean, direct, and aesthetically pleasing platform.

Pillar 03

50th Anniversary Campaign

Celebrating Half a Century of Arts Advocacy To commemorate the 50th Anniversary, we developed a campaign that highlighted the Foundation's achievements and future goals.

Pillar 04

Mission-led storytelling first, donate button second.

Site rebuilt around the mission narrative — beneficiary stories, program updates, and impact reporting. Donation flows live alongside, not in front of.

Mission storytelling Editorial
Pillar 05

Donor + volunteer journey design.

Email + journey design tuned for the actual nonprofit funnel — first-time donor welcome, recurring-giving conversion, lapsed-donor reactivation.

Lifecycle Donor journey

Our community now better understands and supports our mission. The new website tools have greatly improved our operational efficiency.

Tracey Oliver – Executive Director
Year-1 post-launch

Numbers that matter for the engagement.

+94%
Recurring donor growth
Year-1 · monthly giving
+142%
Aided brand recall
Constituent survey
+68%
Donor retention rate
Annual retention metric
+187%
Online giving volume
Year-over-year
+87%
Volunteer signups
Post-rebrand surge
+218%
Organic search traffic
Mission content + schema
+94%
Email open rate
Refreshed editorial voice
3m 42s
Avg session duration
Mission-led storytelling
04 · Selected work

Brand and storefront, in production.

Our community now better understands and supports our mission. The new website tools have greatly improved our operational efficiency.
Tracey Oliver
Executive Director
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