3 Nonprofit Sites That ‘Give Back More’ All Year

If you walk into Acquia’s Boston headquarters, you’ll find our company DNA posted in the lobby. These core values are woven into every aspect of the business and influence how we operate. One of the most important core values is “Give Back More.” After spending 10 years contributing to open source innovation, Acquia believes that investing in its community is a tide that raises all boats. While we live by this motto all year, our commitment to “give back more” is magnified during the holiday season.

At Acquia, we are lucky to have customers that also embody this spirit all year long. Everyday, our nonprofit customers work to enrich communities through innovation and collaboration.

There are a unique set of challenges facing the nonprofit organizations that are building experiences online. From driving donations to stretching existing investments, nonprofits need to think carefully about how they can make the biggest difference with technology. This holiday season, we want to highlight three nonprofit customers who are partnering with Acquia to elevate their missions.

The YMCA Drupal Distribution that keeps on growing

OpenY is a Drupal distribution that empowers every YMCA to operate as a unified brand through a common technology. In partnership with FFW and Acquia, the YMCA of Greater Twin Cities founded OpenY with a philosophy of collaboration that drives innovation and impact. Not only is OpenY improving member experience, but the platform has also inspired YMCAs across the country to contribute back to the project.

Since OpenY was launched in 2016, Acquia has been excited to celebrate our partners at the YMCA. Nathan Maehren, senior vice president of digital experience at YMCA of the Greater Twins Cities, joined Lynne Capozzi (Acquia’s CMO) at this year’s Acquia Engage to share how Drupal helps make a difference in the world.

What’s exciting about OpenY is that the impact of the distribution continues to grow far beyond the technology. In partnership with local charter school Rêve Academy, The YMCA of Greater Twin Cities provides six students with internships through OpenY. In addition to earning academic credit and their very first paychecks, students that participate learn how to use Drupal to develop critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. Acquia is thrilled that the YMCA continues to find innovative ways to practice its mission with Drupal.

City Year grows its community by 1 million

City Year partners with public schools to keep students in school and on track to succeed. City Year AmeriCorps members work side-by-side with students, teachers, and families throughout the school year to provide individualized support, focusing on attendance, behavior, and coursework.

With 2,800 active City Year AmeriCorps members serving more than 250 schools in 25 U.S. cities, City Year needed to deliver an engaging digital experience to recruit the next generation of corps members who would truly educate and support students all over the world. City Year turned to Acquia to provide a platform and technology to help it fulfill its mission of making an impact in the lives of students and communities.

City Year turned to Acquia to provide a cloud solution that would help it continue to engage with young prospective corps members and other audiences all across the United States. Acquia Cloud provides the organization with the ability to scale its mission statement, support global engagement, and bring its program to new countries or schools. With Drupal, City Year found a community of 1,000,000 developers that it could relate to and truly feel a part of.

“Drupal gave eight people with no development experience on our team the ability to build content into an entire website in two months,” said Namrata Patel, director of digital marketing at City Year. “With this external facing channel, we can serve and make an impact on increasing the graduation rate in high need schools across the U.S.”

Parkinson.org reaches more than 500,000 people for Parkinson's Awareness Week

Parkinson’s UK drives better care, treatments and quality of life for people living with Parkinson's. It works with the international research community to develop life-changing treatments - and won’t stop until they find a cure.

For this year’s Parkinson’s Awareness Week, Parkinson's UK tapped Manifesto and Acquia to help deliver a digital campaign that was different, that was creative, and that could engage new supporters.

That work led to Parkinson’s UK and Manifesto winning the 2017 Acquia Engage Award for best Nonprofit site. Here’s the Manifesto team’s take on building the 2017 ‘We Won’t Wait’ Campaign:

This would be its first integrated fundraising campaign for Parkinson’s Awareness Week, with a target of recruiting tens of thousands of new financial supporters to help the charity deliver its ambitious new research strategy.

Using Acquia Cloud and Drupal 8 to build the We Won’t Wait site meant that Parkinson’s UK was able to get the campaign to market quickly and with confidence that, no matter how large the response, the solution would be secure and reliable. After launching the new site, Parkinson’s UK collected donations from thousands of new supporters and captured the details of thousands more, all of whom can now be nurtured by the charity with further opportunities to help fund a new wave of Parkinson’s research.

In total, more than 500,000 people took action during the campaign – driving real engagement during Parkinson's Awareness Week and beyond.