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Nonprofit · Website build

A century of Canadian research, told clearly

The Banting Discovery Foundation has funded early-career biomedical researchers since 1925. The site needed to make that legacy legible to donors, researchers and grant applicants alike.

Banting Discovery Foundation website homepage designed by Oakville Web Designs
Client
Banting Discovery Foundation
Sector
Nonprofit, medical research
Scope
Website build
Founded
1925, centenary in 2025

The challenge

A charity website has to serve audiences that want completely different things. A donor is deciding whether to give. A researcher is checking whether they qualify for a grant. A journalist is looking for the history. A board member wants the annual report.

The Foundation had all of that material. Finding any particular piece of it was the problem, and a hundred years of history is only an asset if a first-time visitor can grasp it in a few seconds.

The centenary raised the stakes. A milestone year draws attention from people who have never heard of the organisation, and the site had to convert that attention rather than lose it.

What we built

A restructured site that leads with the centenary, separates the audiences, and puts the donation path within reach from anywhere.

Audience-led navigation

Distinct routes for donors, grant applicants and people researching the Foundation's history and impact.

Credibility first

The hundred-year record placed where a first-time visitor sees it immediately, rather than buried in an about page.

Clear giving path

Donation reachable from every page without turning the site into a fundraising appeal.

Built to be maintained

Programme pages, news and annual reports structured so the team can update them without a developer.

Why this one is different

This was a build rather than an ongoing engagement, so there is no search performance data to report. It would be easy to invent some. I would rather say plainly that the brief was clarity and credibility, both of which are judged by the people who use the site rather than by a ranking report.

It is included here because it shows the range. A charity marking its centenary needs something different from a law firm chasing commercial search terms, and both should still feel like they were built with care.

If you want a case study with numbers attached, the Mungar and James Deep Law projects both have them.

Working on something similar?

Send me your URL and I will send back a plain-English audit of what is working, what is not, and what it would take to fix. No charge, no pitch deck.