Pro Bono Website Tackles Postnatal Depression

 

Getting a website is an important threshold in the development of many new charities and social enterprises. When a cause is first created often a holding page or blog or a social media group is used to pull the organization together, but the development of a full scale website marks the moment when a systematic offering can be communicated, when external recognition can be achieved and when a cause is ready to grow to achieve its full potential impact.

MumsAid is a great new CIC that provides free postnatal counselling for new mums. They started in March 2012 with a small grant from UnLtd and support from the Royal Borough of Greenwich Children's Services. Two important tasks ahead of them are making their case to GP's of the importance of postnatal depression support and finding sustainable long term funding. To succeed with both of these tasks MumsAid knew that they needed a professional website to back up their experience and expertise in working with struggling mothers.

"We are committed to removing the barriers which often prevent women seeking help by challenging the stigma that surrounds postnatal depression and by raising awareness about the symptoms, impact and treatment," explains MumsAid founder and Clinical Director, Miriam Donaghy. Miriam is a Perinatal Psychotherapist who has worked in the voluntary sector in South East London for more than 20 years. And She oversees MumsAid's committed and experienced volunteer counsellors and psychotherapists currently providing free counselling to new mums at four children's centres in Greenwich.

MumsAid is providing a great service for struggling new mums, but they needed to reach more individuals, doctors and potential funding sources. UnLtd suggested that Miriam sign up for Pimp My Cause to see if she could get pro bono support in building the MumsAid website.

In September Miriam connected with Bek Cruddace, an experienced graphic designer and web developer on the Pimp My Cause platform. Bek immediately gave Miriam confidence that she could provide a design around the logo that they already had and liked, and a website that would provide information for their beneficiaries and supporters and would be easy for the MumsAid team to maintain themselves.

Miriam quickly came back to Bek with a full brief covering all of the website content needed and example sites that they liked. Over the next couple of months they worked together to create a clear and inspiring site that shares the important work that MumsAid is doing.

Miriam was very pleased with the outcome: "I love the website that Bek has created for MumsAid and the feedback about it from users and colleagues has been very positive. I found Bek incredibly helpful throughout the design process. She made useful suggestions, translated everything into non techy language and was very patient with all my requests for tweaks. She also managed to deliver the finished working design in an impressively quick time frame."

Now that they have a great website, MumsAid's next task is to connect with more mums through social media and they would love to hear from any marketers wanting to help them develop their social media marketing strategy.