Funding over $80 million annually across a five-county Central Texas area, St. David’s Foundation is one of the largest health foundations in the United States. Through a unique partnership with St. David’s HealthCare, the Foundation applies trust-based philanthropy to strategically reinvest back into communities to help advance health equity and build vibrant, inclusive communities. As part of its strategic planning process, St. David’s Foundation asked Constructive to align their branding and website to amplify their impact by more authentically expressing their community roots, projecting their vision for a more equitable future, and fostering greater transparency with community-based partners.
When St. David’s Foundation engaged Constructive, their team was in the process of developing its strategic plan—and deeply focused on how their mission, vision, and values translated into an operating model for impact. We built on this work by researching how to best translate their strategic priorities into a mission-aligned brand and website. Central to the challenge was changing a perception that St. David’s Foundation was not as community-centered as it actually is and elevating their commitment to trust-based philanthropy. Among other priorities, we emphasized two key needs. First, to differentiate the Foundation’s branding from being confused with the St. David’s HealthCare hospital system. Second, to create a website that places St. David’s Foundation within the community, not above it.
After two months of listening, learning, and leaning into what St. David’s Foundation stands for, we created a clear strategy to turn their vision, values, and mission into a tangible, visual expression of their core brand ideas. We developed multiple directions speaking to different facets of St. David’s Foundation’s brand to collaboratively create a new logo representing the five interconnected counties of Central Texas, united as the iconic Lone Star State. The brand’s new visual identity design system leads with a mosaic of vibrant, unexpected colors that optimistically express joy, diversity, and optimism. Typography combines a bold, open, and inviting sans serif to make the brand accessible, while a modern serif typeface adds a stylistic flourish and personality that supports the brand’s focus on publishing long-form content such as the Foundation’s storytelling and research communications.
St. David’s Foundation was viewed by many as a traditional grant-maker as opposed to one that leans heavily into trust-based philanthropy. This misperception was unintentionally reinforced by the Foundation’s aging website, which lacked the strategic focus and content it needed to provide audiences with transparency into the organization’s impact strategy and how they bring community partners into their process. Through our content strategy and UX design process, we changed this narrative by combining St. David’s Foundation’s primary website and four disparate program-specific websites into a holistic home that tells their story more fully, better represents the places and spaces in which they work, demonstrates the inter-connectivity of their workstreams, mobilizes knowledge, and lifts up community voices.
St. David’s Foundation understands the complex, interconnected nature of health equity—that people’s environment and options matter as much, if not more than individual choices, and that achieving it requires a system of health that’s informed by and responsive to the community. To visually honor this core principle online, we expanded the Foundation’s branding to how they show up for audiences online. Our design strategy creates a vibrant, uplifting environment that invites audiences in and leads with commissioned photography that authentically captures the spirit of Central Texas and the Foundation’s work with its many communities.
The new St. David’s Foundation website projects the organization’s joy and optimism, providing an inviting space for people to learn about their work, celebrate the communities that they are a part of, and strengthen the bonds needed to collectively advance the mission.
A key responsibility of foundation and philanthropy websites is to help audiences understand how grant making activities reflect the organization’s strategic priorities. If a foundation is committed to trust-based philanthropy, then this responsibility is even greater. For St. David’s Foundation website, we kept things simple, creating easily-navigable information and details around funding opportunities, past, present and future. The new website features clear, accessible information about their work, their impact, and opportunities for funding, learning and collaboration. And by increasing transparency, St. David’s Foundation Foundation is better able to engage community partners and connect with them more effectively.
St. David’s Foundation has long been committed to ethical storytelling that makes space for the voices of people in Central Texas’ communities. However, their previous website always lacked a place to consistently elevate and authentically share these powerful and moving stories. In designing their new website, we created a dedicated space for visual and verbal stories that center on community—then wove them throughout the experience to connect community voices to the organization’s mission. The result is a digital storytelling platform that honors lived experience and reflects the communities that St David’s Foundation serves.
While community-based partnerships and trust-based philanthropy are two pillars of St. David’s Foundation’s strategic plan, they also leverage research to guide grantmaking decisions and serve as a community resource to understand our region’s most pressing health needs. To this end, St. David’s Foundation’s work also emphasizes mobilizing knowledge by sharing evidence-based insights and ideas that deepen understanding of the complex nature of health inequities. Their new website delivers with a robust Research & Insights hub that makes research more accessible and actionable for partners and community members. From mobile dental research to data democratization, the hub bolsters St. David’s Foundation’s commitment to increasing and deepening understanding of what it means
