Community Catalysts
Community Catalysts is a social enterprise that works in partnership to ensure people are part of strong, inclusive communities with real opportunities to connect, create, and contribute. They achieve this by supporting people in setting up community micro-enterprises in their local areas; providing Local Area Coordination to help people recognise their own skills, talents and resources and give them choice and control over their support; and encouraging innovative approaches to social care for both individuals and organisations.
Castlegate IT has an established and long running relationship with Community Catalysts. Since we first started working with them in 2011 they have expanded their offering and comprise a family of five organisations that align with their mission.
The brief
The five organisations under the Community Catalysts umbrella had their own separate websites, each for a different purpose including two with member portals. Community Catalysts came to us with a challenge: bring all the sites together with a cohesive look and feel, while preserving the individuality and functionality of each brand and saving on service fees.
The website
We approached this complex project by auditing each website. This enabled us to design a universal, editable navigation system, replicating potential functionality across each website. The technical capabilities and core design principles are the same sitewide, but each organisation has kept its distinct branding, colour palette and style.
Because Community Catalysts provides services in Wales, they are legally required to give equal weighting to Welsh and English language on their websites. To support this, we implemented on page translation across every brand using a flexible and cost-effective combination of Neural Machine Translation and human editing.
The nature of Community Catalysts’ work with public sector organisations and local authorities requires them to provide evidence of data privacy compliance. We put a consent management platform in place across the portfolio of organisations, helping them meet the specific requirements of their partners and funders.
Another key component of the functionality we designed for Community Catalysts was a listing system that enables care providers to add themselves to a searchable directory. This gives small businesses and individuals the chance to bring personalised services to even more local people, helping to realise the company mission.
The result
We successfully completed this ambitious multi-site WordPress installation for Community Catalysts, delivering a replicable framework for all the member brands to satisfy a diverse group of stakeholders. The pages for every organisation have the same potential functionality, future-proofing the Community Catalysts family and enabling them to continue growing with confidence.
Community Catalysts are delighted with the result and feel that Castlegate IT have perfectly achieved the brief of creating cohesion and uniformity throughout a highly usable website, while allowing the uniqueness of each brand to shine through.
