State Humanities Councils

Long-Term Solutions for Member Organizations That Won’t Tire Your Staff

Client: State humanities councils – A national network representing 55+ humanities council member organizations, and the humanities council for the state of Virginia

• Digital strategy
• Information architecture
• Cutom website design and multi-site WordPress development
• Member portal development

Results: A network of 8+ connected WordPress sites launched under one shared visual system, plus a custom member portal serving 55+ member organization

The Relationship

Virginia Humanities needed a network of connected websites — its main site alongside affiliated programs such as a radio show and the Virginia Folklife program — that shared a visual identity while giving each individual program room to speak in its own voice. Managing related-but-distinct sites without a shared technical foundation creates a maintenance burden that compounds every time a new program launches.

Separately, the Federation of State Humanities Councils needed a public-facing website to recruit and inform potential members, and a separate, private space where its 55+ member organizations could communicate directly, share resources, and build capacity — two products that needed an intuitive interface and feel like part of one coherent organization.

Our Approach

openbox9 applies an iterative, non-linear design-build-test process. Discovery begins with questions and research, producing a full set of foundational documents — sitemaps, wireframes, technical requirements, and user personas — before any visual design work began. That documentation was treated as scalable architecture to support the organization years into the future, not just a one-time launch, with particular attention to how easy the finished system would be for a small nonprofit staff to maintain.

Information Architecture

For Virginia Humanities, openbox9 architected a multi-site WordPress environment connecting 8+ individual program websites under one shared system, with a dynamic content feed automatically promoting related content across the network to connect individual programs without manual cross-linking.

For the Federation of State Humanities Councils, a separate information architecture was built for its private member portal: personalized member profiles enabling direct messaging, forums organized by topic for community dialogue, an interactive map for member-to-member networking, and a filterable resource library with upload functionality for members to share materials with each other.

Website Design & Build

Like any family, nonprofits with programs need to share family traits, while expressing personality traits that distinguish them from their siblings. openbox9 developed a shared visual identity system with defined distinct cues for each program. By building custom WordPress content blocks tailored to each site’s specific function — including a media player, a bookmarking system, and custom forum styling — openbox9 reduced the ongoing maintenance load for internal teams when creating new content or pages across the network.

Deliverables

• Discovery documentation: sitemaps, wireframes, technical requirements, user personas
• Multi-site WordPress network (8+ connected websites) under a shared visual identity and CSS system
• Custom member portal with personalized profiles, direct messaging, and topic-based forums Interactive networking map for the member portal Filterable, upload-enabled resource library
• Custom WordPress content blocks (media players, bookmarking systems, dynamic cross-site content feeds, and more)

Results Over Time

The result functions as a genuine network: shared branding and dynamic content feeds let related Virginia Humanities programs promote each other automatically, while each individual program — from a radio show to a folklife apprenticeship program — retains its own distinct voice.

For the Federation, 55+ member organizations gained a collaboration working space alongside their public-facing recruitment site, addressing two very different audience needs within one coherent system.