Growing Sustainable Development for Moroccan Communities

While the High Atlas Foundation doesn’t compete with similar organizations in Morocco, they do need to stand out among their international funders and donors. We dug into the sustainable development landscape in order to create branding and messaging that distinguishes them among government agencies, educational institutions, international nonprofits, and donors around the world.

Already set up on an international giving platform, the High Atlas Foundation team wanted more control over their fundraising avenues. We worked with them to establish multiple giving pathways including donations, peer-to-peer fundraising, and more.

The updated visual ecosystem we created for the High Atlas Foundation brand started with moodboards and extended into a new logo and a complete visual design system.

The logo leads the way, evoking the Atlas mountain range in Morocco and using green to hint at the agricultural development for which they’re most known. The Sky Arch element of the design softens the overall feel, creates a sense of wholeness and completion, and harkens back to their previous logo. 

These elements come together to establish a modern brand expression that feels like an established organization rather than an outdoor brand while honoring the organization’s visual legacy.

Icons and illustrations were introduced across the site to balance out the visual look without making it feel too playful. These accents are connected to the linework throughout the site, highlight specific pieces of content, and add to the visual language.

As an international organization, it’s critical for their brand-building and fundraising efforts that they have a consistent understanding of their brand expression to build out future elements across all communications and collateral. The brand style guide that we prepared for them keeps everyone on their growing communications team on the same page and provides clear guidance to the visual ecosystem, its usage, and current messaging.

An organization that’s been operating for almost a quarter of a century, it’s important to tell their story in a way that goes in-depth without feeling overwhelming. We created a history of quick snippets that tells the story in a way that entices people to move from one item to the next.

Establishing the voice and tone of the High Atlas Foundation is critical to their fundraising and communications initiatives. As a heart-centered, friendly, and welcoming organization their messaging also needs to project the informative, academic, and professional approach to their work.

In preparation for creating the overriding messaging and website copy for the High Atlas Foundation, we delineated their core audiences in order to ensure that they are addressing them all across the site and in external communications.

• Audience 1: Individual Supporters
• Audience 2: Institutional Supporters
• Audience 3: Partners
• Audience 4: Beneficiaries of Our Work
• Audience 5: Academic Partnerships

The primary pages throughout the site begin with context setting that tells a site visitor more than just what the subject of the page.

With over a half dozen active programs, communicating what they do requires detailed yet succinct copywriting to keep readers engaged and informed.

Working with the High Atlas Foundation team on expressing their mission, vision, and values, we developed value statements that not only communicate these ideas but indicate how they put those concepts into action.

To make website changes easy to do, our developers built in a Preview feature that allows the communications team to see what changes will look like without having to publish pages. This feature saves time and allows the process of updating and adding to the site to go smoothly.

Over the decades they have been operating, the High Atlas Foundation has worked on a multitude of projects across Morocco. We wanted to demonstrate their impact as more than a list — we wanted it to be an experience. The interactive map on the Impact page is the result, a way for site visitors to both explore what interests them and see the scale of Impact at a glance.

Due to its evolution over the years, it had become challenging for the High Atlas Foundation team to describe what they do. Our solution was to design and build a Homepage that serves as a summation of everything they do with links to deeper content. This provides grounding in programs, impact, and insights from their work.

We worked with the High Atlas Foundation to create pathways to sustainable revenue. In addition to encouraging people to donate and support an individual community project, we built out a peer-to-peer fundraising function. This allows people to get involved with their work on a personal basis, create their own fundraiser, set goals, and monitor the progress of their fundraiser.

The new website facilitates a bold approach to social media use to raise awareness and drive sustainable revenue for the nonprofit. With an entirely new visual language, we wanted to provide their marketing, communications, and development teams with visual assets that aligned with the updated brand expression.

The High Atlas Foundation’s decision to rebrand, update their visual ecosystem, improve their online presence, bring their messaging into alignment with their modern mission, and provide themselves with options to create greater sustainable revenue is a strategic investment in the future.

To get the ball rolling on the next chapter in the organization, we worked with them to create a rollout campaign built around the idea A New Season. The rollout included landing pages that expressed their commitment to their ongoing work across Morocco.