PixelMEDIA Inc.

PixelMEDIA is pleased to announce the redesigned website for the Working Dog Foundation, the fundraising organization for the New Hampshire Police K9 Academy.  Knowing PixelMEDIA’s track record of helping non-profits, and hoping for support from one of their community neighbors on Pease, Chairman Mark Ericson approached PixelMEDIA’s cofounder and CEO Erik Dodier, for pro bono website consulting, design, development, and hosting services back in July of 2009.

The Working Dog Foundation (WDF) raises money to run the K9 Academy, locate dogs for police forces that can’t afford them, and provide convenient discounted training by seeking out donations and running fundraising events open to the community.  In the past year, they outgrew their volunteer-only operations and added two part-time employees.  However, having a paid staff made them ineligible for the free hosting and web maintenance they were previously receiving.  Forced to seek out a new host for the website, they were hopeful that someone would be able to update their web presence as well.

In addition to hosting the website, PixelMEDIA provided logo and website design and development services, as well as consulting on web and social media strategy to help the Working Dog Foundation get the most out of its online presence.

One of the biggest challenges for the PixelMEDIA team was how to reconcile two very different audiences: law enforcement (the direct participants) and the community (the donors). It became clear that what was “cool” to one group might be “threatening” to  the other, and what was “approachable” might be perceived as not serious enough. PixelMEDIA worked closely with Mark to better understand these groups, and ultimately developed a strategy that communicated a friendly, valuable message to the community, without diminishing the very rigorous nature of police dog training.

Mark Ericson bravely put up with the culling we are sometimes required to do on the path to a usable website.  His enthusiasm to explore everything from a completely new site architecture, to Facebook implementation, to logo redesign and beyond was both invaluable and contagious.

I was impressed with the professional, logical approach that was being taken for the project…. Pixel’s ability to gather all this info, remove duplicate bits of data, and craft a much more coherent, eye-pleasing presentation was amazing. Working Dog Foundation is a small non-profit that now boasts a top-notch web presence thanks to PixelMEDIA!

- Mark Ericson, Chairman, Working Dog Foundation

Learn more or get involved with the Working Dog Foundation

Tags: News and events, PixelMEDIA, Social media, strategy, Website design