CIVICUS (White Band Campaign)

Web Design & Development, Graphic Design, Online Marketing

Helping a global campaign understand its online network, better engage audiences, and realize its social networking vision

The White Band campaign is a global coalition of national anti-poverty organizations that include popular campaigns such as the MAKE POVERTY HISTORY campaign and Bono’s One Campaign.

With a global mandate to reduce poverty and support the world’s poor, the campaign developed a global network of national websites around their central campaign website. However, the online network was uncoordinated and the central website suffered from neglect, technical flaws, and political ownership challenges. Moreover, central coordinators did not understand the scope of their online network nor its users– this limited their ability to leverage the full force of their global online community.

Over several years, we helped the coordinators leverage their online network by quantifying its scope, public audiences, and impact. Our work was carried out by Dr. Cugelman in partnership with our co-researchers Kanti Kumar and the SCRG. We authored two global reports on the White Band campaign’s online networks (assessing 48 websites one year and 74 a few years later) and recommended numerous strategic and tactical improvements. We supported campaign’s transition from unreliable to reliable web services, redesigned their central website, and developed two social networking websites.

Our services included:

Performing two global evaluations with recommendations for campaign improvements
Undertaking independent research, including web surveys, online data collection, content analysis, and data syntheses
Providing graphic design services, including concept development and the creation of web and print materials
Building a highly dynamic global portal in the form of a digital scrapbook of the campaign
Developing a social networking portal for the campaign