Community Reinvestment Fund (CRF USA):
New site for community development fund extends nonprofit’s reach

Community Reinvestment Fund, USA is mission-driven nonprofit lender helping underserved neighborhoods across the nation. The CDFI works with its partners to fund $3.6 BN in loans to small businesses and communities in need. Through the years, CRF USA estimates that it has created or retained over 156,000+ jobs and served over 9,300+ small businesses.

Many types of visitors access CRF USA’s site: donors, small business owners, referral partners, lending agencies, and more. CRF needed a site that could guide each of these groups to find the pages and actions relevant to them. And they wanted a way to link to coordinating pages based on anticipated audience paths.

The website also had to be WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 compliant to accommodate visitors with auditory, visual and other disabilities.

Before commencing work, MVP collaborated with CRF to craft seven user personas including philanthropists, small business owners, lending partners, etc. in order to understand how they would ideally navigate the site.

The new user-centric site approach encourages visitors to explore CRF USA’s strategy and track record of success. Panels on select pages preview images and snippets from other pages to keep visitors clicking to see the breadth and depth of this CDFI’s work.

To encourage action-taking, MVP also created two tiers of top-navigation offering visitors a simple, yet intuitive means of interacting with the site.

Real-world photos help tell CRF USA’s story and MVP employed current web design trends, including large statistics and custom iconography to produce a cutting-edge website. Fonts were carefully chosen to reflect CRF USA’s mission to inspire change with a bold style and modern touch.

MVP’s rigorous site functionality review included WCAG 2.0 compliance testing, such as a contrast test of the text for color blindness making the site more accessible for those with this disability.

And the MVP-customized WordPress (CMS) platform makes the site easy to update without need for external support. The end result is an engaging, accessible and impressive CDFI website designed to grow with this rising nonprofit’s trajectory.

“Thank you for the hard work and talent you brought to this project to help us tell the story of how CRF improves lives and strengthens communities. We enjoyed working together to create a well-organized site that our visitors can explore. And we are extremely satisfied with the beautiful end result.”

Katelyn Bednarski, Director of Marketing