A foundation website that guides every visitor.
From the 2026 site we shipped to the concept for what comes next.
Media Visionary designed and built the Richardson ISD Foundation’s 2026 website. This concept is the next step: a six-page site, built on current design principles, that guides donors, students, teachers and businesses to the right next step and shows the Foundation’s impact in its own numbers.
One client, two versions. Shipped, then taken further.
The Foundation supports nearly 37,000 students and 5,700 staff. Its website has to turn interest from very different visitors into gifts, scholarship applications, sponsorships and volunteer hours.
Media Visionary designed and built the Foundation’s 2026 website, live by February 2026. It states the mission up front, puts Donate on every page, gives sponsors named events, and adds video, stories and transparency.
The next version guides each visitor to the right path: a scholarship finder, guidance before giving, a K–12 program journey, and an Our Impact page built from the Foundation’s 2024–25 numbers. It is a proposal to test, not a measured result.
Six ideas that turn a website into a guide.
Every program, amount and name in the concept comes from the Foundation’s own website and its 2024–25 Year in Review. The concept changes how that content is organized and presented, not what it says.
Programs shown as one path, from first book to first career.
Donors give to outcomes, not menus. A slider walks through a student’s years from Pre-K to graduation, and the programs that reach each stage glide to the front.
- Nine funded programs, from early literacy to senior scholarships, each with its own stage markers.
- One honest caveat: the Foundation doesn’t publish grade ranges, so each program’s stage is my reading of its description.
Scholarships a senior can compare at a glance.
A graduating senior has one question: which of these can I apply for, and what are they worth? The finder filters by high school and puts the amount, eligibility and minimum GPA on the face of each card. A bar for RISD students and staff on every page puts it one click away.
| Without clicking | 2026 site | Concept |
|---|---|---|
| Filter by high school | No | Yes, with live count |
| Amount & minimum GPA | Inside each panel | On every card |
| Apply button, desktop | 2,563px, below list | 888px, above list |
| Apply button, phone | 3,132px | 869px |
Guidance before the giving form.
Donate, GEMs, Direct Your Gift, Honor Someone, Volunteer and Sponsor are each clear on their own. The concept helps a first-time visitor choose between them.
- A two-question matcher suggests the best-fitting way to help, with alternatives.
- A GEMs builder turns monthly tiers into a gem you can pick, with the yearly total spelled out.
- Stories end in a next step: the teacher-award story closes with a way to support teacher ideas.
- Every gift still completes on the Foundation’s own secure forms.
An impact page built from the Foundation’s own numbers.
The Foundation publishes a Year in Review; the concept turns it into a page. Every figure comes from the 2024–25 report: $58K+ in educator grants, $63K in scholarships, where each dollar went, and five years of revenue.
- Charts start at zero and label their values, even where that makes growth look modest.
- Colors checked for color blindness, with a table view under every chart.
- Real stories paired with real figures: two teachers’ grants and two graduates’ scholarships.
A site map that matches how people look for things.
The concept is a homepage plus five focused pages, so the homepage invites and the inner pages answer.
- About: history, vision, mission, values, the full board and staff, and financials.
- Our Impact: the Year in Review as a page.
- Get Involved: every way to help in one place, including volunteering and business sponsorships.
- Scholarships & Awards: one front door for students and staff.
- Our Supporters: patrons, GEMs and community partners, with a name search.
Built to current design principles.
- Accessible from the start: WCAG AA contrast, keyboard access, and screen-reader labels, checked with automated tools on every page.
- Works without the extras: key numbers are in the page itself, so they show even if scripts fail, and motion respects reduced-motion settings.
- Fast where it counts: the 3D gem loads only as a visitor scrolls toward it.
- One source of truth: every page reads from a single content file, so a fact changes once.
- Held to the same standard: my own audit found 31 contrast failures in the concept. All were fixed before it went live.
The 2026 site, designed and built by Media Visionary.
The concept builds on a site Media Visionary already shipped for the Foundation. Live by February 2026 (first archived Feb 5), it replaced a template the Foundation had used since 2020.
- Purpose up front: the mission and the district’s North Star Goal in live text on the first screen.
- Donate on every page, with a form that ties each amount to an outcome.
- Programs grouped by who benefits: students, teachers and staff, and partnership grants.
- Sponsors get named events, each with its own page.
- Stories and trust: a grant video, stories, financials and the Candid Platinum Transparency Seal.
| Area | The 2026 site | The concept adds |
|---|---|---|
| Giving | Donate on every page; amounts tied to outcomes | A two-question guide and a GEMs builder before the form |
| Scholarships | A For RISD Students page with full criteria | A finder by high school with amount and GPA on every card |
| Programs | Grouped by who benefits | One Pre-K-to-graduation journey |
| Impact | Financials, Year in Review and the Candid seal | A full Our Impact page with charts from the report |
| Businesses | Named sponsor events | One section for sponsorships, Emerald GEMs and partnership grants |
Seventeen years online, traced through the archive.
To understand the audiences, I traced the Foundation’s web presence back to 2008 through the Internet Archive. Every historical screen below is an unaltered archive capture.
What I would test first, and how it would be measured.
It is self-contained. Task test with 5–8 seniors: “find a scholarship you qualify for and its GPA requirement,” current page vs finder.
Compare matcher-first and form-first paths for first-time donors.
Scholarship-page visits and portal clicks, donation completions, GEMs sign-ups, and sponsor inquiries, measured before any change ships.
Keyboard and screen-reader testing by a qualified reviewer, beyond the automated checks.
Grade ranges for each funded program, from the Foundation itself.
What this work shows
Building the 2026 site meant learning who the Foundation serves and what each of them needs. The concept puts that knowledge to work: it starts from the visitor, shows the answer before the detail, and lets the Foundation’s own numbers tell its story.
It also holds itself to a standard. Every fact traces to a Foundation source, inferences are labeled, charts are drawn honestly, and the concept was audited and fixed before it went live. Where the evidence runs out, the page says so.
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A note on this case study
- Client work and concept
- Media Visionary designed and built the Richardson ISD Foundation’s 2026 website as a paid engagement; the Foundation has updated it since launch. The concept is independent and unsolicited: it was not commissioned, approved or implemented by the Foundation, and the Foundation has not endorsed it.
- Sources
- Concept screens were captured from the live concept on Oct 30, 2026, and the 2026 site on Oct 28, 2026. Historical screens are unaltered Internet Archive captures. Facts and figures come from the Foundation’s website and its 2024–2025 Year in Review.
- What the numbers are
- Page positions and accessibility results are observations of the captured pages. None are results of user research or analytics, and no outcome for the concept has been measured.
- Content and photography
- The Foundation’s name, content and photography belong to the Foundation and appear here to show the work.