Willamette Partnership
In 2023, Willamette Partnership hired Sheepscot Creative to build a website and design a communication strategy to support the Northwest Environmental Justice Center, an EPA-funded hub of technical assistance, training and operational resources for environmental justice communities in Alaska, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.
The nature of Sheepscot’s work on behalf of public service organizations means that mediating relationships among aligned partners and coalitions is frequently a core component of our projects. Our work with Willamette Partnership on the Northwest Environmental Justice Center (NWEJC) was an especially resonant example of this.
OUR DISCOVERY PROCESS
Because the NWEJC serves a diverse collection of environmental justice communities—varied in everything from language, race, location, education and access to technology—the process of its website’s conception, design and implementation was deeply collaborative from start to finish. Throughout the project, Sheepscot worked with community representatives across the Pacific Northwest, from regional nonprofits to the Oregon Public Health Institute, Portland State University’s Institute for Tribal Government and the Oregon Health Authority.
THE NEW WEBSITE
NWEJC’s team wanted to emphasize a sense of inclusivity and belonging to website visitors. In our design, we made sure that those sentiments were front and center. Greetings in many languages spoken by communities in the region scroll beneath the hero image; graphics in a personal, hand-drawn style emphasize the site’s human spirit; and the content is available in both Spanish and English (with other languages soon to come).
Willamette Partnership’s team wanted an easy to navigate, user-friendly website, with resources readily available for those in need. Below, a screenshot of the “Find Funding” page displays active funding opportunities for environmental justice advocates. The table is populated by a simple Google Sheet file, regularly updated by NWEJC staff and interns. Filters allow users to sort for opportunities according to region, due date, funding available and funding type .
OAK AND PRAIRIE CONSERVATION COMMUNICATION STRATEGY
Acting on a grant from Pacific Birds, Willamette Partnership hired Sheepscot Creative to:
gather baseline knowledge about oak and prairie conservation from Northern California to British Columbia;
determine key target audiences and constituencies; and
build an effective communication strategy to generate support that results in increased capacity for on-the-ground work.
The project started in earnest with a kickoff meeting and workshop attended by eleven key stakeholders. We took what we heard in that workshop and began to dive into the strategic action plans, funding strategies and communication reports published by participating partners: Willamette Partnership, the East Cascades Oak Partnership, the Klamath-Siskiyou Oak Network, The Intertwine Alliance and the Oak and Prairie Working Group, as well as a collaborative that included representatives of the American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Lands Management, Klamath Bird Observatory and Pacific Birds Habitat Joint Venture.
Next we conducted a series of one-on-one interviews with individuals whom the partners believed could provide actionable first-hand perspectives on the state of oak and prairie funding, policy and communication.
With interviews and research complete, we presented our findings and proposed strategies to achieve the coalition’s objectives.
