Founded in 2006, the Lilly Scholars Network is a networking group for recipients of the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program. The Lilly Scholars Network aims to foster connection for students and alumni through service, learning, and fellowship, but their messaging was confused by an outdated and hard-to-navigate website.
To help the Lilly Scholars Network engage its diverse audience, we created a site that balances vibrant design with professional polish, making it both approachable and impactful. Students, parents, educators, and alumni can now explore a site that feels inviting, while easily navigating to the information they need.
Results
The Brand
Lilly Scholars Network has a dynamic and vibrant brand identity that wasn’t showing through on the original site. We brought the brand to life by using their logo and other visual elements in bold and creative ways. The new website strikes a balance between being playful and polished depending on the content, making the brand feel fresh and flexible but true to the philanthropic foundation of the program.
The Website
The new website puts students and community impact front and center, with highlights of student stories and successes. Reliance on photography from network events brings a sense of connection and empowerment, while a modular design keeps the content-heavy website easy to navigate. We also used brand colors to create subtle, color-coded wayfinding throughout the site, adding an extra layer of intuitive navigation and visual clarity.
SEO
Before the redesign, the Lilly Scholar Network website was hard to navigate — both for users and for search engines. With better content organization and overall optimization updates, the new site now shows up well in search for relevant terms. In the first five months organic keywords went from 0 to over 120, and in the first year organic traffic increased over 1500%.
Ready For a Website Built With Purpose?
We built a vibrant website for Lilly Scholars Network that supports their mission without hiding important information. It gives students, alumni, and educators a clear path to finding what they need while showcasing the impact of the organization.
Your organization deserves a great website — let’s create it together.