The Detroit Partnership
A website redesign that makes it easier for University of Michigan students to find and sign up for volunteer opportunities across Detroit, and easier for the organization to keep it all up to date.
IMPACT AREA
Civic Engagement
CLIENT
The Detroit Partnership
YEAR
2024 - 2025
BUILT WITH
Squarespace + Figma
OVERVIEW
The Detroit Partnership (DP) is a student organization at the University of Michigan that connects students with Detroit-based community partners through service-learning and on-campus events. Its website acts as a resource hub for volunteer opportunities across metro Detroit, but the old email-based sign-up process was cumbersome and discouraged participation. Our team partnered with DP to rebuild the site so students can find and join opportunities more easily, and board members can keep everything up to date themselves.
T4SG PROJECT TEAM
Project Manager · UX Designers
Software Developers
CHALLENGE
DP's website is a resource hub, not the point of contact: it lists opportunities run by eight different community partners, and volunteering meant emailing each organization separately. That friction discouraged sign-ups and made participation hard to track. Board members, who run DP with no coding background, also struggled to keep the site current. So how might we increase volunteer access and retention through a redesigned website with a streamlined sign-up that the team can maintain on their own?
WHAT WE DID
We redesigned the Detroit Partnership website in Squarespace with an intuitive, mobile-friendly layout and a centralized volunteer sign-up form. Each of DP's eight community partners now has a dedicated space to share its mission, events, and volunteer opportunities, and board members can update content without any technical skills. We surveyed users on accessibility and usability, prototyped the redesign in Figma, and kept the build sustainable so ongoing maintenance stays low-cost.
OUTCOME
A redesigned, mobile-friendly site and Figma prototype ready for DP's 2025–26 volunteering cycle, with transition documentation so the team can maintain it long after the partnership.
The Detroit Partnership
A website redesign that makes it easier for University of Michigan students to find and sign up for volunteer opportunities across Detroit, and easier for the organization to keep it all up to date.
IMPACT AREA
Civic Engagement
CLIENT
The Detroit Partnership
YEAR
2024 – 2025
BUILT WITH
Squarespace + Figma
OVERVIEW
The Detroit Partnership (DP) is a student organization at the University of Michigan that connects students with Detroit-based community partners through service-learning and on-campus events. Its website acts as a resource hub for volunteer opportunities across metro Detroit, but the old email-based sign-up process was cumbersome and discouraged participation. Our team partnered with DP to rebuild the site so students can find and join opportunities more easily, and board members can keep everything up to date themselves.
T4SG PROJECT TEAM
Project Manager · UX Designers · Software Developers
CHALLENGE
DP's website is a resource hub, not the point of contact: it lists opportunities run by eight different community partners, and volunteering meant emailing each organization separately. That friction discouraged sign-ups and made participation hard to track. Board members, who run DP with no coding background, also struggled to keep the site current. So how might we increase volunteer access and retention through a redesigned website with a streamlined sign-up that the team can maintain on their own?
WHAT WE DID
We redesigned the Detroit Partnership website in Squarespace with an intuitive, mobile-friendly layout and a centralized volunteer sign-up form. Each of DP's eight community partners now has a dedicated space to share its mission, events, and volunteer opportunities, and board members can update content without any technical skills. We surveyed users on accessibility and usability, prototyped the redesign in Figma, and kept the build sustainable so ongoing maintenance stays low-cost.
OUTCOME
A redesigned, mobile-friendly site and Figma prototype ready for DP's 2025–26 volunteering cycle, with transition documentation so the team can maintain it long after the partnership.