Typically, the Alliance brings together our audience members to celebrate wins in Chesapeake Bay watershed conservation. This week, we’re excited to share some non-conservation-related news: the Alliance and our friends at Digital Ink won a Web Excellence award in the “Website — Environmental Awareness” category.

The 7th Web Excellence Awards competition saw over 950 entries from 37 countries worldwide, including 42 US States and countries such as Australia, Canada, the UK, Israel, New Zealand, Poland, India, Turkey, and Germany. The Web Excellence Awards winners are selected by marketing gurus, advertisers, communications specialists, and web experts. These experts base their evaluation on the innovation, creativity, implementation, and impacts of all the projects submitted.

The Web Excellence Awards provides a platform for entrepreneurs, web developers, and digital gurus to showcase their work and participate in web awards competitions held regularly across the globe. It aims to become one of the most prestigious web competitions to accolade winners’ creativity, innovation, and dedication.

The Alliance has worked with Digital Ink since 2015 on multiple web development, design, and maintenance projects. Our current website was redesigned at the end of 2020 just in time for the Alliance’s 50th Anniversary. With a customized theme, the redesign has allowed the Alliance to take control of how we communicate the work we do.

A few exciting Features

Generally speaking, the new website more accurately reflects the Alliance’s work than the old one, showcasing our four program areas within the main navigation menu. Much of our programmatic work has expanded in the last few years – so much so that our regional teams in Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia now work more collaboratively across their jurisdictional boundaries, and it simply makes sense for us to share our work this way.

If you visit the Alliance’s homepage and scroll down, you will see an interactive “Get Involved” map. This map has been a game changer for advertising upcoming events. We normally have so many events happening in the spring and fall, that it’s great to be able to show people what’s happening across the watershed differently than the traditional calendar or list views. Whether it’s an educational workshop you’re looking for or a hands-on volunteer opportunity, this map shares all of our upcoming events.

Another area of growth for the Alliance has been our extremely passionate volunteer force. Our volunteers are at the heart and soul of our mission to lead and inspire those who live and work throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed to become true environmental stewards. As a result of this work, we now have an entire page dedicated to compiling volunteer opportunities for prospective and existing volunteers. This page pulls from our main events list and only shows upcoming volunteer opportunities. It also shows more long-term volunteer opportunities like Riparian Rangers and RiverTrends. This central hub has been a great addition to our site when trying to recruit and retain volunteers.

In addition to the Alliance’s website, Digital Ink has helped the Alliance re-design the Chesapeake Network, Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative, and Reduce Your Stormwater websites. Our partnership with the Digital Ink team has helped standardize the Alliance brand across our entire online presence which helps audience members, like you, develop a stronger connection with our work. We are very excited to continue working with Digital Ink and see what other website projects take root. Big thank you to our friends at Digital Ink for your continued partnership!