Amherst Island Community Medical Clinic

The Amherst Island Community Medical Clinic is a volunteer-run not-for-profit that brings health services to an island community in southeastern Ontario: monthly wellness clinics with community paramedics, blood work, foot care, equipment lending, well-water testing, and programs like Tai Chi, balance classes and the Loaves & Fishes lunch. Without it, many residents would have to take the ferry to the mainland for routine care.

The clinic runs entirely on donations, so every dollar spent on overhead is a dollar not spent on care. Its WordPress site badly needed a redesign. Service times, locations and contact details were hard to find, especially on a phone, and hosting and maintenance cost about $600 a year for what was a fairly basic brochure site.

The clinic's board members are generous with their time, but most aren't technical. They also needed someone to look after email accounts, newsletters and the everyday IT that comes with running an organization, with no budget to hire for any of it.

Built around the questions residents ask

The clinic serves the island where we live, so we took the project on as volunteer work, with no proposal and no invoice. We designed the new site in Figma and built it from scratch, with colour-coded sections for clinics, events, donations and the newsletter. It is organized around the questions residents actually ask: when is the next clinic and what do I bring, what's happening this month, how can I help, and where else can I get care? Each service and program has its own page, and a Local Health Services directory lists nearby family medicine, hospitals, mental health supports and crisis lines.

Emergency numbers first

After a review with the clinic's board, emergency numbers moved to the very top of the homepage in high-contrast red, so they are the first thing anyone sees on any device. The site is responsive, works with a keyboard and uses screen-reader-friendly markup, for an audience that includes many older residents.

Newsletter sign-ups that add themselves

New newsletter subscribers used to be added to Mailchimp by hand. Sign-up forms on several pages and a dedicated Newsletter page now add them automatically, which takes a chore off the board and makes it easier for the list to grow.

More than a website

We host and maintain the site at no cost to the clinic, including every update, and make content changes on request, usually within a day or two. We also manage the clinic's Google Workspace email, and Tim writes its Mailchimp newsletters and its articles for the Amherst Island Beacon, the island's print newsletter, from the news and updates the clinic's board members send him. That way residents who don't use email or the web still hear about clinic services and events.

The clinic's website now costs it nothing, and its volunteer board has a technical partner it can rely on.

• Yearly website costs: about $600 → $0, with hosting, maintenance and updates donated
• Newsletter sign-ups: entered by hand → added automatically
• Emergency numbers: hard to find → first thing on the homepage
• Pages: 18, covering services, events, donations, volunteering and local health resources
• Core build: about one week, with updates on request since launch

For a clinic funded entirely by donations, money that used to go to website hosting and maintenance can now go to care. Between the website, the email newsletter and the print newsletter, the clinic's news reaches everyone on the island, including residents who don't go online.

See more of our websites for non-profits and community groups.

Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Figma, GSAP, Mailchimp API, Vercel, Vercel Web Analytics