Voluntary Action Calderdale

Membership Website | Web Design

About VAC

A Charity supporting and championing the voluntary and community sector in Calderdale and across the UK.

VAC (Voluntary & Community) is a charity that has been supporting, championing, and strengthening the positive impact of the Calderdale Voluntary and Community Sector on local lives and communities since 2000. They develop and deliver needs-led services and projects aimed at improving local lives and communities. A strong, recognised name within the local VCS landscape, over the past 5 years VAC have expanded their services and operational support to different areas of the UK, including developing ‘Quality for Health & Wellbeing,’ a nationwide quality assurance system for groups and organisation delivering health and wellbeing services. When we first met with VAC, they explained how since they’ve expanded, they felt that their branding was the weakest part of their marketing and communication. With a new CEO and new directors on board, they felt it was time to rebrand and create a new identity that better represents their services and brand values. They wanted VAC stand head and shoulders above other Voluntary Action organisations across Yorkshire and the UK. In 2018, VAC began working with wider communities beyond Calderdale and were considering changing their name to reflect this. Internally, VAC decided to rename ‘Voluntary Action Calderdale’ to ‘Voluntary and Community’ to accurately reflect their services and allow them to appeal to a wider geographical audience. VAC wanted to express their new identity with a company rebrand and a new website design.

VAC explained that although they have a large membership base, they did not have an online platform for members with exclusive news, resources, or membership benefits. As part of their new website design, they wanted a dedicated membership area for member resources, a place that would allow members to subscribe, select their membership tier, and post. Their long-term objective for the website was to increase new members with their portal and to generate more revenue from membership fees.

The existing VAC website had been acting as a source of information. It did not have any real interactive qualities or a member’s portal, and VAC expressed that they were unhappy with the design and imagery used and wanted a more engaging design with better quality images. The existing VAC logo and overall brand identity lacked consistency and flair. The VAC team also felt that it was old fashioned, stuffy, and wanted a brand identity that would stand out within the voluntary community. They wanted a team of designers to create a eye-catching new brand identity to go along with a new membership website to help raise awareness and increase their presence in the voluntary sector, increase membership subscriptions, and provide an online platform for their existing member-base to access member-only information.

We also worked with VAC to rebrand their brand identity and website for their quality assurance standard ‘Quality for Health and Wellbeing.’

See below for more on our VAC design projects.

Testimonial

“Grinning Graphics has completely modernised our branding and website for our main charity (VAC) and our quality assurance standard, Quality 4 Health + Wellbeing. The whole experience with Grinning Graphics has been great; Kate’s knowledge, talent and creativity took our brief and delivered above and beyond what we imagined. The websites are not only visually engaging but so easy to run, edit and maintain as an admin. We have received so many compliments on our new websites and branding and that is largely thanks to Grinning Graphics!”

VAC

Emma Worsley - Communications Manager