SF Education Fund | Marker Seven

Providing an effective and efficient way to engage all their audiences.

THE CLIENT'S CHALLENGE

The San Francisco Education Fund serves as a bridge between the community and public schools. The availability and accessibility of a vast amount of information for students, teachers and community members is key to the Fund's success. To provide an effective and efficient way to engage all its audiences, the San Francisco Education Fund sought to exploit technology, in particular its Website.

“Rather than just another not-for-profit site that focuses on goals and mission, the San Francisco Education Fund's new Website needed to be a forum for sharing ideas among the community, teachers and students; a library for finding resources; an avenue for learning, and a foundation for getting the community involved in education,” said Lori McGiplin, Fund development and corporate marketing manager.

“Because of our objectives, we sought an interactive firm that was proficient in both development design,” McGiplin said. “The San Francisco Education Fund also had very unique database needs. We chose Marker Seven to redesign our site and to develop a customized database application because of its experienced technical staff, and as important, the firm’s ‘can-do’ attitude.”

McGiplin added that the San Francisco Education Fund did not have any technical staff to work through the logistics and requirements, so was relieved when the Marker Seven in its proposal clearly conveyed its understanding of the site requirements and how it would meet them.
To support the San Francisco Education Fund’s vision for learning and sharing resources to help San Francisco public school students reach their full potential, the redesigned site needed to employ creativity and imagination to encourage engagement and provide easy navigation to do so.

MARKER SEVEN'S SOLUTION

Marker Seven designed and built a custom MySQL database for San Francisco Education Fund and created different types of resource entries

The San Francisco Education Fund had a vast amount of resources that needed to be catalogued and made available to the public for searches and the staff for updates. As part of the redesign challenge, Market Seven had to consolidate all the materials in one place, enter the data into the database, index content for easy search and retrieval, and create a flexible administrative interface so that users could edit their entries. Marker Seven also designed and built a custom MySQL database for the San Francisco Education Fund for its over 300 resources.

“Marker Seven not only redesigned the Website, but also customized a resource database of over 300 resources, allowing teachers and students to search for education related articles, reports, organizations, and Web sites and add information a daily basis,” said McGilpin. “The database is easy to search and includes information ranging from Bay Area field trip recommendations to reports about quality teaching and supportive learning environments.”

THE RESULTS

The new Web site plays a particularly important role in the relationship between students and teachers

Marker Seven launched San Francisco Education Fund’s new Website (http://www.sfedfund.org) on October 13, 2005. The site plays a particularly important role as a resource to help strengthen the relationship between students and teachers.

“Our new Website now is a forum for sharing ideas, a library for finding resources, an avenue for learning, and a venue for getting the community involved in education, said McGiplin. “Marker Seven helped us accomplish all of these things.”

In November 2005, the Public Education Network honored the San Francisco Education Fund Website with a national award. In addition, San Francisco Education Fund received the Carmen A. Sarnicola Award for Excellence in Communications.

About San Francisco Education Fund

Founded in 1979, the San Francisco Education Fund is a community-based nonprofit organization established to improve the quality of teaching and learning in San Francisco public schools so that all students in this diverse community have the education necessary for full participation in the economic, civic, and cultural life of our society.