Buckhorn Community Centre: Brand as Infrastructure

This is an ONGOING project until March 2026

The Problem: A 47-year-old rural community hub was thriving on the inside but invisible on the outside. The volunteer base was strong. The programs were meaningful. The impact was real. But the website was confusing, the logo was scattered across half a dozen treatments, the posters looked amateur. To donors, sponsors, younger volunteers, the place didn’t feel as credible as it actually was.

As the centre prepared for its biggest funding push in years, the gap between what it was and what it looked like it was became a liability.

The Insight: Brand isn’t just aesthetic. It’s infrastructure. When you get the brand right, volunteers can produce better materials faster. Staff can pitch with confidence. Donors see stability. For a rural nonprofit with two full-time staff and 300 volunteers, a good brand system is capacity.

What we’re doing: Over the next 10 weeks, my team and I are going to build 3 interlocking systems.

  1. First, a brand platform grounded in the people and place: essence, voice, visual identity tested for WCAG accessibility (because most of the audience is 55+).
  2. Second, a marketing playbook: channel strategy tailored to how Backcountry Boomers actually consume information (local radio, posters, email), plus a library of Canva templates so volunteers could produce on-brand materials without design skills.
  3. Third, a website UX strategy that treated the site as a conversion funnel, not a directory.

Every decision cascaded from one system into the next. Brand colors → website palette → template designs. Brand voice → email tone → social copy.

The results hoped: BCC to gain visual credibility, operational clarity, and the confidence to pursue bigger goals.

Why It Mattered: This shows how brand systems empower organizations to do better work faster. It also proves that accessibility and authenticity aren’t “nice-to-haves”, they’re strategic advantages, especially in rural communities where trust is earned through visible consistency and respect for your audience.