Update: Proposals are due befroe April 5th at 9:00am PDT.
All Saints Episcopal Church in Sacramento seeks an experienced Web Designer, Graphic Artist with experience in website design, or a team of such people to work with us to redevelop our website and provide some graphic design services. We have received a grant to modernize our website. As part of this modernization, we wish to develop a consistent brand image including a new logo.
We would like our site to be both the hub of an on-line community that is an extension and supplement to our existing congregational activities and also a 21st century “phone book listing” – a place where those searching for a church can see us at our best.
- A professional looking home page which gives those searching for a church a clear and positive impression of our community.
- Development and use of visual elements (logo, fonts, layout) that could also be used in our print media to present a consistent brand image.
- Integration with our active facebook page and twitter account
- A blog with comment scheme that encourages ongoing discussion
- The ability to easily embed Audio / Video from YouTube, Vimeo, UStream, etc
- A content system that makes it easy to create, change, and remove pages. One of our biggest complaints with our current system is that all changes must be funneled to a single Web Master. We would like many people to be able to create content with a few people who approve changes before they go live.
- A section of the site that is limited to church members where we can put “family business” and internal procedures (a private church wiki perhaps)
- A highly flexible platform that will grow and expand with us if our dream of a faith centered community on the web takes off.
Our initial budget is not huge. We would like to explore how much of this we can accomplish on a budget of $2,000 to $3,000. Our grant, which is focused primarily on hardware upgrades, has some flexibility in it if you can show us that it is in our best interest to spend money in this area instead.
Our grant only covers initial start-up costs. On-going server costs will need to be absorbed into our operating budget. We are committed to funding the on-going costs but a high monthly bill is far more likely to chill our enthusiasm then a high initial cost. Schemes that allow us to pay up front for a couple years of service would be well received, as would solutions that make use of freemium services that we could upgrade once we see results.
Our congregation has many dedicated people who are willing to learn how to use a reasonable UI. We have only one ore two that really are conversant in the technology that runs today’s websites, and they are busy. We don’t need or want “something so simple your grandma could use it” but the site will need to be kept up-to-date by volunteers without specialized knowledge or skills.
Our website is currently hosted for $50 per year by BlueDomino.com. It is maintained in DreamWeaver by a volunteer parishioner. Another parishioner who knew some HTML and CSS (but admittedly nothing about graphic design) did the layout in 2004 and it shows. Changes to the site must be e-mail to our volunteer webmaster and manually added to the site which is then uploaded via FTP to our server. This process is a real pain point for us.
Audio recording of sermons are uploaded (somewhat) regularly and posted to our site. With our grant we will upload video to one of the many video sharing sites and will link to those as well.
We have a facebook group which we use frequently and a twitter account which at the moment merely echoes our facebook posts.
We own the domain allsaintssacramento.org and wish to continue to use it for both our website and e-mail. If an e-mail solution is not included, we will point our MX record at GMail and that is alright with us.
If you are interested in working with us on either the Graphic Design, Website Development, or both please e-mail us at info@allsaintssacramento.org. Show us you have fully considered our request and that you are interested in our specific proposal by using putting the phrase “Digital Technology Grant” in the subject line.
Your initial proposal must include at least an estimated cost range. Responses that do not include an estimated price will not be considered further. An approximate time line for the proposed work would also be appreciated.
Please provide us with samples of your work. Please also include your preferred hosting solutions if it applies.
We will contact those whose proposals seem reasonable and whose creative vision seems to be a good fit for us. Ideally we would like to meet with you in person to discuss ideas and give you a sense of who we are and what our community is like. However, for the right offer we are willing to work remotely.