United Way Online

The Challenge

The original platform was built on Drupal 7 and a legacy AWS stack. It suffered from performance issues, limited scalability, and high maintenance overhead. On top of that, it held over a decade’s worth of content — much of it outdated — making it difficult for users to find relevant information. The platform’s outdated design and limited collaboration features resulted in low engagement and usage. NGOs struggled to share data, communicate effectively, and work together across regions.

Our Solution

We delivered a full modernization focused on performance, usability, and collaboration.

We migrated the platform to Drupal 10 and rebuilt the hosting environment using a cloud-native AWS architecture with Kubernetes on EKS. This setup significantly improved reliability, deployment management, and future scalability — using Terraform and Helm for infrastructure and application configuration.

Content also got a major upgrade. We redesigned content types, cleaned up old and irrelevant material, and reorganized everything to better match user needs. A newly structured information architecture, paired with full-text search and advanced filters, helped users find valuable content faster and more easily.

The platform’s UI was rebuilt with a modern, responsive design, making navigation intuitive across all devices. We also integrated with Salesforce and LDAP, introduced Single Sign-On (SSO), and ensured secure, consistent user access with accurate role and permission syncing between systems.

Finally, we added collaboration tools that support content creation, track user engagement, and enable personalized content delivery — making the platform not just a place to access information, but to actively contribute and connect.

The Results

The new United Way Online is faster, more secure, and far easier to manage. With a modern tech stack and improved design, users now experience quicker load times, a more relevant and organized knowledge base, and greater ease of use.

Most importantly, NGOs across the network are now engaging with the platform more actively — sharing resources, collaborating on programs, and using the platform as a real driver of global cooperation.