Mountain Education Alliance
Branding and strategy for an organization focused on outdoor education standardization
Date
2020-2021
Client
Mountain Education Alliance
Responsibilities
Digital Strategy
Branding
Art Direction & Logo Design
Content Writing
Website Audit & Consulting
Website
Background
The Mountain Education Alliance (MEA) is a partnership of non-profit recreational mountain clubs focused on improving the quality of education among volunteer based outdoor education in mountain sports such as rock and ice climbing, mountaineering, and more.
MEA started in 2016 as an informal gathering of the largest mountain clubs in the country and evolved as the group realized that they all shared a common challenge: their organizations relied on volunteer leaders who had no consistent standard of training.
For each of these non-profit organizations, volunteer leaders allow them to have a much wider reach than would be possible with paid staff of the same numbers. Without training standards, the quality instruction and leadership depended heavily on individual instructors’ personal skill sets. Additionally, training standards were needed to ensure leaders in high risk activities were prepared and up to date with industry best practices.
Thus, the Leadership Education and Development Program (LEAD Program) was created to give volunteer mountain leaders consistent, quality training to become better educators.
In Search of Identity
After years of drafting and planning, MEA’s work was quickly moving towards a public launch of trainings and certifications. The group had long struggled with clearly explaining to their members and stakeholders what the value and purpose of the project was.
The group lacked identity and structure. They also struggled with inconsistent and ineffective communication around the product that was being built. This led to many instances of the group being unable to explain the value of MEA’s work to stakeholders. In a project that depended on board members, donors, and volunteers getting buy-in, these issues needed to be addressed.
MEA realized it needed to formalize from a loose group of non-profits into a single entity, while still allowing each organization to retain its autonomy. The idea was that this balance would allow MEA members to have a single communication strategy and promote the product to stakeholders effectively.
My Role
My primary role was as a project manager, contributor and strategist for MEA initiatives on a national scale, in addition to being the creative lead.
In this role, I was responsible for spearheading the branding, content creation, and digital strategy for the newly formed MEA and the LEAD Program. In addition to this work I also led the creation and implementation of the LEAD training and certification, including running four pilot programs across the country for all five MEA organizations.
What's in a Name?
I worked with our executive and management teams to identify important criteria and outline objectives for choosing a name. We met in Denver and ran a naming session that identified important attributes to the group. We split into groups of 2-3 to brainstorm.
There were several objectives we aimed to meet:
- Showcase our primary function: helping mountain clubs and their volunteers improve education and leader standards.
- Highlight our partnership that balances collaboration with organizational independence
- Create a memorable name that conveys trust and experience
After the small group brainstorming, we came together and discussed different options. I helped keep the group on track by keeping the focus on our objectives, as well as ensuring we discussed any names that may be problematic or too similar to other organizations in the industry.
Our meeting ended with multiple options still on the table. We had narrowed down to a handful of potential names. We decided to sit on it for a few weeks and work remotely in a future meeting to pin down the final name. At the same time, we also started a remote process for naming our certification program, which is the main product that MEA provides.
I reviewed the options on the table. After reviewing and iterating on these ideas, I was able to propose a name for both the organization and the certification program. The end result was the Mountain Education Alliance and the LEAD Program (Leadership Education and Development). The group felt these names fit our needs well and we moved forward with a trademark review, domain name purchasing, and other steps to secure the rights to these names.
Mountain Education Alliance is a descriptive name with an easy to say and easy to remember acronym. MEA is a unique title in the mountain sports industry and embodies all of the objectives we set out to meet. It describes the group's partnership focused on mountain sports education.
The LEAD Program works well as both a descriptive acronym and a name that describes what MEA is doing: developing mountain leaders and educators. During the development of the LEAD Program name we also decided to call those individuals who became certified in these programs Certified Educators.
"
Nick is that rare person who always adds value to a group, contributing in his own right with a breadth of skills and expertise while also elevating the group, finding common ground and moving everyone forward.
"
Elizabeth L. - Executive Director, Mountain Education Alliance
Creating Value for Stakeholders and Volunteers
Our team needed more than a name to ground the organization and the mission. While everyone involved knew about all the great things MEA was capable of, we had struggled with messaging and distilling our purpose into an easily digestible format.
I proposed we develop a mission statement to clearly articulate the purpose of the organization, along with a set of values that tell a bit more of what MEA stands for. I worked with our team to identify the most important pieces of what MEA does, and what exactly we wanted to be known for.
Mission Statement
Crafting a mission statement was a fairly simple process. Because I was so involved in the larger project, I had a good understanding of what the goals of the MEA were, we just had not crafted them into a collection of words that we agreed was a good summary.
Things I knew were extremely important to the group:
- Improving outdoor education quality
- Working together and building a community
- Being intentional about inclusivity
I drafted a mission statement based on this knowledge, and then went to the executive team for feedback and input. We worked together to make some edits and came up with our final version.
It was a quick process because we had all been on dozens of meetings together in which our primary function and goals had been discussed. This alleviated the more time consuming need to deep dive with stakeholders about what the organization was and what was most important.
Organizational Values
The creation of organizational values was similar to the mission statement. This exercise presented a slightly larger problem because there are many values that are important to MEA but narrowing down to a select top 3-4 proved challenging. It was important to keep the list shorter to really focus on a few key points and make it easy for the public to understand what MEA stands for.
For this exercise, I worked with the group to identify what each member values about the MEA project. It turns out, many of the answers were similar! This made it easier to filter out some of the less important things and focus on a select number.
The final set of values works well with the mission statement. MEA is centered around education, quality, consistency, and volunteerism. It is these four pillars that embody much of what MEA is working to accomplish: providing welcoming, safe, high-quality outdoor education experiences.
With a name, mission statement, and organizational values in place, we were finally able to better communicate what exactly our group was, our purpose, and what we provided to our community. It made working with our members and volunteers and getting buy-in for the program much simpler.
Logos
I led the logo design process. For the initial MEA brand logo, we worked with a logo designer. About 6 months later, we were ready to create additional logos for our LEAD program certificates. I designed these myself and presented them to our executive leadership.
MEA Brand Logo
I worked closely with another designer under my direction to create the concept art. MEA stakeholders indicated that a mountain logo was preferred based on the name and what the organization does. It was important for me to find imagery that was not generic and stood out among the many mountain logos out there. Additionally, other stakeholders found it important for the logo to tell a story of the orginazation and connect it to local roots. This presented a challenge with 5 organizations from different regions.
I built a mood board to help our logo designer visualize the MEA mission and assist in the logo creation process.
After several iterations and discussions, we settled on the image of the Liberty Bell Group, an iconic cluster of rock spires that rise dramatically above highway 20 in the North Cascades in Washington.
This famous climbing area is a place that all the organizations have a connection to. Its roots in climbing and volunteer led mountain sports are rich, and each organization has ties to this iconic area. Additionally, the Liberty Bell group contains five spires in one group, representing the five founding member organizations.
I worked closely with the designer to make detailed changes to get from concept to final product. We worked together through several drafts.
The final logo is simple. Its dramatic and iconic imagery has a deep meaning to the climbing community, and the five spires tell a story of the history of Mountain Education Alliance and its combined goal of improving education and leadership in the outdoors.
LEAD Program Logos
The LEAD Program gives volunteers an internationally recognized certification in one or more specific disciplines of mountain sports. We wanted to be able to provide a certificate with an individual logo for each discipline. A visual identifier would help both the public and volunteers understand the different tracks of certification, and the imagery would help add value to the certification beyond just words on a page.
These logos also helped give MEA a way to brand apparel, documents, and anything else that was specific to these individual certificate tracks. The visual identifier of each discipline is similar to what the American Mountain Guides Association (the certifying body for working mountain guides in the US) has done. This helps to create a similar feeling of value for volunteer leaders, while distinguishing it as a separate certification.
I started with some rough concept sketches, and then worked to create several options that were more polished. I was able to use much of our prior work around naming and values to help inform the direction of the logos.
I went through several iterations of logos as we explored the possibilites.
I presented these options to the executive leadership group of MEA. After gathering feedback, we narrowed the options down to two. I made some changes and presented two final options.
The final design choice was a badge image that contained the Liberty Bell imagery of the main MEA Logo. This design helped ensure that wherever the certificate logo was used, the MEA image would be clear, even without the primary MEA logo present.
The design choice ultimately needed to accommodate future certification disciplines, so an easy to replicate logo was key. We also wanted the logo to stay simple and uncluttered, so we opted for simpler imagery that allowed the text to stand out. The final product is one that works well across the MEA and pairs well with the main brand imagery.
Certificate Design
I created a simple certificate template that would be given to a Certified Educator upon completion of the program.
This certificate contains the specific climbing discipline logo for the certificate holder. It is a part of the welcome package that each new Certified Educator receives.
Brand Guide
With a large body of brand identity work completed, I made a brand guide for each organization and the MEA to reference when working with MEA materials. I presented to the executives of each organization and we had a discussion about how to use the guide and the importance of consistency and staying within the guidelines.
Apparel
All new Certified Educators receive a shirt as a part of their MEA welcome kit. I created a simple shirt design that included the main MEA logo and a sleeve with the specific Educator logo.
While apparel design is out of my comfort zone, it was fun creating this. We have years of survey data that has told us volunteers value gifts for their efforts and t-shirts are highly desirable especially when they help a volunteer connect with a program and feel valued. It’s fun and rewarding to be able to wear a shirt with pride that shows your knowledge and dedication.
Website Creation
Now that MEA was forming into a proper organization with an identity, it was time to get online. One of the partner organizations had purchased the domain through GoDaddy.
Due to budget constraints for this project, the leadership group wanted to stick with the free GoDaddy website builder. I worked within GoDaddy's very simple and limited editor to create what is the current MEA website. There were a limited number of options with even less customization choices. I was able to do some simple custom code to add a few minor features to the site.
I did a basic sitemap and tried to build out a navigation that was simple and effective. I did run into an issue with the template where having more than five navigation items resulted in additional items being grouped into a “More” category. Additionally, the “Home” item was unable to be removed, even though it was not necessary to display. This resulted in the contact page being buried under the “More” menu item.
While this was not ideal, I considered the impact of reducing one of the other menu items to accommodate the contact page being displayed properly. After discussion with stakeholders, it was determined that the bulk of contact with MEA would either be directly through each partner organization, or through donor outreach by the MEA Executive Director. Keeping the Volunteers and Organizations menu items prominent was actually more important than displaying the Contact link. To make up for this missing navigation item, I input contact buttons into each page to make it easy for any visitor to reach out and get more information.
Content Writing
I drafted content for the site and worked with Elizabeth, MEA’s Executive Director, to edit and finalize it all. The end result is a site that is simple and makes it easy for someone to learn about what MEA does.
Site Audit & Recommendations
I was able to get a website up that meets the bare requirements of MEA currently. However, future needs will quickly outpace the functionality of the current website builder platform. I did an audit of future needs and made some recommendations on how MEA could improve the website to ensure the site was able to meet the needs of the organization into the future.
MEA future website needs:
- Database of Certified Educators with public profiles
- Information on certification tracks and trainings
- Embed events natively on website
- Certified Educator login with training resource library
- Community messaging/forum capability
The solution to these future needs would require an additional investment that MEA currently is unable to support. The organization is just getting started and as they grow so will budget.
I recommended a few possible choices for addressing these needs:
- Custom site (hand code or webflow)
- Wordpress hosted site working with a developer to implement custom options
- Wix, Squarespace or similar for a drag and drop editor with better functionality than current platform
Each of these has its own pros and cons, and I outlined these to the MEA group for future reference and decision making.
MEA Announcment Document
MEA was becoming a proper organization. Each of the partner organizations felt it was time to make a unified announcement to spread the word and start to build interest.
Using all of the prior work to create an identity, I wrote a communications document for each organization to distribute to their combined 300,00+ members. This was an announcement letter that explained what the program is and why it is important. This was an important announcement. It needed to be impactful to build value and importance and send a message that would resonate and build interest.
I worked with several others within the partner organizations to edit and refine the letter before its distribution.
Leading Educators Into The Future
The MEA successully launched its pilot certification program in 2020, and since has run multiple programs certifying dozens of volunteer leaders. MEA programming is growing rapidly and helping to improve the quality of instruction for hundreds of thousands of new climbers across the country.
While branding and a website are only a small part of the countless hours of work that went into launching MEA programs, the effort to help MEA find an identity has been successful in recruiting new participants for programs and in securing funds to ensure MEA continues to operate and grow for the future.
The long-term outlook for MEA is positive, and I am looking forward to seeing the great impact this work will have for generations of mountain sports enthusiasts.