CONCEPT STUDY. Spiral Gardens is a real business, not a client. I redesigned their site unsolicited to demonstrate my process on a real-world problem. The research, design, and build are 100% real. The engagement isn’t: Spiral Gardens didn’t commission or endorse this work. No results are claimed; judge the thinking.
Spiral Gardens: putting the revenue engine at the front of the mission
A nonprofit nursery where shopping is the donation. The site finally says so.
The client
Spiral Gardens Community Food Security Project, a Berkeley 501(c)(3) running a plant nursery, a communal farm, and free education on reclaimed railroad land since 1993. Redesigned here as an unsolicited concept study, with admiration.
The problem
The nursery funds everything: by the organization’s own words, all proceeds support every other program. But the site buries it among eight nav items (two pointing to a program that ended), states its opening hours inconsistently across pages, and offers donors a mailed check or a bare PayPal link. For a three-day-a-week retail operation, every confused “are they open?” search is revenue the mission never sees.
The one job
Get more people to the nursery tables this weekend, then turn regulars into subscribers, volunteers, and monthly donors.
Design decisions
“Shopping is giving” as the site’s argument, not a footnote. Every purchase funds the farm that gives its harvest away, so the redesign puts the shop first in the nav and wraps the persuasion around the model itself. Commerce isn’t embarrassing here; it’s the engine.
Three doors in the hero: Shop, Volunteer, Give. The org’s three real relationships, triaged above the fold, with the mission supporting the choice instead of replacing it.
On the Tables: the availability list they can’t maintain, replaced by the Instagram they already post. The feed becomes the stock snapshot, the freshness signal, and the reason to check weekly. Zero new tools.
Rain Check: “clear-weather Sundays” turned into a one-tap sitewide banner. Whoever makes the weather call flips a CMS toggle from a phone, and volunteers stop showing up to locked gates.
The Weekend List: a named Thursday email (what’s on the tables, is Farm Sunday on, one growing tip) timed exactly for a Friday-through-Sunday shop. “Join our email list” asks for nothing; a named ritual is repeatable at the register.
Zero-upkeep operations and AA accessibility as mission requirements: every dynamic module has a designed empty state, every fact has one editable home, and a multigenerational audience (senior neighbors to school kids) gets 17px minimum body text and computed contrast throughout.
The build
Webflow CMS collections for events, FAQs, testimonials, and press; a Site Settings singleton driving hours and the Rain Check banner via conditional visibility; an Instagram embed with a designed fallback; a fee-free donation platform with monthly giving; a 301 map preserving two decades of flat-.html link equity.
What I’d measure
Weekend List subscribers, monthly donors in the giving circle, hours and directions engagement as a proxy for foot traffic, and how many repeated questions the growing FAQ absorbs. The register is offline, so the honest metric is fewer people wondering and more people showing up.
What this means for your business
Nonprofits with an earned-revenue arm, community orgs, anywhere the shop funds the mission: this is the approach I’d adapt to you. Tell me about your project.