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Paper Crane / who-we-work-with / non-profit
Sexual violence support. Pancreatic cancer. Dementia care. Chronic pain research. Co-op housing across a country.
Ten projects in our portfolio were built for non-profits. Most are still running, and several we are still building. We are a Calgary studio that builds brands, websites and software for organizations where getting it wrong carries a real cost.
( Scroll to explore ↓ )
Detail
Built to own.
A lot of non-profits are paying rent on their own website. A proprietary platform with a licence that renews whether or not it still fits, or a developer invoice every time a paragraph changes.
The Regional District of Central Kootenay had outgrown an expensive engagement platform. We rebuilt it as a lean WordPress application they own outright, and cut their annual running costs by more than 95 percent.
YWCA Calgary's team runs 51 custom blocks without calling us. CHF Canada publishes across a bilingual national site on their own. Neither of them needs us for routine changes.
Selected non-profit work
Brand
Strategy
Creative
Website Design
Website Development
PCNA
Brand
Strategy
Software Development
Website Development
Help for Dementia
Brand
Strategy
Creative
CCASA
Detail
Two kinds of organizations.
Some of the organizations we work with are local and lean. CCASA came to us for an identity that felt less like a help line and more like a friend, after 25 years of steady work in Calgary. ELIXR needed a home that matched what they had grown into.
Others carry a whole sector. CHF Canada supports more than 900 housing co-ops from coast to coast, fully bilingual. Pain Connect is McMaster University's national platform for the Chronic Pain Network. CHF BC put every housing co-op in British Columbia on one live map.
The work looks different at each end. Both end up with something their own staff can run.
Detail
Often it isn't a website.
Pain Connect is a searchable directory of studies, a database that matches people to them, an admin portal, and the email flows that connect the two. Explore Lethbridge is a Python platform with points and rewards across more than 350 locations. The Co-op Explorer maps every housing co-op in British Columbia against live Salesforce data. Help for Dementia runs a learning platform alongside an AI resource assistant.
Non-profits are often sold a brochure site when the thing they need is a working system. We build both. We will also tell you which one you actually need, which sometimes means talking you out of the bigger project.
Note
Accessibility
We build to WCAG standards and we are confident in that work. YWCA Calgary's site was engineered accessible throughout.
We will not tell you a site is certified. A formal audit is separate work with a third-party cost attached, and any agency promising certification without one is guessing. If you need certified compliance, we will scope the audit alongside the build and be straight with you about what it costs.
Working with us
We're writing an RFP. What should we be asking for?
Ask who owns the code and the design system when the engagement ends. Ask whether your team can build a new page without a developer, and ask to see the block library that makes that possible. Ask where the data lives, which matters if you handle anything sensitive or have Canadian residency requirements. Ask what the platform costs to run each year, separate from what it costs to build.
You will learn a lot from how a vendor answers those four.
Do you respond to RFPs?
Yes. We have delivered through public and sector procurement for the Regional District of Central Kootenay, the Association of Kootenay and Boundary Local Governments, and national bodies including CHF Canada and the Chronic Pain Network at McMaster University.
Can you work in French?
Yes. CHF Canada is fully bilingual end to end, structured so their team publishes in both languages without running a duplicate workflow.
Can our team actually run the site afterwards?
That is the point of how we build. YWCA Calgary runs on 51 custom blocks, CHF Canada on more than 40. Your team assembles pages from those blocks. Most of our clients keep us on for the bigger pieces of work and handle the day to day themselves.
Do you only work with Alberta organizations?
No. We are based in Calgary and work across the country and beyond. Recent non-profit work includes British Columbia, Ontario, and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.
What happens after launch?
It depends what you want. Some clients take the keys and we hear from them once a year. Help for Dementia has been a three year partnership across a rebrand, a learning platform and an AI assistant, and we are still building with them.
Get in touch
Sound like a good fit?
Tell us what you're working on. If it isn't a fit, we'll say so.
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