NAWIC Atlanta

The short answer

NAWIC Atlanta is the largest chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction in the country. When I started with them in early 2020, they had an outdated WordPress site, no automated systems for members or sponsors, and no consistent brand identity across their digital and printed materials. By July 2020 the new site was launched. Over the next three-plus years I stayed on as their webmaster, rebuilt the brand, ran photography and creative for chapter communications, and built out the systems that let a volunteer-led board operate at professional-organization scale.

The headline number is the traffic jump, but the real story is what became possible once the digital foundation was in place. The chapter's board, led by then-President Christina Genius-Fraley and then-VP Cait Lowe, went from spending hours on manual administrative work to running the country's biggest NAWIC chapter with the kind of digital polish that built trust with sponsors, members, and the national organization.

Problem

A national leader with a local-club digital footprint

NAWIC Atlanta is not a small chapter. It is the largest chapter within the national organization, with an active board, a growing membership base, and a full annual calendar of professional development events, socials, and fundraisers. But in early 2020 none of that was reflected in their digital presence.

The website was dated, hard to navigate, and did not surface the events, membership benefits, or sponsor opportunities that matter most to visitors. During Women in Construction Week (WIC Week) — the chapter's biggest annual event window — the site was pulling around 800 weekly visitors. For an organization whose growth depends on new members and corporate sponsors finding them online, that was a ceiling.

Everything was manual

Member communications, event registrations, sponsor outreach, donation follow-ups, new-member onboarding — all handled by hand, by board members who already had full-time construction industry careers. New inquiries would sit in inboxes. Follow-ups would slip. Sponsor renewal windows would pass unnoticed. There was no system catching the people who were already interested.

No consistent brand

The chapter had strong personalities, real stories, and a national platform. But their brand assets — photography, event graphics, social content, printed materials — were fragmented. Every event, every campaign, every piece of collateral looked like it came from a different organization. That inconsistency undermined credibility with the exact audiences (corporate sponsors, prospective members, national board) who mattered most.

Approach

Full WordPress rebuild focused on organic discovery

I rebuilt the site on WordPress with a clean, event-forward information architecture. Every page was structured around the questions people actually search for when looking for women-in-construction resources, chapter membership, sponsor opportunities, and event information. The site was optimized for organic search from day one — clear headings, structured content, fast page loads, and internal linking that helped both search engines and visitors move through the site the way they actually think.

Membership and event systems on MembershipWorks and Egnyte

The member management side was built using MembershipWorks for membership tiers, applications, dues, and event registrations. Egnyte handled document storage and collaboration across the board — a central place for meeting materials, sponsor decks, brand assets, and event planning documents that any board member could access without emailing files around. The two systems together meant board turnover no longer meant institutional-knowledge loss.

Brand and photography

Beyond the website, I did the visual work that gave the chapter a consistent look. That included member and leadership portrait sessions, event photography, editing and retouching, and creative direction for social content. Every asset was built to match the same brand system — same color language, same photographic style, same voice — so a sponsor deck, an Instagram post, and the website all felt like the same organization.

Ongoing webmaster relationship

After launch in July 2020, the chapter retained me as their webmaster. That meant regular updates, new event pages, sponsor page refreshes, brand campaigns for WIC Week and Founders Day, and continuous small improvements to speed, SEO, and structure over the next three-plus years.

Results

Traffic

The 21K peak-week number was measured during the same annual event window (WIC Week) as the 800-visitor baseline, so it is a like-for-like comparison, not a seasonal artifact.

Creative that traveled

One piece of digital creative I designed for the chapter — a WIC Week 2024 announcement featuring the chapter as the largest in the country — was posted by then-VP Cait Lowe on her personal LinkedIn. It pulled 23,700 impressions in a 28-day window and lifted her overall LinkedIn impressions by +204.7% in the same period. That is a bonus proof point that the creative work I did for the chapter was strong enough to carry outside the chapter's own channels.

National recognition

The photography and creative work I contributed to the chapter earned personal recognition at the national level: my portrait was selected as the back cover of the 26th Annual WIC Week Digital Magazine — the kind of national-level chapter recognition that reflected the trust the chapter placed in the visual direction I set for them.

Operational impact

The metric that mattered most to the board was time back. Volunteer board members went from spending hours on manual admin — chasing member follow-ups, hand-building event registrations, tracking sponsors in spreadsheets — to a system that handled the routine work automatically. That freed the board to focus on the things volunteers actually joined to do: build relationships, secure sponsorships, and grow the chapter.

Data source: Traffic figures were measured in Google Analytics, comparing the same peak event week (WIC Week) year over year.

In the client's words

"Zach delivered the full package — the website, the member and event systems, the brand — and every piece came back better than we imagined. He gave our board time back and gave the chapter a digital presence that finally matched who we are. I am incredibly grateful."

— Cait Lowe, then Vice President, NAWIC Atlanta

How I work

This engagement is a good compressed picture of how I approach client work generally.

Start with discovery, not templates. The site architecture came from mapping what NAWIC Atlanta actually needs the site to do — attract members, land sponsors, promote events, look credible to the national organization — not from picking a template.

Build systems people can run without me. The MembershipWorks and Egnyte setup was designed so that when board members turned over (as they do in every volunteer organization), the new board could pick up and run it without having to call me. That is why the relationship lasted three-plus years — not because they were locked in, but because the work kept compounding.

Treat brand as infrastructure. A consistent visual system is not a nice-to-have. For an organization that needs to win trust with corporate sponsors and national leadership, brand consistency is what makes every other channel work harder. The photography, the creative, the design system — those made the traffic numbers actually convert into members and sponsor deals.

Stay after the launch. The launch is the easy part. What moves an organization forward is the three years of small, compounding improvements after. That is what turned NAWIC Atlanta from a chapter with a functional site into the country's biggest chapter with a digital presence that matches its national standing.