About Valley United Fund
Valley United Fund (VUF) is a volunteer-led community fund that has served the Greater Valley Area since 1960: West Point, Georgia, and the Alabama towns of Lanett, LaFayette and Valley. It runs as a united appeal. Instead of each local charity fundraising on its own, VUF runs one annual campaign and grants the money to partner nonprofits its board reviews every year. In VUF’s own words: “We don’t run programs. We fund the people who do.”
The site gives the numbers in VUF’s own words: 60+ years of continuous giving, 3,000+ residents supported locally, 8 partner organizations and $2.24M distributed locally since 2020.
The brief
VUF wanted a new site to replace its older one, and it had to put donors first. Giving had to be one click from the homepage, and the copy had to speak to the established local donors and employers who fund the campaign. The site also needed to be easy to look after. VUF has no paid staff, so board members had to be able to update pages without touching code. And the logo was due for a cleaner, more modern look.
A new mark
We redrew the logo around a local landmark: a water tower with a river running between its legs, a nod to the Chattahoochee, which runs between the Georgia and Alabama sides of the Valley. The mark pairs with a navy and green wordmark and works at small sizes, from the favicon up. The site leads with VUF’s positioning line, “The Quiet Pillar of Our Community.”
Three ways to give
The donate page offers three paths. Individuals give online through a Zeffy donation form embedded right on the page. Zeffy was VUF’s choice because it is free for the organization. Employees can read a step-by-step guide to payroll deduction, and businesses get their own corporate partnership page with an inquiry form and a row of current corporate partner logos.
Trust and transparency
A united appeal asks people to trust someone else with their gift, so the site shows how the money moves. The About page explains the united appeal model and VUF’s four-step process (gather, vet, distribute, report), lists the volunteer board, and links to VUF’s tax filings on Candid. The Partners page groups funded nonprofits into three focus areas, and each partner gets a card describing its work. Grants are by invitation only, so the site says so instead of offering an application form.
Built to update
The site runs on WordPress with Elementor, so VUF’s volunteers can edit pages, swap photos and add partners themselves. We drafted the page copy from VUF’s own notes and public filings, and VUF reviewed it before launch. Local aerial photos of West Point, LaFayette and a partner’s building went into the page headers.
Ongoing support
We host the site on WP Engine and look after it: updates, backups and security.
The executive director of Sav-A-Life in Lanett, one of the partners VUF funds, saw the new site and called it “great, so professional.”
One of VUF’s funded partners, Redeeming Grace Ministries, is also a 21 ads client. See more of our website and branding services.