Lambda Legal

The Challenge
People reach out to Lambda Legal during the most difficult moments of their lives, a health crisis, homelessness, family separation, workplace harassment, bullying, violence, each one worsened by layers of systemic discrimination, and often faced without the safety net of community or family. Lambda Legal confronts those difficulties head-on through impact litigation, community education, fundraising and media outreach at the local, state and federal levels. Its communications had to carry all of that at once, across every channel, in two languages, continuously.

The Insight

Lambda Legal’s audiences overlap in a way most organizations’ don’t. The person searching for legal help in the middle of the night and the donor deciding where to give may land on the same page, and both are responding to the same thing: evidence that the work is real and that it is working. One cohesive brand voice, speaking to the humanity of the organization’s constituents and to the arc of history bending toward equality, could serve both audiences, as long as every touchpoint made it equally easy to give hope and to receive it. That meant treating the website, microsites, social media, email, direct mail, publications and events as a single system rather than as separate channels.

The Solution

We served as the web and design team for the organization, producing all digital and print materials and maintaining a consistent voice across them.

Website and campaign microsites. We applied a continual improvement methodology to the primary website and to campaign microsites, releasing regular content, usability and performance enhancements rather than periodic redesigns. Campaign sites carried individual cases and state-level fights on their own terms while remaining recognizably part of the whole.

Social media and search. We planned and implemented the social media and search marketing programs, and built the internal capability for video, managing production for video content.

Fundraising, marketing and events. Working closely with the fundraising department, we managed an award-winning email marketing program alongside the direct mail program, and designed signage, advertising, banner ads, invitations, programs, presentations and online assets for fundraising and community education events.

Annual reports. Donors and corporate sponsors gave generously and with long-term commitment, and giving them clear insight into program results and financial stewardship was an obligation. We compiled the metrics that fed the annual reports, then designed and produced them.

Publications, in English and Spanish. We designed, developed and produced community resources including the Impact periodical and stand-alone toolkits such as Out, Safe & Respected, Take the Power and When Health Care Isn’t Caring, plus a full body of Spanish-language collateral for Lambda Legal’s community education program, Proyecto Igualdad.

The Result

Website visitors increased 381%, reaching 735,852, and the legal help desk fielded 6,748 calls from people seeking assistance. The organization gained 111,000 Facebook followers. Net assets grew 142% between 2008 and 2012, supporting a litigation docket that ran to 84 active cases, 32 new cases launched and 131 plaintiffs represented in those new cases, with 34 cases reaching positive outcomes.

That period also produced some of the most consequential civil rights advances in a generation, which Lambda Legal’s litigation and advocacy helped drive: the fall of the Defense of Marriage Act and the recognition of nationwide marriage equality, the congressional repeal of the military ban on LGBT service members, and a presidential order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to end discriminatory hospital visitation practices.