Ben Calf Robe Society

The problem

BCRS is a long-running Indigenous nonprofit in Edmonton delivering education, family and cultural programs. Their previous site was a template on a page builder, put together by an outside vendor and priced accordingly.

It had the usual failure pattern. The design belonged to a builder theme rather than to the organization. Programs had changed since launch and the site had not, because changing it meant going back to the vendor. And the monthly fee kept arriving regardless.

What we built

A custom eleven-page site, designed from the organization's own brochures and printed material so the web presence and the paper matched for the first time.

The important decision was architectural rather than visual. Every piece of changeable content lives in plain structured files: programs, news, events, the calendar, board members, contact details. A staff member opens a file, edits text, saves, and the site updates. There is no builder login, no CMS to patch and no plugin to break.

An on-site assistant answers common visitor questions using the site's own content, so the same information does not have to be maintained twice.

Alongside the site, a matching print kit drawn from the same design system: ID cards, business cards and brochures, generated as print-ready files so a reprint after a phone number change takes minutes rather than a new design engagement.

How it is hosted

Static pages on a global edge network, deployed straight from the source files. There is no server to keep running, no database to back up for the public site, and no monthly platform fee. Hosting genuinely costs the organization nothing.

The handover

The whole thing belongs to BCRS. Files, design, domain and accounts. Every project ships with plain-language instructions written for whoever inherits the job rather than for a developer, and the same documentation explains how to publish a change.

The measure of success is that a staff member with no technical background can keep the site current without calling anyone. That was the requirement from the start, and it drove most of the decisions above.