From the Nominator

"In 2019, Eastern Washington University (EWU) announced a sustainability initiative to restore 120 acres of its campus land to native prairie habitat, working in close collaboration with several university programs. The initiative, dubbed the Prairie Restoration Project (PRP), was later included among EWU’s comprehensive campaign priorities in 2020.  

Landscape restoration is a dynamic process requiring years of planning, seasonal labor, and ongoing maintenance. Distilling the complexity of this work into a fundraiser-friendly landing page or “one sheeter” was near impossible. Project organizers realized the most efficacious way to attract public interest and ongoing donor support was through immersive story-telling.   

EWU’s digital marketing team began working on a dynamic, general-audience-friendly microsite that highlighted the project-related academic activities over time. The team identified milestones of project development, such as seed collecting and hand planting, and used these to populate the site in advance of its launch on Earth Day 2021. The project had no funding beyond the billable hours provided by the digital team and other content providers. 

Since implementation, there have been 3,121 visits to the site and over $10,000 in earned media coverage. Beyond page views, digital content for the PRP has allowed us to enhance our goal of greater community involvement by providing visual confirmation of the project’s momentum. Among the many engaged, critical constituencies are the Native tribes who historically lived on these lands, state and local lawmakers whose policies will affect them, and the wider public whose support and participation is crucial to the project’s success."

From the Judges

The success of this project is outstanding between the amount of time spent on the site, the impressions, and other media coverage. They provided excellent resources documenting the planning and launch of the site. Based on the materials provided, judges felt they did an excellent job taking into account how the creative met the objective and what they wanted their site visitors to think and feel.