Case Study
Cancer Support Community Delaware
For nearly 30 years, Cancer Support Community Delaware (CSCDE) has ensured that no one faces cancer alone. As Delaware’s only organization dedicated solely to the emotional and psychosocial impact of cancer, CSCDE provides professionally led support groups, educational workshops, and wellness programs for patients, caregivers, and families—all at no cost.
While CSCDE’s local centers offered deep comfort and connection, their website hadn’t kept pace. Over years of expanding services, the site grew into an unwieldy catalog of hundreds of pages, making it difficult for visitors navigating treatment to quickly find the support they needed. After years of partnering on social media, CSCDE teamed up with First Ascent to overhaul the site and build a custom Participant Portal—giving Delawareans a welcoming digital front door that matches the care they find in person.
Scope of Work
- Stakeholder Surveys & User Research
- Information Architecture
- Website Design & Development
- Custom WordPress Development
- CRM & Software Integrations
- Participant Portal Development
- Social Media Management
- Print Design
Making Support Easy to Find
Looking for cancer support should never feel complicated or overwhelming. CSCDE needed an intuitive site built for people under tremendous stress, especially patients managing treatment fatigue and caregivers balancing urgent responsibilities.
Community feedback and our site audit confirmed that finding help took far too much effort. Essential programs were lost inside a feed of more than 400 event listings, and the clinical look of the pages failed to convey the comfort of their actual team. As one stakeholder shared: “I wish there was a way to say ‘no matter where in the journey, you belong here’ and have people believe it.”
Before
After
To answer that challenge, we organized the site around four key journeys: finding a program, registering as a new participant, making a donation, and referring a patient. We audited the legacy site to pare down an overgrown catalog of 240 pages into an intuitive 34-page structure, while collaborating with CSCDE to rewrite dense copy into clear, compassionate language. Dedicated entry points like “New to CSCDE?” along with landing pages for Patients & Caregivers and Healthcare Providers now give every visitor a clear path forward within just a couple of clicks.
To untangle their feed of 400+ listings, we built a clean, filterable calendar that allows users to sort programs by county location or virtual access. We also overhauled the Ways to Give section, providing donors with transparent giving options and highlighting that more than 82% of every dollar goes directly into local programming.
Designing With Warmth and Care
CSCDE’s online presence had to feel welcoming from the first visit. We designed a clean layout that pairs clinical credibility with the warmth of a local support group. With a large audience of adults 60 and older, accessibility came first—using large, readable type and prominent buttons so visitors never have to guess where to go next.
The website steers clear of healthcare clichés and stereotypical cancer imagery. Instead of sterile medical rooms or staged clinical shots, we paired real photos from CSCDE’s community with carefully selected imagery that shows adults living full, active lives. Gentle rounded corners and a palette drawn from CSCDE’s signature sunrise logo pull the brand together, translating the team’s everyday compassion directly to the screen.
Bringing Program Access into One Place
Built on custom WordPress architecture, the new site gives the CSCDE team full independence to manage their content. We integrated key tools like Jotform for intake forms, Constant Contact for community outreach, and Blackbaud to streamline donations and fundraising. At the same time, our team mapped and redirected hundreds of legacy URLs, ensuring visitors never hit broken links while safeguarding years of organic search visibility.
To make ongoing participation easier to manage for everyone involved, we developed a secure Participant Portal. For participants and caregivers, the portal serves as a personalized dashboard that gathers everything they need into a single view. Members can manage their upcoming schedules, join virtual meetings through direct Zoom links, and complete required waivers or annual surveys. Automated reminders keep participants updated on upcoming programs and schedule changes. They also have access to group-specific resources like wellness guides and post-session articles.
For staff and facilitators, the portal brings day-to-day coordination into one place. Team members can track waitlists, check in participants from an iPad at community events, and record both in-person and virtual attendance. With one-click data exports for grant reporting, the team spends far less time on paperwork and more time supporting families.
An Ongoing Community Partnership
Our relationship with CSCDE goes far beyond a single redesign. Since 2021, First Ascent has managed their social media, designed event and campaign print materials, and regularly shown up to sponsor and attend community gatherings. Our co-founder, John Himics, was even invited to present as a featured speaker at their national affiliate conference. Today, CSCDE has a unified ecosystem across web, social, and print—working together to ensure that no one in Delaware has to face cancer alone.
The website steers clear of healthcare clichés and stereotypical cancer imagery. Instead of sterile medical rooms or staged clinical shots, we paired real photos from CSCDE’s community with carefully selected imagery that shows adults living full, active lives. Gentle rounded corners and a palette drawn from CSCDE’s signature sunrise logo pull the brand together, translating the team’s everyday compassion directly to the screen.
Award-winning results
CSCDE’s website earned a Gold dotCOMM Award from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), which honors excellence in web creativity and digital communication.
