CASE STUDY:
A Bilingual & Inclusive Communications Strategy for
NYS CDFI, Community Capital New York
"B Storytelling created Community Capital New York's new website. Despite challenges and delays, Julie and her team remained collaborative and patient with us. In the end, the team delivered a beautiful, state-of-the-art, bilingual, fully accessible website that showcases our organization, our programs, and our small business lending products."
– Kate Conlan, Community Capital New York Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Development
Introduction
Community Capital New York is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and nonprofit lender providing affordable capital to small businesses throughout the Hudson Valley and affordable housing developers across New York State. Their mission is to create pathways to social justice and wealth-building and build resilient neighborhoods, focusing on People of Color, women, veterans, people from rural areas, entrepreneurs with lower incomes, and affordable housing developers.
Our work as storytellers and brand builders has helped community banks, financial literacy organizations, CDFIs, and fintech companies shake up the finance industry- often seen as exclusive and mysterious- by making it more accessible and transparent. Our mission is to amplify the work of organizations committed to an equitable world. So, we knew collaborating with Community Capital New York was mission-aligned and that we had the team they needed to develop an inclusive Spanish/English brand strategy and custom-designed WordPress site.
The Opportunity for Community Capital New York
Community Capital New York knew they had a large Spanish-speaking customer base, but they weren't quite sure how to reach and retain this critical demographic. While bilingual staff members occasionally translated a flier or brochure here and there, the team knew they were missing out on numerous relationships and revenue by not proactively communicating with their customers in Spanish.
The organization knew it was time to invest in a unified Spanish brand strategy, a Spanish communications plans with original—i.e., not translated from English-- Spanish content, revamp their outdated website with fresh creative direction, and create a more customer-forward narrative.
Why Community Capital New York Chose B Storytelling
We're highly familiar with the financial inclusion space: for over a decade, we've had the pleasure of collaborating with financial nonprofits, CDFIs, and tech companies serving the consumers, neighborhoods, and communities cut out from wealth-building because of systemic racist banking practices like redlining.
We root our work in social and economic justice, collaborating with our clients' internal and external stakeholders to build brands and communication strategies that center communities and actively shift culture. Additionally, we are incredibly comfortable with the internal compliance reviews required in the finance industry. We have developed systems to make the editing process as smooth, seamless, and efficient as possible for our clients.
And, we have talented, collaborative partners. Together with the hard work, strategic guidance and creative genius of fellow B Corps, Consciously, Mangrove, and Ahumada Agency, Adrienne Gil Consulting, and our talented Visual Design Lead, Mattia Olivotti, we created a compelling and complementary Spanish/English brand.
"For Community Capital New York, we developed a unique vocabulary that gave our client and their customers the sense of security that they were speaking the same language. It took the Hispanic Advisory Board, direct interviews with their customers, and a strong review process to get there. It was beautiful to see a brand with so many Spanish-speaking clients share their stories so openly. We're proud to have given Community Capital New York the tools to approach and retain a market they were missing."
– Marcela Ahumada, CEO of Ahumada Agency & B Storytelling Spanish Brand Lead
What We Accomplished
For us, equity is both a process and an outcome.
We're proud to have stewarded Community Capital New York through the following:
- The creation and management of a paid Hispanic Advisory Board to ensure our bilingual communications aligned with the needs of a Spanish-speaking demographic from multiple countries with diverse financial demands
- Spanish brand strategy process
- Spanish/English product branding
- Spanish SEO strategy
- Unified Spanish language choices
- Complete WordPress redesign in both English and Spanish
- Discovery
- Creative direction
- Storytelling
- Original Spanish website copywriting
- Project management
- CRM Solution
- Lending platform recommendation & integration
- Training videos
- Creative team selection & management
- Bilingual, SEO-driven organic content strategy
Additionally, we developed and executed several marketing campaigns to drive business growth, promoted new product suites, and built relationships through partner co-branding opportunities. We created and grew all five of their social media channels from scratch and a blog hub to share the stories wins, and learnings of their community and resources for customer success. We accomplished all of this on time with our project scope, even during a transition in executive management.
"B Storytelling created Community Capital New York's new website. Despite challenges and delays, Julie's team remained collaborative and patient with us. In the end, the team delivered a beautiful, state-of-the-art, bilingual, fully accessible website that showcases our organization, our programs, and our small business lending products."
– Kate Conlan, Community Capital New York Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Development
The Benefits
From a targeted, lead-generating new website to communication channels that enhance customer engagement and overall searchability, plus a Brand Guide with customizable creative assets, Community Capital New York now has a sophisticated, inclusive brand strategy to support the success of their business goals.
Your Turn
Ready to fuse your impact and culture goals with your business and bottom-line goals? We're here to make it happen.Get in touch – we can't wait to hear from you.