Overview

Partners in Project Green (PPG) is a collaborative initiative launched in 2008 by Toronto Pearson and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). This not-for-profit community unites businesses, governments, institutions, and utilities across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to drive environmental action and economic prosperity. PPG facilitates sustainability through knowledge sharing, infrastructure implementation, and network building, focusing on areas such as energy performance, waste diversion, water stewardship, and stakeholder engagement. Membership is open to organizations and individuals operating within the GTA.

Goals

The primary goal of the PPG project was to eliminate technical and usability barriers that had historically prevented the organization from scaling membership engagement and delivering a unified digital experience. PPG needed a platform that would serve sustainability leaders and a multitiered membership with equal effectiveness. The redesigned platform aimed to simplify access to tools, resources, and networking opportunities while supporting organizational growth.From a staff perspective, the project also focused on evolution in phases. The developed solution would need to integrate with a CRM chosen in the future, enabling more seamless member management, and consolidating event registration to a single system.

Challenges

Before the redesign, PPG’s web ecosystem was fragmented across multiple platforms, creating confusion for users and administrative inefficiencies:

  • Membership management lacked automation and centralization, resulting in manual renewal processes and outdated databases
  • Event registration was decentralized, making it difficult for staff to administer guestlists easily
  • Content discoverability suffered due to an outdated and overly complex tagging and categorization system, overwhelming users instead of guiding them
  • Non-members found it challenging to understand what PPG offered or how to begin engaging with the organization, creating barriers to membership growth
Process

The project began with a collaborative discovery phase, during which Blue Goose and PPG staff, facilitated user story workshops to uncover needs, frustrations, and goals across three primary audiences: sustainability leaders, members, and non-members.

Through a series of navigational design exercises and iterative wireframing, the team reimagined the site’s structure around user tasks rather than internal processes. A lean taxonomic model was developed after close work with staff, reducing unnecessary tags and streamlining the categorization system. This effort helped ensure content could be easily discovered without overwhelming users with choices.

The technical foundation of the site was completely rebuilt to make it faster, easier, and more flexible to manage. We developed a custom WordPress CMS with tailored Gutenberg blocks, giving the team full control over content editing without risking design consistency. We also integrated search and simplified the navigation to help users find what they need quickly. Staff can now easily create new landing pages with a custom builder, without needing developer support. To support marketing and engagement, we added advanced forms, social media integrations, and tools to promote events and campaigns more efficiently.

Extending member functionality was a key focus of the project, ensuring that organizations could fully manage their memberships with minimal staff intervention. Restrict Content Pro (RCP) was implemented with custom development to create a powerful Member Dashboard, where companies can view and update their membership tier, renewal status, and organization details through custom fields.

Company administrators can invite and manage their own staff via an integrated invitation workflow, with each employee automatically inheriting the organization’s content permissions based on the active membership tier. Members can also access a complete invoice and billing history directly within their dashboard. Event registration was streamlined for both public and member-only events, supporting in-person and virtual formats.

In addition, a public-facing Members page was automatically populated using company data from the CRM, including logos, significantly reducing administrative workload and ensuring that new and renewing members are consistently and accurately featured without manual updates.

Outcome

PPG’s new site is WCAG 2.2 AA compliant, fully responsive, and cross-browser compatible. After launch, we provided in-person training sessions, a detailed admin manual, and ongoing training for new staff to make sure the team could easily manage and grow the platform over time.