Alopex Case Study
Mat-Su Trails and Parks
The Mat-Su Trails and Parks Foundation connects people with Alaska's parks, trails, and outdoor spaces while promoting recreation, stewardship, and healthy communities.
To support that mission, the Foundation needed a website that captured the spirit of exploring Alaska while making it easy for visitors to discover trails, attend events, become members, volunteer, and give back. At the same time, staff needed an intuitive platform to keep trails, events, and content up to date without relying on a developer.
Designing an Experience Worth Exploring
The Foundation wanted a website that felt as distinctive as the organization itself. That meant moving beyond prebuilt themes and familiar nonprofit layouts to create something specifically for them.
Working closely with the Foundation, our designers explored its personality and connection to Alaska's outdoors. Custom details appear throughout the site:
Creative highlights included:
- Original Alaska wildlife illustrations and mountain landscapes
- Torn-paper edges and notebook-inspired backgrounds
- Taped and clothespinned photography
- Handwritten-style headlines and highlighted notes
- Custom icons designed around trails, activities, and giving
- Scrapbook-inspired layouts that give individual pages their own character
Rather than forcing every page into the same structure, we created different visual experiences while maintaining a cohesive identity.
Even practical pages became opportunities for creativity. The Support + Donate page transforms a conventional list of giving options with notebook paper, pinned photographs, custom graphics, and playful compositions. The information stays clear, but the page feels unmistakably theirs.
The result is a website designed around the Foundation's character rather than adapted from an existing theme. It looks and feels like it could only belong to the Mat-Su Trails and Parks Foundation.
Making Trail Discovery Simple
The custom approach extends beyond the visual design. We built a custom trail directory that helps visitors compare destinations by difficulty, activities, accessibility, and trail type.
Custom iconography makes key information easy to recognize at a glance, while each trail page brings together descriptions, photography, Google Maps directions to the trailhead, and links to Otter Spatial for detailed mapping.
Visitors can move from discovering a destination to planning an outing without losing the personality and visual language established throughout the rest of the website.
Empowering the Team Behind the Trails
We developed the website on WordPress with an intuitive content management system that gives Foundation staff the freedom to update trails, publish events, share news, and manage content without relying on a developer.
Whether adding a new trail, promoting an upcoming event, or announcing a community cleanup, staff can keep the website current with confidence. By making updates simple and efficient, we helped the Foundation spend less time managing its website and more time supporting the community.
Making It Easy to Get Involved
The creativity visitors see on the surface is backed by a practical giving experience.
We integrated the Foundation's donation and membership pages with DonorPerfect, allowing contributions and memberships to flow directly into its existing donor management system. Visitors have clear paths to become members or donate, while staff can manage supporter information through the system they already use.
That combination allows the Foundation to offer a giving experience with its own personality without creating additional work behind the scenes.
A Website That Inspires Action
The Mat-Su Trails and Parks Foundation now has a website built around who they are. Its visual identity grew from collaboration, creative freedom, and a willingness to move beyond familiar website conventions.
Custom functionality helps visitors discover and plan outdoor experiences, while WordPress and DonorPerfect give Foundation staff practical tools to manage content, events, memberships, and donations.
The project shows what can happen when a website begins with the organization instead of a template. Every illustration, icon, texture, photograph, and unexpected detail contributes to an experience created specifically for the Foundation and the community it serves.
The best website for an outdoor organization doesn't end at the screen. It inspires people to explore.