Mellon Foundation Gets a New Digital Home

The Mellon Foundation, the largest funder of the arts & humanities in the United States, has launched a new digital home for the brand.

Among the new website’s goals is to broaden the focus from the site’s previous focus on the organization alone to one that more deliberately spotlights Mellon’s grantees and their work, celebrating the real, tangible impact that the Foundation’s partners are making in society. The redesign also underscores Mellon President Elizabeth Alexander’s vision for the organization: one that centers social justice in Mellon’s grantmaking in the arts and humanities.

Work & Co led the creation of the site, overseeing design concepting and execution, technical strategy, and the build. The brand identity was developed by Pentagram partner Eddie Opara and his team.

Features of the new Mellon.org include:

• Multivocal perspectives. Content that expands visitors’ knowledge on some of the topics covered by Mellon’s grantmaking, which range from higher education to civic engagement to artists and monuments. Visitors can now learn not only through Mellon’s voice, but through the voice of its grantees, staff, experts, and broader network with a variety of media like video, audio, slideshows, and more.
• Best-in-class resources. As a longtime leader in the philanthropy space, Mellon is now offering a hub of best-in-class resources, including information about its grantmaking process, calls for concepts, areas of focus, and how they can engage with Mellon more closely.
• Extensible foundation. With the new site, there’s now a solid and extensible foundation that uses best-in-class and modern technologies for the Mellon team to build on. Work & Co worked closely with Mellon to create an entirely new architecture that can support internal teams, and established net new development and operational processes.

“Mellon’s new site focuses on the Foundation’s social justice work with lively storytelling from our arts, culture, and humanities grantees. These scholars, artists, and visionaries are front and center, spotlighting their impact and showcasing the power of their work,” said Vanessa Corrêa, chief communications officer at Mellon. “The site beautifully reflects the energy and focus of Mellon’s mission and reimagines how philanthropy can present itself.”

“Our partnership with the Mellon Foundation has as much been an opportunity to evolve its digital presence as a call to action to tap digital to make systemic changes through the arts and humanities,” Said Fabricio Teixeira, Work & Co Design Partner. “With Mellon’s new digital platform —and the expanded content now available— we see the potential to tell the stories that uplift the organization’s wide array of grantees while also reaching even more worthy ones in the future.”

Learn more about the Mellon Foundation and visit the new site here.