Overview
When the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) came to Last Call Media in 2017, they faced a common challenge: their CreativeGround platform had outgrown its original architecture. Their existing Drupal 7, while functional, was experiencing technical limitations and user experience friction that prevented NEFA from realizing their ambitious vision for New England’s creative community.
What began as addressing immediate platform challenges evolved into an 8+ year strategic partnership focused on transformation and continuous innovation. Sophisticated search capabilities, and API partnerships have extended CreativeGround’s reach. Today, the platform connects over 30,000 artists, cultural organizations, and creative businesses across six states.
About the client
New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) is a regional arts service organization with an ambitious mission to strengthen New England’s creative sector. They serve artists, organizations, and cultural professionals across Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
NEFA understands that meaningful community impact requires thoughtful, scalable digital infrastructure. Their commitment to serving their community with excellence aligns perfectly with Last Call Media’s approach to building digital solutions designed for humans, creating the foundation for a partnership focused on continuous improvement and long-term sustainability.
Goals
NEFA approached their CreativeGround modernization with a clear strategic vision. While their existing Drupal 7 platform was comprehensive and feature-rich, they recognized the need to address mounting challenges and limitations while building toward something bigger — a comprehensive digital infrastructure for New England’s creative economy.
The aging platform’s hosting issues, performance limitations, user experience friction, and maintenance challenges were preventing NEFA from achieving their broader goals:
- Connecting creative professionals across state lines through sophisticated search and networking features
- Supporting government partnerships with automated roster management and compliance capabilities
- Scaling reliably to serve tens of thousands of users without performance concerns
- Integrating seamlessly with their existing Salesforce and Mailchimp workflows
- Evolving continuously to meet their community’s changing needs through ongoing partnership
NEFA recognized that achieving this vision required more than a traditional website rebuild — they needed a digital strategy partner who could help them build and maintain a platform that would grow with their community for years to come.
Challenges
Platform modernization and performance
NEFA’s Drupal 7 platform was experiencing the technical debt common to aging systems. Hosting challenges, performance bottlenecks, user interface limitations, and maintenance difficulties were consuming valuable staff time and frustrating community members.
Complex multi-system integration
NEFA’s operations required a seamless flow of data between CreativeGround, their Salesforce CRM, Mailchimp marketing platform, and various state government systems. Each integration needed to maintain data integrity while supporting different user workflows and compliance requirements.
Accessibility and inclusion standards
Serving New England’s diverse creative community meant ensuring the platform met WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards and supported specialized requirements, such as artist verification under the Native American Arts & Crafts Act.
Scalable API architecture
NEFA envisioned CreativeGround serving as digital infrastructure for the broader creative economy. This meant building robust APIs that external organizations could use to integrate CreativeGround data into their own websites and applications.
Multi-user experience design
The platform needed to elegantly serve multiple distinct audiences — individual artists, cultural organizations, creative businesses, state administrators, and the general public — each with different needs and workflows, and all within a cohesive, intuitive experience.
Solutions
Strategic partnership approach
The partnership started with platform stabilization to ensure uninterrupted service, then systematically planning and executing comprehensive modernization. Our approach prioritized NEFA’s operational needs while building toward their ambitious long-term vision.
Modern headless architecture
Together, we transitioned from the technically limited Drupal 7 environment to a decoupled Drupal backend with Next.js 14 frontend, creating the flexible, scalable foundation NEFA needed to support:
- Advanced search capabilities with Apache Solr integration and city field indexing
- API-first design enabling the external partner integrations NEFA envisioned
- Modern React components for complex forms and user interactions built on a comprehensive Material Design-based component system, ensuring a consistent user experience
- Enhanced performance through CDN optimization and strategic caching
Visual architecture and user experience design
Our cross-functional design and development collaboration delivered:
- Sophisticated search experience with complex logic handling art discipline hierarchies, venue capacity filtering, and breadcrumb navigation systems for enhanced discoverability
- Streamlined account creation flow featuring multi-step user onboarding with email confirmation workflows, error recovery systems, and seamless profile management integration
- Brand identity development establishing CreativeGround as a distinct digital brand while maintaining organizational relationships
- Comprehensive design system with Figma documentation, systematic component library, and Material Design foundation enabling scalable interface development
- Accessibility-conscious design implementing compliance improvements with built-in validation tools throughout the platform
- Cross-functional quality assurance with design-to-development fidelity reviews ensuring implementation accuracy
Comprehensive system integration
Our team implemented the sophisticated multi-system integrations NEFA required, including:
- Custom Mailchimp integration with sophisticated audience segmentation capabilities, including:
- Institution/Business Type field synchronization enabling targeted communications
- Iterative enhancement based on NEFA’s evolving marketing needs
- Automated data flows maintain consistency between Creative Ground profiles and marketing audiences
- Performance optimization for sync operations supporting large-scale community outreach
- Support for bidirectional Salesforce synchronization with custom field mapping and automated data flows
- API partnership program supporting external WordPress plugins and custom applications
Quality-driven engineering
Our development process emphasized reliability and maintainability through:
- Multi-environment testing pipeline (development → staging → production)
- Automated deployment with CircleCI ensuring consistent, low-risk updates
- Comprehensive documentation and knowledge transfer protocols
- Proactive maintenance cycles with quarterly updates and security monitoring
Results
Platform growth and scale
- 30,000+ professional profiles across New England’s five states
- Multi-state roster programs supporting government arts partnerships
- API partnership ecosystem with successful WordPress plugin implementations
- 99.99% uptime maintained through rigorous testing and deployment processes
Technical excellence delivered
- Enhanced search performance with city field indexing and geographic mapping
- Supported Salesforce implementation enabling streamlined data management workflows
- Mobile optimization with responsive design across all device types
- Accessibility improvements implemented across platform features
Measurable community impact
- Cross-state networking facilitated through “I Have Worked With” professional connections
- Extended digital reach via API partners integrating CreativeGround data into their platforms
- Improved discoverability for artists and organizations seeking collaboration opportunities
Strategic partnership value
- 8 years of continuous development, demonstrating successful long-term collaboration
- Collaborative problem-solving enabling rapid response to community needs
- Successful knowledge transfer with NEFA staff, confidently managing day-to-day platform operations
Ready to transform your mission-critical platform? Contact us to explore how our empathy-led design and quality-driven engineering can help your organization build digital solutions designed for humans.