Narrowing Focus, Expanding Impact: NFI's Website Transformation

What happens when your website becomes a maze of information? That was the challenge facing National Fatherhood Initiative® (NFI) as they looked to increase their impact by narrowing their focus.

NFI recognized that their website was making it difficult for organizations to find the specific resources they needed to succeed. To turn things around and make their site easier to navigate, they needed a partner who could understand both their nonprofit mission and their B2B operational model.

With a team of just eight staff members, NFI partnered with Lean Labs to completely rethink how they communicate their mission and solutions. The goal wasn't just a new website—it was a strategic transformation of how they guide organizations through their father inclusion journey.

The result? Their website now acts as an additional team member, effectively guiding organizations to the right resources based on their level of father inclusion. More importantly, the project revealed new opportunities to streamline their communication strategy and better serve their partners.

Lean Labs sat down with NFI's President Christopher Brown and Chief Marketing Officer Melissa Byers to hear their transformation story.

Who is NFI?

National Fatherhood Initiative® provides proven solutions and resources to help organizations effectively include fathers in their programs and strengthen families across communities. They partner with organizations like nonprofits, schools, correctional facilities. and military installations and give them the tools and training needed to address critical challenges facing today's families.

Image: National Fatherhood Initiative® homepage

National Fatherhood Initiative®'s Journey: Melissa Byers

Mallory: Thanks for chatting with me today! Let’s start at the beginning. Do you remember the problem or trigger event that led you to hire us, and how that problem affected your business?

Melissa: So our primary website, fatherhood.org, had been in place in its current design and format for probably about five years, although we had done some internal edits to it to sort of help it improve and change with the times. We really came to the point where I, as a marketer, knew that the design was outdated, the layout was outdated, and it really was not optimized for inbound marketing strategy, for generating leads, not as optimized as it should or could be based on what I knew was available today. 

So it had been in the back of my mind for probably our last fiscal year or two that it needed to be redesigned. And it just finally had come up on the to-do list that I could put into my next fiscal year budget, which was the fiscal year that just started. So we were in fiscal year ‘25. 

And so, from that point, I had not researched many partners for that redesign, but I did know that I wanted it to be a certified HubSpot partner, ideally Diamond, because I really do just always feel like when you're working with a partner of any particular software, you know, wanna choose the best. So I had that in the back of my mind. 

What happened next from there was just sort of a, I think, happy collection of events where somehow I started following Lean Lab's newsletter, or I had heard about it through something I downloaded somewhere. 

Then, I attended a couple of webinars by Kevin. And, in general, I really appreciated his strategy around lead magnets and just some really more complex ways of handling and working with and optimizing websites and inbound marketing. And so from there, I started asking, who is this Lean Labs? Who is this guy? And what do they offer that could help me? Because we are a very small nonprofit. 

We have only eight staff members. We do not have an “IT” or “technology” person. We do have a primary graphic designer who can do a lot of great things with websites print design and digital design, but just no capacity to do it. So we really rely on outsourcing to high-quality partners to do these kinds of projects for us. And so as I explored Lean Labs' website, I saw that you guys do these website redesigns. And I also appreciated that the website provided some pricing levels on that, so it helped me have an idea of what I was potentially getting myself into just by starting to have a conversation with you guys. 

I think that was really key to me actually reaching out and saying, ‘okay, they are in a price range I can probably afford because we are a nonprofit, we have a smaller budget to work with. But I can also tell they do work with really high quality.’ And so that's what really caused me to reach out. 

Mallory: When you were looking for a partner for this project, what exactly were you looking for?

Melissa: Our old website was hosted on HubSpot, but it was not easy for me or my designer to edit. I had also been familiar with Sprocket Rocket. When I first came to the National Fatherhood Initiative, I've been here 13 years, we had a website that was based on sort of more of that modular approach. And so when I kind of put two and two together that you guys could build a site that used that, that would make it easier for us long-term to edit and maintain the site, that was important.

And then just looking at your own website, and then I think I also looked at some websites you've designed or other clients you've worked with. You know, it's always important to me to see the quality of work that a potential partner has done. 

We are a very unique nonprofit in that we function like a regular business organization. We sell products B2B. And so it's important to find a partner who has that B2B perspective as opposed to necessarily someone who has a nonprofit perspective. So I actually don't often choose partners that have a nonprofit perspective because it really skews the focus of how you are doing your inbound marketing and what you're driving toward, which is revenue. 

Those are some of the additional things that I look for in a partner that I was seeing in Lean Labs.

Mallory: At the end of the day, was there a certain X-factor that made Lean Labs stand out from the other partners you considered?

Melissa: I think Lean Lab stood out because in the second meeting I had with Kevin, he actually put together a very loose design framework of what our homepage would look like and what he envisioned, what the direction was that we'd be going that he envisioned. 

He presented this framework that really helped me feel comfortable with the direction we were going to be going off the bat, as opposed to just trusting that what would be eventually put together would meet our needs. I think that just right away gave me that comfort that I could also show that to my boss right away and say, ‘hey, this is who I think we should work with. And here's why. And here's what they already put together as a wireframe, just really on good faith.’

It really sped the process along. I felt that we had something to start with, knowing all of the messaging and positioning work that we did, I knew what we were getting to eventually in the end. And I think that was really helpful for me.

Mallory: I'm sure perhaps there were some doubts during the buying process or some questions, challenges. What concerns or doubts did you have?

Melissa: To be honest with you, I don't think I had many concerns or doubts because I felt very clear on our path. Our path was that during this particular period of time, we were going to work on messaging and positioning, and then we would be done by this particular time. Then, we would start the design of the website, and it would be done by this particular amount of time. 

Maybe during that process I was like, ‘that's really an aggressive timeline.’ And I probably just assumed we would not meet the targets because I have never done a website redesign with a partner and have it actually launched on time in my entire career. And so I think that, you know, accommodation of it happening fast, but starting to quickly see that we were meeting these goals and these milestones and it was moving along quickly was encouraging to me. 

So I didn't really have many moments that I can recall where I was worried or concerned or had doubts that we wouldn't get there and that it would be quality work because I felt like the team was going so deep with me and the other key team members. And also, going back to your comment about why we chose Lean Labs, I really appreciated Kevin's no-nonsense approach to the conversations we had and getting us to actually answer questions that he asked us in a very concise way without adding too much fluff or jargon to it. That aspect of Kevin's approach that was really helpful. 

I think because I saw that on the front end, I also felt comfortable that like he's gonna get to the heart of the matter when we need to get to the heart of the matter. 

Mallory: How did it feel to work with LeanLabs? What did the process feel like for you and your team?

Melissa: It felt comfortable because when I asked for certain types of information or needed information in a certain format for my team Kevin or the team were able to do that so that I could easily share it with them and get their blessing on it. 

There were a couple of times where I know that Kevin likes delivering things in video. And so at times it felt like, I have to watch this whole video to get, you know, the point that he's trying to make. And so that's his communication style. That felt a little challenging from time to time. 

The transition to working with Jessie was extremely seamless. I've worked with many partners and I've experienced on many occasions that the handoff from sales to the actual account manager, program manager, project manager, whatever has been disjointed and where I'm being repetitive about what I've already told somebody else. This handoff did not feel that way, it was painless. 

And then, working with Jessie and the rest of the team using Slack, I thought it was great. I think that that whole structure of communication and just the speed at which she replied to questions I had just really helped me feel good about everything moving forward so quickly is that it was moving forward quickly, like it was supposed to. 

Overall, I think my feelings about it were that it was just a fun project, everyone was great to work with, and there really weren't any big problems or issues that we faced along the way.

Mallory: I know it hasn't been a super long time since launch, but I want to talk about any results that you're seeing so far. What have you seen since launching the new site?

Melissa: Unfortunately, I don't have any numbers to share yet. But what I can share is that our president was involved in the entire process, but he's even impressed with how it turned out. And so am I. 

I would say it's the best redesign and restructure that we've ever had since I've been here. As I mentioned, I've been here for 13 years. This whole project was so collaborative and enjoyable. And then for the people who were involved in the collaboration, the staff who were involved in some interviews or in choosing color scheme for the site were just thrilled with the result. 

And then those who hadn't seen what we were doing at all and had just heard that we're working on this at staff meetings, when they saw it, they were just blown away by the, not just how pretty it looked, not just how modern it looked, but how well organized the products and services that we offer were on the new site, how easy to navigate it was, how simple we had made it for people to understand what we do, and we really the site had really removed a lot of clutter that we had previously without removing the things that were important to us.

Overall, our team has been blown away, saying, ‘wow, this is just so much better than what we've ever had.’ 

Then I shared it with our board chair and she was over the moon. She is in PR and digital marketing and advertising field, so she knew the work that had gone into it. She also knew how our messaging and positioning needed to change and was absolutely thrilled with the result of what she commented on first was not just how nice it looked, but it was the strategic messaging changes that we had made and just was really, really impressed with it. 

Mallory: If you had to give some advice to a professional who is in the same situation you were in before partnering with Lean Labs, what would you say?

Melissa: I would say to really evaluate what you need to change about your website from its heart, not just from the pretty visual design and color scheme, but exactly what you're trying to accomplish. 

What are your goals with your website? Then, look for a partner that understands those goals, that understands the systems you use, and the methodologies you use, like inbound marketing. So that the partner you choose gives you the result you're looking for. 

I think also look for a partner who feels like they match your business and I don't know if I would say culture, just that, you know, helps you feel like it's a good match because the feelings do matter because you're, you know, you're not just a business person, you have feelings too. 

When you meet the people and are deciding how do you feel about how you're engaging in conversation even as you're getting to know each other. And then I think also someone who understands and is committed to following the work that they did, to watch what the results are and continue to make recommendations to help you continue to improve. That's what I would recommend.

Mallory: Amazing, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today, Melissa! 

 National Fatherhood Initiative®'s Journey: Christopher Brown

Kevin: What was the trigger event that led you to want to change your website?

So kicking off this thing, NFI had a website for a long time. And I want to understand what problem we were trying to solve or what trigger event, what led you to want to change your website? Like what was happening in the business and what made you want to change the website? 

Christopher: Well, there were two things, Kevin. The first is that it was old. I mean, we had not had a major overhaul of our website in probably seven or eight years, something like that. So it was in need of certainly refreshing. So that was the term that we used initially. But the timing of this was fantastic for us in terms of working with you guys. 

One of the things that we have been doing over the years is narrowing our focus for maximum impact. So that might seem a little counterintuitive, right? Why would you narrow your focus and do less in order to have more impact? But that's what we realized we needed to do. And our website was basically a jumble of information, just a whole lot of information that we, as a nonprofit, thought that historically we needed to communicate to people, when in fact from a business perspective, we really didn't need to do all of that. 

We needed to focus more on what we offer that has the most impact in terms of moving the needle on our cause, which is to increase the ability of organizations in communities across the country to include fathers more effectively in their programs and services. 

Kevin: And how was your website keeping you from doing that? What was happening there? 

Christopher: Well, it was clear from our analytics that people were having a hard time navigating to the information that they needed to learn about and to find that best meet their met their needs. 

We have organizations in many sectors that we partner with in communities. Some of them are your traditional nonprofits that most people are aware of, but we partner a lot with schools, with correctional facilities, with military installations, with organizations in lots of different sectors. And they have different needs. 

Many of these organizations are just looking for information on how to get started around including fathers, where other organizations have more experience in including fathers. And we have resources that can help these organizations based on whatever level of father inclusion they happen to be at.

The problem was helping them to find that information so that they could ask ‘where do I start working with National Fatherhood Initiative® to have the most impact in increasing the father inclusion of our organization?’ 

People were simply getting lost on our website and often having to call us for information on, you know, what is it that we can do with you to be more father inclusive? And we wanted our website to do more of that. 

In other words, we wanted our website to act more like an additional staff member that we didn't have to pay, quite honestly. We wanted our website to do more selling for us so that when folks encounter our staff, when they call us, when they email us, they're farther down the road around understanding what it is that we offer so that we can kind of cut to the chase and give them the resources that they need to be effective. 

Kevin: Once you decided you needed a new website and wanted to find a partner to help with that, what were you looking for in that partnership?

Christopher: The first thing that was non-negotiable in looking for a partner was a HubSpot partner, someone who has expertise in the HubSpot inbound marketing platform, because everything that we do runs through HubSpot. So that was the first thing. 

The second thing was working with an organization that understands how to help your traditional for-profit organization to grow and be more successful, being able to do the same thing for a nonprofit. A lot of times when organizations have come to us or when vendors have come to us, they really have no clue how to translate what they're doing in the for-profit world into the nonprofit world. While there are some similarities in how nonprofits and for-profits operate, there are some significant differences. 

So, when we looked for a HubSpot partner, we were looking for someone who we felt comfortable could work with us to basically implement a for-profit approach in the nonprofit world. And as a consequence, they had to really be able to get up to speed with what we were doing quickly. And what we were, and frankly, I was shocked at was how fast the Lean Lab staff were able to understand what our mission is, what our history was, and where we needed to go to narrow that focus.

Kevin: What did your decision process look like? How did you narrow down your options and arrive at Lean Labs?

Christopher: Well, honestly, that was a process that I was not involved with, except at the very end, Kevin. So the process that we used was our chief marketing officer, Melissa Byers, she did the initial research. So she knew, of course, that we needed HubSpot partner, and she asked our HubSpot rep for recommendations. So that was the first step. 

The second step was to look at these different recommendations and talking to a few of those folks to determine who she would recommend to me we go with. So one of the things that I do, generally speaking, with our staff is empower them to do their jobs. so with Melissa, and we've been working together for well over a decade, I've come to really trust her judgment around picking vendors to work with us. 

So when she came to me with the recommendation to work with Lean Labs, my next step was to take all of the information that she shared with me and determine whether I thought that this was a good potential partner to work with. When I researched Lean Labs, looked at your website, looked at the information that you had sent Melissa, I was very impressed and thought that this was a good choice. 

Kevin: What were your biggest concerns? What were your biggest doubts? 

Christopher: Our experience working with other website design vendors, while fairly good was not great. And so I wasn't sure that frankly, anyone could understand and grasp the range of things that we do and help us to narrow the focus of our website to be in line with some recent decisions we had made around our strategic goals and tactical priorities, which are so much more narrow now than they've been historically. 

I had some trepidation initially, not because of Lean Labs specifically, but anybody that we would work with on such an effort to be able to accomplish that. And, you know, once we got into the process of working with you guys, the templates and the processes, the wireframes, every step in the process, gave me more confidence that you guys would be able to produce a website that tied in closely with our goals and priorities. 

Kevin: How did it feel once we started working together? Were there any standout moments in the process?

Christopher: Well, first of all, just increased excitement as I continued to see the website put together. And I would say the first time that my excitement level raised significantly was when we sat down with Jessie and started to go through the wireframes and messaging that would then be used by Lean Labs to create the different web pages in the navigation system that you see now. 

Once I started to see that, I got excited because it forced us to really think even more deeply about how we talk about National Fatherhood Initiative® and what it is that we provide. Everything from our value proposition, all the way down to specific wording around the fatherhood programs, the trainings that we provide, and the other resources as well. 

I was very confident that what you guys were going to present was going to be very useful. Moreover, what really excited me about this was the fact that you guys were so accommodating in terms of our suggestions for how to change things that you presented. And obviously, from a customer service perspective, right? I mean, that's one thing that a vendor should be doing. 

But on the flip side of that, you guys weren't afraid to challenge us in terms of how we thought we needed to be communicating about what NFI does generally and what we do in specific areas of our programming and training. So I thought that the relationship we had and as that relationship developed became one of almost like you guys were part of our team now. 

That gave me a huge level of comfort that, at the end of the day, this was going to turn out to be not just a satisfactory but a fantastic result. 

Kevin: I know the website just launched, but what kind of feedback or results are you seeing? And you might not be able to say anything on results. I think it's too early to look at the analytics. But what kind of feedback have you been getting since launching the website? 

Christopher: The internal feedback from our staff has been phenomenal. mean, every person on our staff absolutely loves the new website because it's not only a tool for people who are coming and looking for help around father inclusion to learn about what we do. 

We have many, you know, hundreds and thousands of people coming and finding us because of our inbound marketing efforts. But it's also a sales tool because now we can, as a staff, refer people to our website for information on National Fatherhood Initiative®, broadly speaking, and in specific areas, and have confidence that when they go there, they can find what they want. It's not that we as staff can't do that ourselves, but as I mentioned earlier, we wanted to work with a vendor who could develop a website that would act as an additional staff member and help us to communicate what we do and frankly, to help us sell the stuff that we have. 

Our staff is very impressed with its new status as a sales and marketing tool. We also have a very involved board of directors. As a nonprofit, having an involved board is very important. At the same time, because these folks are so experienced in both the for-profit and nonprofit worlds, we have a board with a wide range of experience. 

They have a very critical eye when it comes to what we do. And to a person, they have had nothing but positive things to say about the new website. 

One other thing I was impressed with was the fact that testimonials are an important part of the information that you guys want on websites for folks you design. That forced us to think about, well, what is it that we can do more proactively to go out and get testimonials? And we've developed a process for being able to do that.

Kevin: That's awesome.What advice would you have for someone who's unhappy with their website? Do you have any advice for someone in the process that you just went through? 

Christopher: Don't be afraid to basically, in this case, throw the baby out with a bath water. If you're really unsatisfied with your website, basically start from scratch and and trust the process that Lean Labs has for being able to turn your website into an effective communication tool or sales tool or all of the above.

At the same time, you have to be really clear about what you want in a website. Because any vendor, whether it's Lean Labs or anyone else, without you being clear about what you want your website to accomplish, and what you want to accomplish as an organization or a business, if you don't communicate that clearly, then no one's going to be able to help you. 

So you need to start there. What is it that you want your website to do for you? And then how do you clearly articulate that to Lean Labs so that they can then take it and make it the best website that it could possibly be? When you do that, trust that Lean Labs will be able to accomplish that for you. 

Kevin: Amazing, thank you so much for your time today, Christopher!