Five Jars

YMCA of the North offers online learning courses which so far have been accessed on an anonymous basis, meaning no registration nor identification from users was required to participate. Thinking about expansion, YMCA of the North teamed up with Five Jars and overhauled the LMS entirely by transforming it from a landing page-based solution to a fully functioning learning platform. We have identified authentication to be one of the key pillars of the new system. Based on our initial requirement analysis, we have decided to build several layers of access restriction to provide the needed functionality.

Our team developed a scheduling and rescheduling solution that did these tasks with one simple click. Moreover, YMCA of the North can now invite new users as well as add users to new courses in batches. This reduced the manual workload of the employees significantly. Eventually, our solution also simplified the communication between the administration, course leaders, and users by providing a simplified communication channel that allows for a quick and easy release of messages and emails.

George Washington’s Mount Vernon partnered with Five Jars to help with difficult technological challenges, to update and advance their web environment and add additional features to their ticketing platform and website.

As Five Jars is experienced in working together with non-profit organisations and the Tessitura ecosystem, we were the right choice to team up with and started straight away by analysing the web environment. We help Mount Vernon constantly innovate what they do online. 

Spooky Nook Sports recently transitioned to a new CRM system and identified various areas for improvement. Especially the UX design and the user journeys required an update to align with the overall desired website experience. Five Jars was hired to analyze the current state, identify areas for improvement and, eventually, integrate the required third-party functionalities.

We have launched a calendar and schedules widgets on the website that are constantly syncing with the ACTIVENet CRM and display up-to-date information about all available events. In order to achieve a seamless and intuitive solution, we analyzed the current state of the CRM transition and anticipated the near-future changes to the data structure. We ultimately went live in a phased way to ensure a smooth roll-out of our solution.

YMCA of the North desired to introduce a microsite communicating their daycare and preschool programs for various age groups to their community and beyond. While forming a part of the wider YMCA of the North website, the Early Childhood Learning Centers (ECLC) microsite should provide a very distinct browsing feeling to the user. Five Jars created a microsite with parallels to the YMCA of the North websites, but it is still offering a completely new user experience.

Full web presence redesign for a major educational association (Council for Exceptional Children), a professional association of educators focused on advancing the success of children with exceptionalities.

Five Jars went through the full cycle redesign with the CEC team to digitally transform their web presence and improve brand consistency across all platforms. We created a digital ecosystem for the CEC to host 70+ microsites and created an engaging, positive website visitor experience.

Encouraging a global audience to stay active while lockdowns are introduced throughout the world. The first national on-demand Health & Wellness platform for YMCAs had been launched just days after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States and lockdowns had been introduced. The goal of the Health & Wellness platform is to enable members and families to stay balanced through online workout sessions while their beloved local fitness clubs must remain closed.

We set up a scalable cloud infrastructure, built a custom website with an independent CMS system, and added content for the launch. Furthermore, we enabled simple content upload to foster the long-term success of the platform. Last but not least, the global orientation of the platform posed specific requirements to the infrastructure to keep the loading and use of the content smooth. Within less than three weeks, people from 189 countries registered and started using the platform. The first national YMCA platform became a global star and at the end of the third week, nearly one million unique users had registered and started using the platform.

YMCA members are increasingly relying on mobile devices, voice assistants, and new channels of content delivery. YMCA associations need to stay ahead of the curve to ensure that they meet the needs of their members.

We selected Amazon Alexa for the ease of development of new skills on the platform. Amazon Alexa provides an excellent framework for building and deploying applications to the store.

Five Jars created an Amazon Alexa skill that allows users to interact with YMCA content through conversational, natural language and shows off a variety of new features.

YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties has been an eager Open Y community member. However, without having done any major updates to their old website, their technology environment became outdated and error-prone. Five Jars was hired to update its entire website in order to enable the running of all the necessary functionality. By updating its entire web presence, Five Jars introduced a user-centric approach to creating seamless user journeys.

Five Jars migrated and overhauled an existing website to harness the power of sophisticated functionalities such as single sign-on and data analytics. One of the overarching goals, however, was to foster efficient updating in the future. Therefore, our developers created synergies wherever possible and created an intuitive user interface as well as a backend to simplify all processes.

YMCA of the North is responsible for the preparation and uploading of dozens of videos – each day. While this is great as a lot of amazing content is being produced, it also shifts the bottleneck from content creation to video preparation. Five Jars was hired to automate the video preparation and reduce the time spent on these administrative tasks.

George Washington’s Mount Vernon has been increasing its video production efforts to offer additional value to its visitors and members. Besides pre-recorded videos, Mount Vernon now offers live events and other captivating online experiences as well as a membership area with additional members-only content. However, their video content management system reached its peak of usability and they turned to Five Jars as their long-term development partner to re-design the way content is managed and presented to visitors and members. 

Through the initial discovery phase, our developers created a detailed backlog and kicked off with a structured time and budget plan. The final solution not only reduced the time needed to manage the video portal by over 200 hours per year but also updated the UI/UX of the video portal to a more sophisticated online web platform worthy of Mount Vernon.

The YMCA of Greater Seattle fosters healthy living habits and a strong sense of community in the Greater Seattle region through its 14 branches. YMCA of Greater Seattle is one of the key players in the Open Y community. We worked with the YMCA to digitally transform their membership experience, starting with Open Y migration. We also improved Group Exercise schedules and streamlined the program registration process. We are thrilled to have an excellent partnership that makes digital transformation possible for the YMCA of Greater Seattle as well as for the marvelous Open Y community.

YMCA of Greater Brandywine encompasses eight YMCAs with more than 80,000 members across Chester County. 

We worked with the YMCA to digitally transform their membership experience. Starting with a migration to the Open Y platform, we quickly followed with improved Group Exercise schedules, a streamlined program registration process, and a digital signage launch with promotional and schedules screens, all while lowering expenses for future Open Y upgrades and digital signage software.

The project brief was bursting with innovation opportunities. YMCA of the North desired to innovate the way they inform visitors about upcoming events as well as how to guide them through their buildings. Five Jars accepted the challenge to digitalize the offline processes and to create an engaging, new way of taking care of guests.

Several YMCAs searched collectively for a platform solution to host their video content and to draw more traffic to their online offerings. They selected Five Jars to deliver three standalone websites and cater to individual requests while acknowledging a tight budget.

Channel Islands YMCA has maintained eight replicated WordPress websites with its growth. The project's main goal was to consolidate all websites into one primary site with branch landing pages and create one-off pages from each landing page. Launched the Open Y website simplified website navigation, enhanced content management experience increased website traffic, revenue, and streamlined user journeys.

The Virginia Alliance of YMCAs unites 27 independent Ys that serve communities throughout the Commonwealth. The Virginia Alliance of YMCAs was functioning on a website that looked dated and was missing some basic features. Open Y allowed the Virginia Alliance of YMCAs to launch a new, modern website with advanced functionality with a minimal budget.

YMCA of the North attracts 3,000,000+ unique users annually. With that amount of traffic, every single website improvement becomes a complex project. In order to delight customers, increase impact and grow their organization, YMCA of the North hired Five Jars to carry out necessary development work as well as improve the user experience across its online presence.

Five Jars evaluated the required steps and kicked the project off with a diverse project team. Integrations we built generate demand and revenue for YMCA products and services. Our solutions process tons of data and allow people to book and register for programs, training, and camps online. In addition, the processes we automated save time and money and show high ROI. By simplifying the scholarship application process, we made it easy for many families to join the Y.