For the New Mexico council of Trout Unlimited, I designed and developed a custom WordPress website that brought together conservation storytelling, community engagement, and organizational infrastructure in a single, flexible platform. The project was especially rewarding because it supported work centered on rivers, public lands, habitat restoration, and long-term environmental stewardship across New Mexico. The organization’s public messaging emphasizes healthy water, thriving trout habitat, policy advocacy, and on-the-ground restoration, which gave the site a clear mission-driven foundation from the start.
The challenge was to create a site that could do several jobs well at once. It needed to communicate the urgency and value of conservation work, support public engagement through events and action campaigns, and provide a scalable structure for the organization’s programs, team, and regional chapter network. At the same time, the site needed to feel accessible, energetic, and rooted in place, reflecting both the landscape of New Mexico and the grassroots nature of the work. The site’s core sections span Who We Are, Our Work, Get Involved, Blog, and donation pathways, with content ranging from restoration and policy to volunteer engagement and community science.
I designed the site around a custom WordPress build tailored to the organization’s operational needs. Key features included an events calendar for volunteer opportunities and community gatherings, a blog for conservation news and storytelling, and custom post types to support the Take Action section, Our Work initiatives, team profiles, and local chapters. This structure made it easier to manage a wide range of recurring content while keeping the front end cohesive and easy to navigate for supporters, volunteers, and stakeholders alike. The public-facing site currently highlights local events, action campaigns, team members, and chapter information across the state, including the Truchas Chapter of Trout Unlimited, whose own site I also designed and built as part of the broader Trout Unlimited New Mexico engagement.
On the design side, the goal was to create something that felt modern and organized without losing the warmth and immediacy that conservation work demands. The visual approach supported both storytelling and action, giving the organization room to showcase restoration efforts, policy work, water infrastructure initiatives, community outreach, and local leadership in a way that felt credible and engaging. The result was a site that functions as both a communications platform and a participation tool, helping Trout Unlimited New Mexico connect people to the work happening in rivers, watersheds, and communities across the state.
Patrick Iverson has been designing brands and building custom WordPress websites for nonprofits, conservation groups, and mission-driven organizations across New Mexico since 2003. If your statewide council, chapter network, or environmental nonprofit needs a digital platform that can carry storytelling, fundraising, and public engagement at the same time, I would be glad to talk it through.
