How ArcStone Has Spent 28 Years Helping Minnesota Organizations Show Up Online
There is a particular kind of trust that takes a long time to build.
It is not the trust you earn from a single successful project or a polished proposal. It is the trust that comes from showing up year after year in the same community, learning what organizations here actually need, and doing the work carefully enough that those organizations call you again when something changes.
ArcStone has been doing that work in Minnesota since 1996. We are a small agency in Minneapolis, and over nearly three decades, we have had the privilege of partnering with some of the organizations that define what this state stands for: its parks, its food shelves, its housing providers, its schools, its arts communities, its county governments, and its workforce programs. What follows is not a comprehensive list. It is a look at what that kind of work actually looks like across the organizations that have trusted us to help them show up online.
Serving the Public: Government Websites That Work for Everyone
Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board manages more than 180 park destinations serving millions of visitors each year. Their website is not a marketing tool. It is a public utility, one that residents rely on to find program registration, facility hours, accessibility information, and recreation resources across the entire city.
When MPRB came to ArcStone, they needed more than a refresh. They needed a large-scale government platform that could meet WCAG accessibility standards, handle multi-departmental content management, and hold up under the demands of a major city agency. After launch, internal support requests related to the website dropped by 60%. For a government communications team, that number represents real time returned to public service.
Minnesota Counties Intergovernmental Trust (MCIT)
MCIT is the organization that helps Minnesota’s 87 counties manage risk. Their members are county administrators and elected officials who need to find specialized insurance and risk management resources quickly. The old website made that harder than it needed to be, with poor navigation, accessibility gaps, and a cumbersome event registration process.
ArcStone led MCIT through our Blueprint discovery process, rebuilt the site on WordPress with WCAG 2.2 AA compliance, and integrated Stripe payment processing for their training event registrations. The resource library now has efficient search and filtering, and staff can manage and update content without needing a developer. For an organization whose entire value proposition is making complex risk management navigable for busy county officials, a website that actually works is not a small thing.
Housing, Stability, and Human Dignity
Minnesota has a persistent housing crisis. Several of the organizations we work with are on the front lines of it, and building their digital presence requires something beyond competent development. It requires understanding that the people visiting those websites are often in the worst moments of their lives.
Simpson Housing Services
Simpson Housing Services has provided emergency shelter, transitional housing, and supportive services to women and families experiencing homelessness in Minneapolis for decades. ArcStone has been their digital partner since 2016, rebuilding their website twice as the organization’s programs and needs evolved.
The challenge with a site like Simpson’s is one that many housing nonprofits face: donors need to be moved to give, but the people being served deserve to be represented with dignity, not as objects of pity. Every design decision, every photo selection, every piece of copy has to hold both of those things at once. That is the kind of work that requires attention and restraint, and it is the kind of work we have been doing with Simpson for nearly a decade.
Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative
Beacon brings together congregations across the Twin Cities metro to develop and operate permanent supportive housing. Their work is deeply relational, rooted in community, and often operates in the background of the broader housing conversation. Their digital presence needed to reflect that identity while also making it easy for congregations and community members to understand how to get involved.
Bridging
Bridging is one of those organizations that people in the Twin Cities talk about with a particular warmth. They furnish homes for people transitioning out of homelessness, and they do it at a scale that is hard to comprehend until you see the warehouse. Building a digital presence for an organization like Bridging means communicating volume and heart at the same time.
Emma Norton Services
Emma Norton Services has been providing housing to women and families in St. Paul since 1917, when a gift from Emma Norton funded what began as a residence for young women on College Avenue. The mission has deepened considerably over the years. Today the organization provides trauma-informed housing with comprehensive supportive services, mental health support, and case management, programs that were developed and expanded through the 1990s into what the organization is now. ArcStone has partnered with their team on digital strategy and development, supporting an organization whose more than 100 years of history in this community is matched by the relevance of what they do today.
Food Access, Affordable Services, and Community Resilience
Loaves and Fishes
When someone is looking for a meal, they are not browsing. They need to find the right location, confirm the right day and time, and get there. Every extra click is a real barrier.
Founded in 1982, Loaves and Fishes now provides free meals at more than 35 community locations across 16 Minnesota counties, making them the largest open-to-the-public prepared meal program in the state. Their old website had clunky navigation and outdated design that made it harder than it should have been for families to find what they needed. ArcStone built a mobile-first WordPress redesign with advanced filtering and interactive mapping, so a parent on a phone can find the nearest meal site by neighborhood, day, or time in seconds. The donor side of the site needed to work too, with storytelling that communicated impact without creating barriers for people seeking services. Both things are possible on the same platform if the design is done thoughtfully.
The Lift Garage
The Lift Garage is a Minneapolis nonprofit that provides low-cost auto repair to income-qualifying Minnesotans, charging $25 per hour for labor with parts at a modest markup. Founded by a former social worker, it operates on a model built around the idea that reliable transportation is not a luxury, it is what allows people to get to work, to medical appointments, to school. They also offer free monthly Car Care Classes that teach basic automotive skills, from checking fluids to jump-starting a battery, to the community members they serve.
When ArcStone came on board, The Lift Garage was operating on Kukui CMS, a platform built for traditional auto shops that had no capacity for donation processing, community program promotion, or any of the things that make The Lift Garage different from a regular garage. ArcStone migrated them to WordPress and integrated Bloomerang for donation management and Acuity for appointment scheduling. They left with a platform that actually fits what they are, not just what they do with cars.
Hunger Solutions Minnesota
Hunger Solutions works to connect Minnesotans with food resources and advocates for anti-hunger policy across the state. Their digital platform serves both the people seeking resources and the policy audience they need to influence.
Workforce Development and Education
Caring Careers Start Here
This was one of the largest projects ArcStone has completed: a statewide workforce development campaign on behalf of the long-term care sector in Minnesota. The engagement included branding, a full website build, and a multi-channel marketing campaign designed to connect job seekers with healthcare employers across the state. The campaign reached thousands of Minnesotans navigating career decisions, and the platform built to support it had to be durable enough to serve that audience at scale across an extended campaign window.
Summit Academy OIC
Summit Academy OIC has been training Minneapolis residents for careers in skilled trades, IT, healthcare, and financial services since its founding in 1996, with roots in the Opportunities Industrialization Center movement that stretch back to the late 1960s. When ArcStone redesigned their website, the country was in the middle of the pandemic. Rather than pause, we organized COVID-safe video shoots to capture content that could show prospective students and employers what Summit Academy’s programs actually look like. The result was a site that better communicates career outcomes and program quality, built during the hardest possible conditions for that kind of production work.
Decoding Dyslexia Minnesota
Decoding Dyslexia Minnesota is a parent-led advocacy organization that serves families, educators, and policymakers navigating dyslexia diagnosis and support. Building their website required thinking carefully about the audience. Many of the people visiting this site are dyslexic themselves, and the design needed to reflect that.
ArcStone delivered a WordPress redesign with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance and explicit dyslexia-friendly design principles: appropriate typography, spacing, and color contrast that makes reading easier rather than harder. We also handled a NationBuilder integration via WP Fusion, migrated over 50 pages of content, and simplified the brand visuals for better scalability. For an organization whose entire mission is removing barriers, a website that removes barriers is not optional.
Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health (MACMH)
MACMH connects Minnesota families and educators with children’s mental health resources, training, and advocacy tools. Their audience is often in a difficult moment, a parent searching for help after a crisis, a teacher trying to support a struggling student. The site needed to feel welcoming and navigable under those conditions, not overwhelming.
ArcStone built a platform that provides clear access to resources while meeting accessibility standards that serve all users, including those experiencing mental health challenges. The improved platform positions MACMH as the trusted resource center it has always been.
Bluesky Online School
Bluesky Online School serves Minnesota students who need an alternative to traditional in-person education. Their digital presence is not supplementary to their program. For many of their students, the website is the first impression of the school and a daily interface with their education.
Arts, Culture, and Community Identity
Plymouth Christian Youth Center and The Capri Theater
PCYC has been a fixture in North Minneapolis since 1954, founded by Luther Seminary students and rooted ever since in the education and development of young people in the neighborhood. Today the organization serves more than 2,000 youth annually through three interconnected programs: PYC Arts and Technology High School, an accredited alternative high school operating in partnership with Minneapolis Public Schools; Bright Futures, an after-school and summer enrichment program for K-5 students; and The Capri Theater.
The Capri was built in 1927 and is the last surviving theater of the 13 that once served North Minneapolis. PCYC has owned and operated it since the mid-1980s. Prince performed his first solo concert there in January 1979. It is a cultural anchor for a neighborhood that has fought hard to hold onto its institutions, and when PCYC needed a digital platform that could support the theater’s reopening and expansion, the site had to carry the weight of that history while also functioning as a practical event and programming tool.
Both PCYC and The Capri needed websites that reflected who they actually are. For PCYC, we built a WordPress design that embraces their community-focused energy while clearly communicating programming and impact. For The Capri, we developed a platform that combines cultural storytelling with practical event tools. Neither site looks like a generic nonprofit website. That was the point.
Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Minnesota
Minnesota Horticultural Society (Northern Gardener)
The Minnesota Horticultural Society was founded in 1866, making it one of the oldest continuously operating horticultural organizations in the country. Their audience spans amateur weekend gardeners and professional horticulturists, and their website needed to serve both without condescending to one or overwhelming the other.
ArcStone developed a phased redesign approach that allowed MHS to launch core functionality within their budget constraints, then expand with a robust resource center in subsequent phases. The result is a platform that serves gardeners at every skill level and reflects the 160 years of authority MHS has built in Minnesota horticultural education.
West Central Initiative
West Central Initiative is a community foundation based in Fergus Falls that drives economic development and community investment across nine counties in west-central Minnesota: Becker, Clay, Douglas, Grant, Otter Tail, Pope, Stevens, Traverse, and Wilkin. Founded during Minnesota’s farming crisis in 1986, WCI has spent four decades investing in the rural communities and people that the broader economy sometimes overlooks. ArcStone partnered with their team on a website that serves both the communities WCI invests in and the donors and organizations that partner with them. That kind of regional work does not always make headlines, but it shapes the long-term economic health of Minnesota communities well outside the metro.
Minnesota Corn
Minnesota is one of the leading corn-producing states in the country, and Minnesota Corn represents the farmers who grow it. Building a digital presence for an agricultural commodity organization means serving a membership of working farmers while also communicating the value of corn to a broader public audience.
Faribault Foods
Faribault Foods traces its origins to 1888 in Faribault, Minnesota, making it one of the longest-running food manufacturing operations in the state. Today the company, which produces canned goods under brands including S&W Beans, SunVista, Luck’s, Butter Kernel, and Kuner’s, operates plants across Minnesota and employs hundreds of Minnesotans. Partnering with a company that has manufactured in this state for nearly 140 years is a reminder that ArcStone’s work extends across sectors, and that the same care we bring to mission-driven organizations applies equally to businesses with deep roots in this community.
What 28 Years in Minnesota Looks Like
The list above represents a fraction of the organizations ArcStone has served in this state. What runs through all of them is something we do not always say out loud but feel every time a project launches: these organizations are doing real work for real people, and their websites either help them do that work or get in the way.
We are a small agency. We are majority woman-owned and a Certified B Corporation. We have spent 28 years making the choice to work with organizations whose missions align with a version of Minnesota we want to live in. That is not a marketing position. It is what happens when the same team stays together in the same place long enough to develop real relationships with the community around them.
If your organization is navigating a website project and you want to work with a team that knows this community, we would like to talk.