Introducing the New BarrFoundation.org

Welcome to the brand new barrfoundation.org.

By way of introduction, let me say a few words about the principles that guided our work on our new site. More than an opportunity to refresh Barr’s logo and color palette, and to introduce a more contemporary, mobile-first design, we have always understood our website redesign as an important opportunity to demonstrate our commitments to be open and transparent, to deploy a broad range of tools to advance our programmatic goals, to share what we are learning, and to be active collaborators.

As we re-launch barrfoundation.org, we are pleased to join the Foundation Center’s Glasspockets initiative, which champions philanthropic transparency online and tracks more than twenty transparency and accountability indicators. Several features of our new site enable visitors to learn about aspects of Barr’s work we have not shared previously, or that we have done only in limited ways. For example, visitors can now explore all of our recent grant commitments via our grants database, review our financial statements, and read feedback we’ve received from our grantees (and offer their own).

Check in on our blog for timely commentary and updates from Barr staff and visiting authors, and join in the discussion via a new commenting feature. Visit our program pages—Arts & Creativity, Climate, Education, and Global—to learn about our priorities, strategies, and some of our key partners and initiatives. And join our email list for news and updates from the Foundation.

This new website is one outcome of Barr’s embracing a more ambitious vision for communications. Our website is by no means the only place you’ll hear from Barr. It is merely one piece, albeit a central one, of a broader communications strategy that aims to ensure we are both communicating with openness and transparency and that we are engaging, listening, and being responsive to what we hear. Toward that end, we will continue building Barr’s presence on Twitter and may add other digital channels in time. Whatever methods we use to communicate, we will use barrfoundation.org to curate and link to the many conversations in which we are actively engaged.

My thanks to the many partners we engaged last fall to help us define the online experience we want visitors to have of the Barr Foundation; to my ace Communications team and Barr Foundation colleagues for all their work to keep our eyes on that goal (even as record-setting snows buried Boston); and to Threespot, our terrific design and digital partner.

So again, welcome. Show yourself around. I hope you enjoy your visit.

Please let us know what you think.