Mending Indigenous Spirits
Full-Stack Build • Ongoing Management • Pro Bono • 2025
A digital home for Indigenous wellness, culture, and community, built as a mobile-first web app. The work began in 2025, the rebuild launched in 2026, and the studio still runs it.
The organization
Mending Indigenous Spirits is a Northern California 501(c)(3) nonprofit creating and connecting Indigenous communities through wellness, culture, and healing. It supports relatives walking the Red Road and Wellbriety frameworks of recovery, survivors of domestic violence, unhoused relatives, BIPOC community members, youth and elders, families affected by Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP), and Two-Spirit relatives, with patience, understanding, and respect.
The challenge
The organization does a great deal: recovery meetings, cultural events, an artisan market, trainings, and a wellness team. It had no cohesive home for any of it. It needed a space that could carry a wide, growing range of programs without feeling cluttered; serve a largely mobile community often reaching out in vulnerable moments, with calm and dignity; and honor Indigenous culture in its look and language rather than treating it as decoration. And it had to work on a phone first, because that is where most of the community reaches it.
My approach
Discovery rooted in the mission
We mapped the full range of programs into a clear information architecture before any design began: Vision, Team, Events, Wellbriety meetings, Artisan Market, Shared Journeys, and Trainings.
A calm, ceremonial system
Deep charcoal grounds, teal and warm-gold accents, and elegant serif headings that read as reverent and steady: present, never loud.
Patterns that scale
Reusable card grids, event cards, a scrollable meeting-flyer grid, and a filterable team directory, so new content gets added rather than redesigned.
Built for the people it serves
Mobile-first, accessible, and fast, with the paths that matter most always close at hand: find a meeting, get involved, donate.
Full-stack, built to grow
Next.js with a PostgreSQL database behind it, so events, meetings, and trainings are database records rather than pages we re-edit. An admin sits behind them, switched off for now at the organization's request; today MIS sends us the news and we publish it.
Managed, month after month
MIS sends us their news and it reaches their community the same day: a winners list arrives by email, a talking-circle flyer lands in the client portal, and both are live on the site before the evening. The Protect Our Children contest closed in August 2026, and the winners page and its campaign flyer published the day the organization approved them.
Inside the build
What we built
- A mission-first homepage routing people to eight core areas of the community
- An "Our Vision" page stating the 501(c)(3) mission and exactly who it serves
- A wellness-team directory with filters and full leadership bios
- An events hub that ran the Protect Our Children youth design contest end to end, from call for entries to crowning three winners
- A Wellbriety meeting-flyer grid for Indigenous-led recovery meetings, kept current as the organization adds circles
- Indigenous Artisan Market, Shared Journeys, and Certificates & Trainings
- Clear contact and donation paths
The outcome
A single, dignified home for a wide-ranging community program, on a phone or a desktop. The structure gives the organization room to grow without a redesign, the identity reflects the culture it serves, and the most important paths are never more than a tap away. Built pro bono in 2026, and still under my care: when MIS crowns contest winners or schedules a new talking circle, the site says so that same day.
Built with
In the client’s words
Fred stepped up and took the initiative to clean up, rebuild, and reestablish our website. He brought a fresh perspective and created a more polished, welcoming, and well rounded face for our organization. His time, effort, and dedication have helped us present our work, vision, and services in a way that better represents who we are and the communities we serve.
We are truly grateful for Fred stepping up and helping bring our website back to life.