Debra Tomaszewski, founder and executive director of The Planet Bee Foundation, came to me through the Wix Marketplace, bringing me the most extensive website development project to date through that sales channel.
Planet Bee is dedicated to creating a green-minded generation by teaching about the importance of bees as a pathway to STEM, conservation, and innovations in agriculture. Through the power of science and stewardship, we cultivate the green leaders of tomorrow.
The website is designed with four key audiences in mind: educators, schools, corporate human resource departments, and, of course, beekeepers. Each of these groups plays a crucial role in our mission, and the website is tailored to their unique needs and interests.
Two of the Busiest Bees
In 2010, Bill and Debra, a passionate husband and wife team, discovered their love for beekeeping. Disturbed by the impact of Colony Collapse Disorder on bees and pollination, they began offering free seminars, installing beehives, and partnering with various organizations to address the crisis. Recognizing a lack of youth engagement in environmental issues, they created an educational program that initially targeted schools but later expanded to include community and corporate initiatives. Committed to accessibility, they ensured all educational materials were free for public schools, supported by donations and sponsorships.
In 2015, Bill and Debra founded Planet Bee as a nonprofit organization, marking a significant milestone in their journey. They broadened their Environmental STEM Education Program to cover native bees and demonstrated their resilience and innovation by adapting to virtual learning during the pandemic, ensuring that their mission of environmental education and STEM initiatives continued unabated.
With hubs in the San Francisco Bay Area, DC/NJ/NYC, and Philadelphia, Planet Bee collaborates with schools, nonprofits, and corporations across the US and Canada, impacting over 500,000 individuals and continuing to expand its reach.
Planet Bee offers a variety of programs, including asynchronous and synchronous Environmental STEM lessons focused on bees. This HarvestED curriculum educates about plant life and soil, Community Science Programs, and Educator Professional Development. Through these diverse initiatives, Planet Bee fosters environmental stewardship and STEM education on a broad scale.
Now more about the site...
Like Bees in a Hive
With a large team of volunteers, interns, educators, and staff needing to maintain various site sections, Wix's role and permissions tool allowed us to distribute responsibilities across the site's admin and editor. At any time, multiple, if not all, could be on the site, making updates and maintaining the site as needed.
Wix's efficient system allows the administrators of the site, yes more than one, to assign specific tasks, roles, and permissions to all those participating in the development, design, maintenance, and marketing of the site. This enables the team to be on the site at all times, ensuring a continuous workflow. Of course, the Queen Bee (aka webmaster) is still in charge of when to publish, maintaining a balance of control and productivity.
The Roles and Permissions feature certainly promotes the expedition of assignments needed to maintain and market the site quickly and effectively.
Like the Flowers that Attract Bees
As an artist, Debra desired more than just the stacked layout that her old SquareSpace website had. The site utilized free-form, drag-and-drop layouts while maintaining its layout integrity across all devices and browser types.
Complete with a buzzing, animated bee that visits a trifecta of honeycombed-shaped images inside a honeycomb graphic. The pages’ sections feature the flowers and plants that attract bees, providing a colorful layout.
Despite all the organic, layout designs, the site still follows function first.
Hive Functions
The site utilizes several Wix services and apps to help manage and market the website. Not a moment goes by when Wix has an answer to the need for website owners.
Here are some of the facilities being used at the Planet Bee's website:
CMS Collections manages all its programs, grants, team members, corporate partners, press, media galleries, and even the home page.
Forum and Groups App to help site members, beekeepers, educators, and students interact with one another.
The Wix Owners, Spaces, and Studio Apps are a collection of powerful tools that enables site administrators, collaborators, educators, students, corporate human resource agents, and employees to easily manage, engage, and communicate with others, all from the convenience of their mobile devices.
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