A collage of social media designs, statistics, and scheduling buttons.
A collage of social media designs, statistics, and scheduling buttons.

Arizona Community Foundation is one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the Southwest, distributing over $70 million annually through scholarships, grants, and donor-advised funds. 

After helping them relaunch their website, ACF came to Smith & Connors with a new goal: deepen engagement across social media channels and help Arizonans better understand the impact of their community-based philanthropy. We conducted a discovery and strategy phase that became the basis for a report and social media content strategy. Then, we created Canva social templates that made it easy for the communications’ team to generate content.
A grid of social media template designs for Arizona Community Foundation.

The Results

The Challenge

Our Approach

We grounded our work in strategy, conducting research to understand ACF’s audiences and identify content opportunities. Then we delivered a suite of tools to turn their internal team into a content orchestra.

Experience Principles

Options and Pathways

Audiences should feel like there are lots of possible destinations. ACF’s social media should feel like a choose your own adventure experience.

Simple and Plainspoken

Everything will be clear. We’re never speaking over people’s heads. People should feel invited in.

Trust Is Paramount

We want to encourage the audiences to trust ACF through experiencing the foundation’s professionalism mixed with authenticity in social media posts and engagement.

Be a Mirror


Visitors should see themselves represented and included in posts — this is about the community.
A four-step visual process titled "Our Process" on a dark teal background. (1) Strategy, (2) Design, (3) Canva Design, (4) Training.
A flower-shaped diagram titled “Current Follower Profile” on a brown background. At the center is a headshot of a smiling woman with curly brown hair. Surrounding her are six circular segments with text: Identifies as a Woman, 35–54+ Years Old, Resident of Arizona, Lives in Phoenix or Tucson, Works in Nonprofit or Higher Edu., Senior or Entry-Level Position
A four-column layout on a light blue background titled “Content Pillars & Types.” Each column shows content themes and their subtypes:
Graph titled “The Content Orchestra” showing content effort by quarter. Y-axis shows Time and Effort. X-axis lists Q1 through Q4. Three triangle types: Drumbeat Content – low effort and frequent; Chorus Content – mid effort, campaign-based; Crescendo Content – high effort, for big moments like donation drives. Each quarter ends in a peak labeled “Crescendo.”
An always-on content strategy supports “crescendos” and overarching communications goals.

Design & Visual Identity

We refreshed the social brand with a flexible system of templates that could accommodate everything from event invites to data highlights, tailored for Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn
An example of social designs formatted for Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, and Instagram stories.
A few examples of the Flexible Text & Image template using different types of content, from scholarship announcements to case study promotion.
Flexible templates allow the team to promote a variety of content types.
A screenshot of the Storytelling Template as an instagram carousel.
Carousels give the ability to tell powerful linear stories.
A few examples of the Staff & Partnership Spotlight template with a few different employees pictured.
Some specific templates make generating drumbeat content easy.
A screenshot of the Timeline as an instagram carousel.
Timeline templates allow the team to tell their story, full of rich history.

Canva buildout and training

We built branded Canva templates and a comprehensive brand kit, empowering internal teams to create on-brand graphics quickly and consistently. Through custom screencasts and a Canva user guide, we helped ACF staff confidently take ownership of content creation.
A grid of pages from the Canva User Guide.
The Canva User Guide gives their team a comprehensive look at all of the templates available to them. It can also support new team members as an onboarding guide.
The Brand Kit gives their team access to important brand assets, like logos, fonts, and color palettes, making it easy to stay brand-aligned when creating content.
A screenshot of the Canva brand templates page with screenshots from our tutorial videos next to it.
We also provide screencasts that their team can use for training and onboarding of new team members, helping with the adoption of this new tool.

Project Scope

  • Audience & Channel Analysis
  • Communications Strategy
  • Marketing Assets
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Photography Direction
  • Social Media
A Black woman smiling with eyes closed against blue backdrop, gold border and JOBL brand bug in corner.
The Justice Oregon brand style guide, featuring the new brand palette and logo.