Working with Heartland Since 2019
A Nonprofit Site That Works as Hard as Its Members.
The Client
Heartland Art Club is a working art organization — and working is the key word. With 160 members, 40+ annual events, and seven integrated systems running behind the scenes, the club’s website does more than most. Here’s how it got that way.
Location
Kirkwood, Missouri
Sector
Non-profit visual arts
The Journey
Background
Heartland Art Club has been growing since its founding in 2017, a regional nonprofit built around representational art, with a working gallery, an active education program, and a membership community that now numbers 160 artists. Jennifer Suits of The Art Beacon has been part of that growth from the beginning, as a founding member, board member, and secretary of the organization. When it came time to build a website worthy of what the club had become, the work stayed in house.
The Work
In 2024, The Art Beacon rebuilt the Heartland Art Club website from scratch on WordPress, replacing a Squarespace site that could no longer support the organization's needs. There was no clean migration path between the platforms. Every page, every post, every image had to be rebuilt or reformatted by hand, a painstaking process, but one that laid the foundation for everything that followed.
The new site was built to handle real organizational complexity. Seven systems were custom-configured to run the full scope of club operations: membership management, e-commerce with gift certificates and discounts, event and workshop registration, a donations platform, calls for entry, gallery inventory and curation, and a custom-built all-member directory. Together, these systems do work that most corporate websites never have to do.
The site launched with content to match: 143 posts and pages covering exhibit announcements, workshop listings, event updates, newsletter archives, and blog content. New content goes up every week.
Behind the scenes, The Art Beacon built and manages a suite of custom Airtable systems that run the organization's day-to-day operations. There's a CRM for member relationships, bases for workshops, volunteers, and calls for entry, a full content management system, and a document library for meeting minutes and organizational records. The most recent addition is a gallery inventory and curation system built to manage 250 works of art across 2,500 square feet of gallery space, representing 90 artists. Artwork comes in and goes out regularly, and the system tracks all of it. Because the gallery runs on volunteers, many of whom aren't comfortable with technology, the workflow includes paper intake forms and a dedicated data entry step, designed from the start around the people who actually use it.
Ongoing Management
The site is managed on a weekly basis. That includes performance monitoring, SEO, troubleshooting, plugin updates, and responding to whatever the board needs. Organizations never stop, and neither does the site.
The Results
There is a version of this organization that exists only in the gallery, held together by volunteer energy, good intentions, and a website that nobody has time to update. And then there is Heartland Art Club as it exists today: a fully operational digital presence that works as hard as its members do.
Membership is managed. Events are promoted. Workshops fill. Donations come in. The gallery is documented and curated. Every system talks to every other system. And every week, without fail, the site reflects what the organization is actually doing.
That kind of infrastructure does not happen by accident. It is built, maintained, and improved, one week at a time.
Heartland Art Club
The Results
A nonprofit site that works like an enterprise platform.
Functional
7
Integrated systems running membership, e-commerce, events, donations, calls for entry, gallery curation, and a custom member directory.
High Traffic
1,600+
Monthly visitors, with the site handling steady traffic reliably month after month.
Performance
90+
Desktop performance score, consistently maintained through ongoing optimization.
I work with Jennifer more than anyone at Heartland Art Club, I’ve seen firsthand how essential she is to both our operations and our public presence. Her precision and speed is an inspiration. She not only built our website, but she also manages it, which is incredible considering it is our main point of contact for artists entering shows and for students, donors and volunteers. Jennifer is not just a web designer; she understands how to structure content so it works for a growing organization, keeping everything current, accessible, and aligned with our mission. Her hard work is outstanding and Heartland would certainly not function at the level it does without her.
Elizabeth Moreland, Executive Director, Heartland Art Club
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