ECI Collaborative
Coalition coordination becomes community connection
ECI Collaborative is a coalition of 11 organizations serving multicultural communities across Greater Houston. With decades of established trust networks, they needed a unified digital presence that could guide families through citizenship and language access services.
Challenge
ECI Collaborative faced several hurdles:
- Creating a digital presence honoring individual organizations while building collective strength
- Serving communities across 19 languages without overwhelming limited staff
- Meeting strict grant requirements for data collection
- Designing for smartphone-primary users with varying digital literacy
Our goal was to demonstrate value to both community members and grant funders while respecting 11 distinct member organizations.
Uncovering What Holds Communities Together
We used our signature Inside-Outside-In™ model to understand ECI’s true role:
- We conducted interviews with coalition leadership across all 11 organizations
- We discovered community members find services through word-of-mouth within trusted networks
- We identified that ECI’s coordination created connections no single organization could build alone
Designing for Welcome
We developed a culture brand strategy centered on a fundamental shift. While many similar organizations emphasize advocacy and fighting for rights, we positioned ECI Collaborative around guidance, belonging, and collective strength.
From this foundation, we revealed ECI’s Culture Brand Statement™:
“ECI does everything they do because they value Trust, Solidarity, and Coordination and want everyone to experience Recognized Belonging.”
This statement became the filter for every decision that followed, and ECI’s slogan simply emerged as, “Welcome”.
Building a Digital Gateway Across Cultures
The grant requirement to track which languages and services communities were searching for became an opportunity to create something elegant. We designed a website with a hospitality-inspired “choose your own adventure” model featuring 8 core services across 19 languages.
Behind the community experience, we built internal systems strengthening coalition operations—seamless referral protocols, documentation preventing knowledge loss, and quality assurance ensuring families never get lost between organizations.
The result is a digital ecosystem serving communities today while building capacity for the future.
ECI Collaborative now operates with a unified brand identity, an internal referral system ensuring seamless coordination, grant-compliant data collection, and a culture brand framework guiding every decision.
Blackribbit was responsible for developing a working website with branding themes. The team also provided training, created standard operating procedures (SOPs), set up social media handles, and offered maintenance services. The website included language access and filter features to help users find organizations that offer support based on their needs. They did a fantastic job.
Jida N.
Executive Lead | ECI Collaborative