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Organizations Involved

YMCA of the East Bay partnered with Five Jars to replace a one-size-fits-all website with a flexible, audience-driven platform powered by the latest version of Drupal. The result is a modern, mobile-first system featuring three dedicated microsites, streamlined editorial workflows, and integrated tools that connect families, members, and staff with essential YMCA services.

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome)
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About YMCA of the East Bay

The YMCA of the East Bay supports more than 68,000 people across Alameda, Contra Costa, and Yolo counties. With programs spanning early learning, youth development, fitness, and community wellness, the Y plays a vital role in shaping healthier, stronger communities.

  • 68,000 people supported annually
  • 25,000 members served across five fitness centers
  • 4,000 youth participating in enrichment programs

This broad reach made it essential to build a website that could serve many audiences equally well.

YMCA of the East Bay website mobile view

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The Challenge

The previous website was built around fitness users, leaving families in early learning, youth programs, seniors, and camp participants without clear paths to the information they needed. Program details were often buried, registration sent visitors into external systems with multiple steps, and donation flows were inconsistent.

Behind the scenes, content management was equally complex. Staff had to navigate dozens of overlapping content types and a large paragraph-based system without preview tools. With many teams updating content across multiple branches, consistency and speed were ongoing challenges.

YMCA of the East Bay needed a platform that supported its full mission and empowered its staff to manage content with confidence.

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Discovery Process

The Five Jars team led an in-depth discovery phase, including stakeholder workshops, user journeys, content audits, and technical assessments. Working together, the teams identified a key insight: the YMCA did not have one audience; it had several, each with distinct needs and behaviors.

Parents of young children, fitness members, youth participants, and donors all followed different paths that the previous site couldn't support.

These insights led to a new architectural direction: a unified Drupal platform composed of three dedicated microsites – Fitness, Early Learning, and Youth Programs – each with tailored navigation and content but powered by shared components and consistent design.

YMCA of the East Bay personas

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Reimagined Information Architecture and Design

Five Jars rebuilt the site with three audience-specific microsites, each reflecting the tone and priorities of its community. The new system offers:

  • Clear navigation, reducing friction for families, members, and new visitors
  • Distinct experiences for different audience groups, improving clarity and trust
  • Mobile-first layouts, supporting the YMCA’s predominantly mobile user base

This structure ensures each audience can quickly find information relevant to them while maintaining a coherent brand experience.

YMCA of the East Bay microsites

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Integrated Digital Tools

To reduce friction and connect the website to daily YMCA operations, Five Jars developed three tools integrated directly with Daxko and GroupEx Pro.

  • Program Finder
    A dynamic tool that allows visitors to filter programs by age, location, and activity, replacing hundreds of manual links and ensuring accurate registration paths.
  • Membership Builder
    A guided flow that helps visitors understand branch-specific membership options before completing their purchase in Daxko.
  • Schedules
    A custom schedule view powered by GroupEx Pro data, offering filtering options and optional PDF export for improved usability.

These tools streamline common tasks and significantly reduce staff workload.

YMCA of the East Bay Program Finder

Flexible Content and Microsite Management

Drupal’s editorial capabilities allowed the YMCA to move from fragmented content creation to a structured, reliable workflow:

  • Fewer, clearer content types
  • Role-based permissions for branch and program teams
  • Reusable components through layout tools
  • The ability to preview content before publishing
  • Unified governance to maintain brand consistency

Staff can now update content quickly without relying on workarounds.

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Results

  • Simpler journeys for families and members, who can now complete key tasks directly on the site
  • Stronger internal workflows, as content updates take minutes instead of hours
  • A future-ready platform, architected to support additional microsites, tools, and integrations
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Looking Ahead

Five Jars continues to work with YMCA of the East Bay on enhancing microsite features, expanding analytics capabilities, and refining accessibility and performance. Drupal’s flexibility ensures the platform can grow as the YMCA’s programs and communities evolve.

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Why Drupal was chosen

Why Drupal

Drupal was selected for its ability to handle structured content at scale, support multi-site architectures, and integrate securely with external systems such as Daxko (membership, registration) and GroupEx Pro (scheduling). Its strengths aligned directly with the YMCA’s goals:

  • A flexible foundation for audience-specific microsites
  • Strong editorial features for distributed teams
  • The ability to support custom tools connected to operational systems
  • A mobile-first, accessible experience for a diverse community

Drupal provided the governance, flexibility, and extendibility needed for a long-term solution.

YMCA of the East Bay homepage

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen

Key modules and why they were chosen

Gin Admin Theme. Selected to provide a modern, accessible, and user-friendly administrative experience. It significantly improves editor efficiency through cleaner UI patterns and better usability.

Views, Layout Builder, Webform, and Section Library. Together, these modules power a flexible, component-based editing workflow. They enable dynamic content displays, reusable sections, and editor-controlled page layouts – essential for a multisite structure with many contributors.

Metatag, Pathauto, Redirect, XML Sitemap, Yoast SEO. A comprehensive SEO toolkit that ensures clean URLs, structured metadata, automated XML sitemaps, and redirect management. This combination helps the YMCA improve search visibility across all program areas.

UI Icons, Block Style Plugins. Used to support a consistent and distinctive visual language. These modules allow editors to apply icon sets and custom block styles declaratively through YAML, aligning with modern Drupal 11 best practices.

Coffee. Chosen to streamline administrative navigation. Editors can quickly jump between tasks, which is especially valuable for teams managing content across multiple microsites.

Google Tag Manager module. Allows analytics and tracking scripts to be managed without altering code, enabling marketing teams to work independently and maintain accurate event measurement.

Config Split, Content Moderation, Context, Section Library. Provide a structured editorial workflow and environment management. They support content review processes, context-based logic for displaying components, and safe deployment workflows across dev, stage, and production environments.

Ultimate Cron and Rabbit Hole. Improve reliability, stability, and security. Ultimate Cron ensures scheduled tasks run consistently, while Rabbit Hole prevents direct access to certain content entities, preserving user experience and protecting sensitive resources.