Ranch Volunteers

Heifer Ranch is a 1,200-acre agricultural learning center located in Perryville, AR that offers training and support to farmers. Volunteers have the opportunity to grow their experience in sustainable agriculture while living and working at the ranch full time.

My Role
• UX/UI Design
• Content Design
• CMS Page Design
The Impact
The number of volunteer applications has increased and, thanks to the improved application form, the Heifer Ranch team now spends less time sorting through potential volunteers.​​​​​​​
A section of the main Heifer Ranch volunteer page. This shows the introduction, call to action button, and an image of a woman standing in front of a herd of sheep.
The Project
Volunteering to live and work on a ranch full time is very different from other volunteering opportunities that Heifer International offers. The Heifer Ranch team wanted to create a more informative experience for potential volunteers to better communicate exactly how much of a commitment it would be. This included setting up several new pages on the site and creating a new application form that was more comprehensive than the previous one.
Wireframes showing three different page layouts.
The Challenges
Creating a new volunteer application experience caused me to reexamine the current one in order to determine what was missing. The general volunteer landing page had very little information about volunteering at Heifer Ranch and lumped it in with the more common volunteering jobs. Most people who volunteer with Heifer do so for less than 10 hours a week and work in a nice, air conditioned building. This is a completely different experience than working on a ranch. There are also several different volunteer positions at Heifer Ranch that someone could apply for, none of which were reflected on the application form. 
Five-step flow showing how a user submits information to volunteer at Heifer Ranch.
The Solution

The first steps I took were to determine a user flow and to create wireframes. After that, I used their CMS to create new pages and update existing pages on the site. There are two entry points to the new Heifer Ranch volunteering experience, the general volunteer landing page and an informational page about Heifer Ranch. For the general volunteer page, I added a section describing the ranch and duties a volunteer would perform. From there, I produced a new volunteer page specific to Heifer Ranch that gives a brief overview of the jobs offered. Each job has its own page created that breaks down the positions. A new application form was created that includes a field to upload resumes and a section where users can select which job they are interested in.
Two images showing the mobile version of the volunteer information form.
Two images showing the full layout of a page that contains information for one of the available volunteer positions at Heifer Ranch.
The main Heifer Ranch page with all sections of the page shown. This includes the introduction, a list of available positions, and a form for interested volunteers to fill out.
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