RISE Moldova is seeking a professional company to assist with a comprehensive overhaul of the website and development of a brand book
We are seeking a professional and innovative company to assist us with a comprehensive overhaul of our website and development of a brand book.
We are inviting companies to submit a commercial proposal, that will include:
- Costs for the deliverables in USD.
- A proposed timeline for project delivery.
- Information on the team's experience and relevant portfolio samples.
Commercial offers will be submitted to natalia@rise.md until 20 December 2024, 23.59 EEST.
Full statement is available here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25420925-rise-moldova-website-overhaul-requirements
The Organization
About Rise
RISE Moldova is a leading media non-profit founded in 2014, in Chisinau. RISE Moldova has the mission to investigate organized crime, offshore deals, and reveal money laundering schemes involving companies from Moldova, Romania, Eastern Europe, and countries from Central Asia.
Our reporters also focus on corruption and smuggling schemes, tax evasion, arms trafficking and bring to light the hidden businesses of politicians. We operate within international networks of investigative journalists such as OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) and GIJN (Global Investigative Journalism Network).
RISE Moldova was the partner for projects: Panama Papers, The Russian Laundromat, The Troika Laundromat, MetalLeaks, FinCENFiles, and Pandora Papers.
The impact of our investigations includes the resignation of state officials, arrests, initiation of criminal trials and office investigations, protests, online petitions. Our investigations also led to money being recovered from criminals as well as to changes in laws in various countries and shutting down banks servicing criminals.
The Role of www.rise.md
Our main website, www.rise.md is the primary publishing channel for our journalism. The website has the following functions within our global strategy:
● Tell the stories uncovered in our investigative reporting into crime and corruption in and around the Republic of Moldova.
● Provide documents and proof linked to stories our journalists have uncovered.
The History of Rise
The current version of www.rise.md was launched in 2015 and is based on the WordPress CMS with a custom template on the front-end.
The platform's main scope was that investigative journalists could publish their stories. Since the team had a time shortage and limited financial resources back in 2015, we started using WordPress CMS. It provided very simple design and easy maintenance at this time.
The Project Context
Expectations and objectives
RISE Moldova is a growing organization and we need a website that is up to the standards set by our competitors and partners around the world. The current website needs a brand refresh, and we have specific ideas of how weʼd like to be able to publish multimedia content in the future.
RISE Moldova is expecting to achieve the following from the new website:
● Provide a more user friendly experience
Our current website doesnʼt give users a modern and friendly experience when reading. We want the website to showcase the quality of our work and our journalism in a way that adds credibility and gravitas to our work.
● Make reading longer stories easier
Many of our articles take a long form of a story of many thousand words. We want to make these stories more digestible for our readers by providing components like images that can sit inside the story and break up the content. We also want multimedia components and other components such as expanding boxes and sliders. We wish for our editors to have these tools at their disposal when laying out stories.
● Make our stories look more modern and attractive
Our current story layout options are limited and the stories look dated and old-fashioned. We want to bring the Rise brand and experience up to date and give a modern refresh.
● Speed up the website
Loading speed and performance of the website is also an important criteria for us and we want to ensure that the final website has fast loading times.
● Mobile-first layout
Most of our users are viewing the website on mobile, so the site should be designed mobile-first and should adapt perfectly to modern browsers and mobile devices.
● Encourage supporting us through donations
- We currently offer donation options via PayPal and Patreon, with users being redirected to these platforms. We aim to expand these options by integrating additional payment methods, such as MIA QR code, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- We are looking to implement a crowdfunding feature that allows us to raise funds for specific investigative topics or projects.
- Additionally, we want to enhance user engagement by incorporating personalized banners within the text of our articles.
● The structure of the website.
The website will have sections/categories dedicated to:
- Projects, tags;
- An area for People of Interest database (https://profiles.rise.md/) that could be dynamic.
- Area for video / podcasts;
- Subscribe button, including inside the articles.
- Donate button to support our work.
- Button or banner for RISE Leaks.
- Interactive data visualizations on the site to support investigative findings.
- Ability to highlight words in the text (e.g. when linking persons targeted in articles on the People of Interest database).
