Combined Jewish Philanthropies
CJP is Massachusetts’ largest nonprofit and the hub of Greater Boston’s Jewish community — a century-old institution managing $1.9 billion in philanthropic assets. They came to us for a website redesign. It turned into something much bigger: an ongoing, 27+ SOW engagement that has touched donation infrastructure, analytics, SEO, email, persona research, and the highest-stakes content launch CJP had attempted in years.
Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) is Greater Boston's Jewish federation and Massachusetts' largest nonprofit, managing $1.9 billion in donor-advised fund assets across 783 funds. After October 7, 2023, CJP mobilized 6,700 donors to raise $59 million for the Israel Emergency Fund—proof of extraordinary community trust. But the organization faced compounding digital challenges: an aging donor base with a critical 30-45 engagement gap, a fragmented donation ecosystem with >50% form abandonment across 7 platforms, and zero SEO keyword strategy. DAP's ongoing, 27+ SOW engagement has addressed every layer of this transformation.
How We Helped Combined Jewish Philanthropies
Project Summary
What started as a website redesign quickly expanded. Since December 2024, DAP has executed 27+ Statements of Work (and counting) covering SEO, analytics, web development, content strategy, email marketing, HubSpot infrastructure, persona research, and a full donation ecosystem audit.
The flagship deliverable—the 2025 Community Study microsite—generated 2,945 PDF downloads at a 49.5% download rate, nearly 10x the 5% target. On launch day, the site hit a 67.1% download rate with 5:48 average session duration and zero technical errors. Then our scroll data told a different story: 80% of visitors never reached any download button. The Reports page was converting at 44% versus the homepage’s 18%. That gap led directly to a redesign blueprint.
The work went well beyond the microsite. We built 32 audience personas with real market sizes, wrote a 26,000-word analytics measurement plan, started building 8 new website sections (Our Impact, About Us, Grants & Scholarships, Ways to Give, and more), and dug into CJP’s $1.9 billion donation ecosystem—where >50% form abandonment across 7 platforms was costing them donors. The Salesforce migration strategy we put together targets 30% better donor retention and 25% more repeat gifs.
The Challenge
Content Without SEO Foundation No Primary Keywords Across Website Pages
CJP's website had no SEO keyword strategy — not a single page specified a primary keyword. Meta titles exceeded character limits, descriptions were truncated in search results, no placement framework existed, and none of the content used Hebrew terminology like chesed, simcha, or kehillah that would differentiate CJP in search. Good content, but Google couldn't find any of it.
Microsite UX Barrier 80% of Visitors Never Reached Downloads
The Community Study homepage stretched 9,585 pixels tall, with download buttons buried 2,100 pixels below the fold. 53% of visitors never scrolled past the fold. Only 20% reached the first downloads. Just 7% made it to the Israel report section, and 98.8% never hit the bottom. The homepage converted at 18% while the simpler Reports page achieved 44% with 35% fewer visitors.
Analytics Blind Spots 76.4% of Launch Traffic Unattributed
On launch day, 76.4% of Community Study traffic was categorized as "Unassigned" in GA4. The root cause: UTM parameters hadn't been configured for the email campaign that drove the launch, because DAP wasn't involved in the send. Without attribution, CJP had no idea which channels were actually working—or how to prove ROI to their board.
Mobile Engagement Gap 25.9% Mobile Download Rate vs 66.8% Desktop
With 35.3% of traffic from mobile, the experience was underperforming across every metric. Mobile users bounced at 61.1% (vs. 47.9% desktop), spent less time on site (2:40 vs. 3:43), and downloaded at less than half the rate: 25.9% vs. 66.8% desktop. Tablet users fared even worse at 13.1%. Desktop users were 2.6x more likely to download a report.
How we Helped Combined Jewish Philanthropies
32 Research-Backed Audience Personas
We mapped the entire Greater Boston Jewish community—donors, individuals, families, organizations—into 32 personas with real market sizes and giving capacities behind each one.
- Built 17 donor personas ranging from ultra-high-net-worth legacy donors ($5M+ income, $500K-$1M giving capacity) down to next-gen wealth holders—specifically going after the 30-45 age gap that was hurting retention
- Created 15 individual and organization personas spanning families in crisis, scholarship-seeking students, mental health support seekers, interfaith families (47% of households), seniors (45,000+), and six types of Jewish organizations
- Quantified every segment using Brandeis Community Study data, Pew Research, and CJP internal records—identifying addressable markets including 14,000 students, 2,500-4,000 DAF holders, and 15,000-20,000 Russian-speaking Jewish community members
- Looked at the competitive giving landscape: Harvard/MIT capital campaign cycles, the $59M Israel Emergency Fund response (6,700+ donors), and Dor L'Dor Society endowment patterns
SEO-Optimized Content Strategy
We reviewed every new website page and built the keyword frameworks and SEO standards that didn’t exist before we got involved.
- Defined primary and secondary keywords for each page using geographic modifiers ("Jewish life in Boston" not "Jewish life")
- Rewrote meta titles and descriptions to fit character limits and actually get clicked
- Pushed for Hebrew terminology (chesed, simcha, kehillah)—both for cultural authenticity and because nobody else is ranking for those terms
- Added bucket brigade copy techniques to keep readers scrolling
- Created alt text requirements for all images across the site for ADA compliance and SEO
Community Study 2025 Microsite
We built a standalone microsite for CJP’s 2025 Community Study—one place where the Greater Boston Jewish community could find and download all 15 research reports.
- Built a focused microsite with clear navigation across all 15 research reports
- Implemented individual download tracking for all 15 PDF reports via Google Tag Manager, tracking 2,945 downloads in month one
- Built section-level scroll tracking (9,216 section views recorded) to monitor exactly where visitors engaged and dropped off
- Deployed custom event tracking for CTA clicks (1,654), navigation clicks (1,174), CJP.org cross-traffic (4,122), and press coverage clicks (69)
- Shipped on deadline with zero 404s and zero form failures at launch—67.1% download rate on day one
Full Analytics Infrastructure from Scratch
We wrote a 26,000-word analytics and measurement plan, then built all the tracking infrastructure to back it up—GA4, Tag Manager, dashboards, the whole stack.
- Defined tracking specs across all 6 microsite pages: 14 custom events, 7 audience segments (Casual Browsers to Deep Engagers), scroll depth at 25/50/75/100%, and PDF download attribution by individual report name
- Deployed GA4 with Google Tag Manager, including cross-domain tracking between cjp.org and the microsite, section view tracking, and CTA click attribution
- Found and fixed the UTM gap that left 76.4% of launch traffic unattributed, then set up UTM conventions for all future campaigns—email, social, press, partner orgs
- Built tiered executive dashboards: Tier 1 KPIs (downloads, session duration, return rate), Tier 2 engagement (scroll depth, outbound clicks), Tier 3 audience insights (geography, device, referral)
- Set up a reporting rhythm: daily monitoring at launch, then weekly dashboards, monthly executive summaries, and quarterly deep dives
Donation Ecosystem Audit & Salesforce Migration Strategy
We pulled apart CJP’s entire $1.9 billion donation infrastructure—6 giving pathways, 7 platforms, 12 forms—to figure out why more than half of donors were bailing before finishing their gift.
- Mapped all 6 pathways end-to-end: one-time gifts, recurring donations, DAF accounts ($1.9B across 783 funds), Dor L'Dor Society endowments, grants and scholarships, and the $59M Israel Emergency Fund
- Pinpointed PDF dependency as the main abandonment driver—donors hitting PDF-based forms dropped off at >50%, roughly double what you'd see on a platform like Fidelity or Schwab
- Benchmarked against UJA-Federation of New York ($150M+ annual) and other JFNA affiliates to document exactly which Salesforce integrations and mobile-native flows were driving their 30% better retention
- Laid out a phased Salesforce migration plan: one donor database, native web forms replacing every PDF, automated gift acknowledgment, and mobile-first flows—targeting 30% better retention and 25% more repeat gifts
- Got HubSpot email marketing up and running—recorded training sessions, built the initial configuration, and set up the framework for donor engagement campaigns, abandonment recovery, and milestone-based nudges
Data-Driven UX Recommendations
Once the analytics were in place, we used the data to make specific UX recommendations—not guesses, but calls backed by actual scroll maps, conversion rates, and session recordings.
- Scroll depth told the story: 53% of visitors never got past the fold, and 80% left before hitting the first download button at 2,100px
- Showed that the Reports page hit 44% download conversion vs. the homepage's 18%, with visitors grabbing 2.8 reports per session vs. 1.8 on the homepage
- The Israel report sat at 65% page depth where only 7% of visitors ever reached—and it still pulled 183 downloads from the homepage alone. The demand was there; the UX was in the way
- Proposed a homepage redesign that cuts page length by more than half and gets report downloads above the fold
- Recommended sending all future paid social traffic straight to the Reports page—why send people to an 18% page when a 44% page exists?
What we Achieved
The target was 5%. We delivered 49.5%—nearly ten times the benchmark. Launch day hit 67.1% with 678 downloads in 24 hours. By the end of month one, 4,268 users had generated 2,945 downloads across all 15 reports—Key Findings (455), Identity (445), and By the Numbers (430) led, but every single report got real traction. Desktop users downloaded at 66.8%; mobile at 25.9%. Traffic came from everywhere: email (29.3%), organic social (27.9%), direct (21.9%), and organic search already growing at 5.1%. Average session duration hit 3:14 against a 2:00 target, and section views (9,216) outpaced page views (7,817)—people weren’t just downloading, they were reading.
We built 32 personas covering the full Greater Boston Jewish community—17 donor segments and 15 community segments, each with validated population sizes and giving capacities. This wasn’t a branding exercise. We quantified every segment: 14,000 students, 2,500-4,000 DAF holders, 15,000-20,000 Russian-speaking community members, 45,000+ seniors, and 47% interfaith families. We mapped Harvard/MIT capital campaign cycles and the $59M Israel Emergency Fund response to understand competitive giving dynamics. These personas now drive CJP’s website architecture, content strategy, and donor engagement campaigns.
CJP had no analytics infrastructure when we started. We wrote a 26,000-word measurement plan, then built the whole stack: GA4 with 14 custom events, Google Tag Manager with scroll tracking, section views, CJP.org cross-traffic, and PDF attribution by individual report name. On launch day, 76.4% of traffic showed up as “Unassigned”—the email campaign went out without UTM tags because DAP wasn’t involved in the send. We fixed that and got attribution to 100% across all five channels: email (29.3%), organic social (27.9%), direct (21.9%), organic search (5.1%), and referral (4.4%). We also caught 386 “unknown” report tile clicks where users were tapping the card image instead of the button—fixed that tracking gap on March 11. The result: tiered dashboards from daily monitoring to quarterly deep dives, and 9,216 section views proving people were scrolling through content, not just bouncing.
We audited all 7 technology platforms (DonorFirst, Adobe Sign, FedWeb CDN, Wufoo, and others), mapped every one of the 12 forms and 6 giving pathways end-to-end, and documented exactly where and why donors were dropping off at >50%. The biggest culprit was PDF-based forms on mobile. We benchmarked against UJA-Federation of New York and other JFNA affiliates, then designed a phased Salesforce migration: one unified CRM, native web forms replacing every PDF, automated gift acknowledgment, and mobile-first flows. The targets: 30% better donor retention and 25% more repeat gifts. We also got HubSpot email marketing running for the first time—abandonment recovery, milestone nudges, donor engagement campaigns.
CJP’s website had zero SEO keyword strategy—not a single page had a primary keyword. We built the entire SEO framework from scratch: primary and secondary keywords for every page, geographic modifiers (“Jewish life in Boston”), Hebrew terminology integration (chesed, simcha, kehillah) for cultural authenticity and unique search positioning, and alt text across all images for ADA compliance. Organic search was already growing—2.4% on launch day to 5.1% by month one—with zero paid spend. Simultaneously, we began building 8 new HubSpot CMS website sections. Then our homepage performance analysis found the real problem: the Community Study homepage was 9,585 pixels tall, 80% of visitors left before the first download button (buried 2,100px down), and 53% never scrolled past the fold at all. The Reports page converted at 44% vs. the homepage’s 18%—and visitors there downloaded 2.8 reports each vs. 1.8 on the homepage. We delivered a full redesign blueprint: cut the page by half, surface reports above the fold, and route all paid social traffic straight to the Reports page.
