Pleased to meet you.
Executive Summary
We started Social Ink over fifteen years ago to bridge the intersections of social justice, education, and the arts. From coffeeshop-cubicles to our current DUMBO offices, we’ve maintained this commitment to our founding mission.
We are all things web: for activists, advocates, non-profits & small businesses in New York City and beyond.
We pride ourselves in being a nimble local design and development shop. We maintain this profile for a reason: to work with a select group of clients and ensure a direct line of communication with our principals.
Our clients reflect our commitment to diverse communities, from arts-centric nonprofits to educational and cultural institutions. Our work spans the progressive spectrum, from justice system reform to safe streets and civic issues, LGBTQ activism, women and the environment, advocacy, and organizing.
Our Team
Yoni Reinberg
With years of web development and research experience in the nonprofit and small-business arena, Yoni has worked with many local and global organizations integrating technology and social life. Holding a doctorate in interdisciplinary anthropology, technology and intellectual property, his interest in the intersection of new media, globalization, and social integration guides his commitment to Social Ink.
Our Team
Matthew Pinto
As Design Lead, Matthew specializes in User Experience (UX), User Interface Design, visual identity, and front-end Development. A background in museums, universities, and progressive think tanks informs his experience leading clients through the design process. Matthew holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA in Media Studies from The New School.
Every few years we stop to take a picture!
Answers to your Frequently Asked Questions!
How does the process work?
Our process is built for flexibility. Some clients come to us with a sitemap, mockups, and a web team ready to implement a vision. Others have a kernel of an idea and want our help with visual identity, branding, site design, coding and development, and ongoing growth and support.
No matter what the job, we strive to be inclusive and efficient, and generally follow the following steps for a full-service experience:
- Discovery. First, we begin with conversation and research, a “getting-to-know-you” phase we call Discovery. We’ll meet with your stakeholders and investigate the user experience (UX) considerations and content organization for the new site.
- Design. Design is an iterative back-and-forth of in-person presentations and feedback.
- Coding & Development. We build the new site during our coding & development phase, with everything built on our own private servers, so as not to disrupt your current site traffic.
- Site Preview and Training. When the site is ready for testing and internal review, we’ll conduct a training session and begin our QA and final content management phase.
- Launch (and beyond)! At site launch, we enable robust analytics. As the site ages and develops its patina, we offer ongoing growth and strategy services to check in, review, and help with any changes or adaptations necessary.
Whether you need a quick solution or an extensive overhaul of your home on the web with an ongoing partnership, we can help.
What's a typical project timeline?
During the Discovery phase of each project, we work with our clients to develop a project timeline and work schedule.
Every client’s needs are different and we can accelerate our timeline for milestones that are critical to your organization, or extend the timeline at your organization’s request.
On average, a typical ‘full service’ design and development job usually takes 4-6 months from start to finish.
How do I deal with my current content?
Social Ink offers a suite of content migration and import strategies, ranging from a single, multifaceted spreadsheet to a staggered, document-based content entry. We can help migrate between different Content Management Systems (like Drupal or WordPress) as necessary! We also offer to assist your team with content migration via a training session, often providing a cost-effective means of training leading up to launch.
We imagine you will have a fair amount of content, sometimes untethered or lacking context or metadata. Our Discovery phase—which drills down on content strategy and architecture reorganization — will also help our team and yours figure out how to best handle the transfer from old site to new.
At the development phase, we help with the technical “hand-holding” to migrate the content and remain available for any consultation in between.
How do you deal with donations?
Glad you asked! Since many of our clients are nonprofits or institutions that rely on funding from the general public, we’ve honed a toolset over the years that allows us to build secure credit card processing into your brand-new site, without taking the user offsite to an unfamiliar URL.
Within this basic credit card ecosystem, the world is your oyster: we can build targeted payment forms to help with events or memberships, or a general all-purpose donation form. We can even build you a cart system to help with pretty, easy-to-use e-commerce.
Do you offer post-launch support or ongoing partnerships?
Absolutely. Every client website comes with a minimum month of support, and many of our clients choose to keep us on a client support retainer to help with other needs as new sites evolve.
We have three standard client support plans, “light”, “standard” and “pro.” Each plan is tailored to common client needs, from core software updates and database backups and restore points, to direct support to manage technical and hosting issues, to design, content, and digital strategy and analysis services.
Each organization is different–we look forward to talking through your ongoing needs!
Do you offer hosting?
The short answer is yes! We offer a range of hosting options, from technical assistance with setting up your host, to managed hosting through Social Ink.
When we host your site, we contract with a trusted, professional hosting vendor and serve as a focal point of direct support and service. Each site we host lives in its own separate container in the cloud–no local server stacks in the back of a dusty closet here!