Their old platform held everything, and would not let any of it go

One system held the websites, the members, and the money

The National Peace Corps Association is the alumni organization for people who served in the Peace Corps. In its own words: "We uphold Peace Corps ideals and advance Peace Corps-inspired initiatives. Nearly 240,000 strong, we are a powerful force for good." Much of that community lives in affiliate groups, the local and country-of-service chapters that volunteers run.

All of it ran on SilkStart, an all-in-one platform for associations. The national website, the chapter websites, the member database, event registration, and payments sat inside one product from one vendor. For a small staff, that arrangement has real appeal: one login and one bill.

The operations staff at NPCA lived with the other side of it. When one part of the system fell short, there was no replacing just that part. Everything stayed, or everything left.

They needed a new CRM, and the websites could not stay behind

The turning point was the member database. After a long evaluation with a consultant, NPCA chose Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge NXT to manage members and donors. SilkStart offered no way to connect to it. Moving the database while the websites stayed put was not something the platform allowed, so choosing a new CRM meant moving everything.

Then came the harder discovery: the websites could not be exported. NPCA explained it to its affiliate groups this way: "Since we can’t perform a standard “full” website export then our only option is to build a new site using the front-end, public facing website as a reference."

So the job in front of the staff was much larger than a migration. The national site and the chapter sites all had to be rebuilt. The volunteers who run those chapters had to be brought along. And it all had to be finished before the SilkStart contract ended.

We rebuilt everything and made sure NPCA would own it this time

We said plainly that this was a rebuild. There was nothing to migrate in the usual sense, and saying so at the start let NPCA plan the time and set honest expectations with its chapters.

We built two templates. The national site got a set of page sections that staff arrange themselves, so a new program page does not wait on a developer. The chapters got a shared template, so every affiliate group leaving SilkStart started from the same solid base, and volunteers had far less to learn.

We rebuilt from what the public could see. With no export to work from, each site's public pages served as the reference, and the content that could be recovered was brought across. Chapter leaders saw their own words and photos on the new site, which made a forced move feel far less like starting over.

We made every site a separate site that NPCA owns. Each one is its own WordPress installation with its own content. If NPCA ever wants to leave us, they take their files and their databases and go. That is the freedom the old platform never gave them.

We kept each job with the tool built for it. WordPress runs the websites, Raiser's Edge holds members and donors, and payments run through accounts NPCA controls. Any one of those can change later without forcing the others to change with it.

The old contract ended, and nothing was left behind

NPCA's SilkStart contract ended on July 31, 2024. In a final update to its affiliate groups, NPCA wrote: "FatLab, our web developer partner, has successfully migrated every website that was requested of them and they remain on-hand for any further web support that is needed."

Today the operations staff manage a national site they can change on their own, and more than thirty chapter sites run alongside it. When a chapter leader has a question about their site, they get an answer from people who know it.

The association's websites, its member database, and its payments are separate again. The next time one of them needs replacing, it will be an ordinary project with a plan and a date, and the rest will keep running while it happens.

How the chapter sites work is its own story. So is how the national site works with NPCA's other systems.