UMD iConsultancy students help BCF strengthen website management, enhance workflows, and reduce costs
Photo via Baltimore Community Foundation
BCF launched its new website in January 2025. While we have received compliments on the vibrant design and mobile friendly format, we also experienced recurring challenges including unexpected page outages, plugin malfunctions, and fluctuating maintenance costs.
To address these challenges, BCF decided to work with a group of University of Maryland students through the iConsultancy program. The iConsultancy is an offering through UMD’s College of Information that creates consulting teams of top-performing undergraduate and graduate students to solve public and private sector information challenges.
BCF was paired with a team of five undergraduate students who were given the following objectives:
- Perform stakeholder interviews with key staff and vendors to document and assess current processes and procedures for managing and maintaining BCF’s website.
- Develop recommendations to improve workflows to improve overall site management while reducing costs.
- Provide additional recommendations on site modifications to improve workflow management.
The students held periodic check-ins throughout the semester with BCF staff and conducted interviews with staff and contractors to inform recommendations. At the end of the semester, they delivered a Website Development & Maintenance Process Map that helps current and future employees understand how new information is added to the website, how financial transactions are processed through the website, and who is involved when different issues with the site arise. The students also delivered recommendations on opportunities to reduce website management costs and minimize technical issues.
“I was really impressed with the well-researched and thoughtful recommendations provided by the students,” shared Becky Eisen, AVP of Marketing & Communications at BCF, “they knew their stuff and they did the work to understand our business. We are in the process of applying their recommendations to our site and systems now.”
Students shared that they appreciated the opportunity to take their classroom learning and apply it to a real organization, honing their consulting skills and having an impact on their communities.
While BCF worked with the iConsultancy on user experience and web security, the program offers a range of information-based services designed to meet business-critical problems including data visualization, analytics, information management and more.
“Through iConsultancy, our students partner with mission-driven organizations on user experience and interface design, website design and accessibility, data analytics and visualization, and information process optimization. Baltimore has such a vibrant ecosystem of organizations making real community impact, and we’re excited to connect with groups that need these capabilities but might not otherwise have the resources to access them.” – Justin Zielke, Program Manager University of Maryland College of Information
If your organization is interested in working with iConsultancy students, reach out to Justin at Justin Zielke jzielke@umd.edu and let them know that BCF sent you!
The original article was written by Baltimore Community Foundation Staff and published by Baltimore Community Foundation on August 27, 2025.