Giving Garden of Carrollton

Sixteen years of harvest records, one login-gated Wix page, and a garden ready to grow up.

The Giving Garden of Carrollton has fed families in Carrollton, TX since 2010 — donating over 24 tons of produce along the way. Its digital home hadn't kept pace: a decade-old WordPress blog for the public, a bare Wix login screen for members, and everything else — plots, hours, harvest logs — tracked by hand in spreadsheets and an Access database. Here's what changed.

BeforeWordPress, since 2010

Old Giving Garden of Carrollton homepage: a default WordPress blog theme with a sidebar of archive links dating back to 2010

AfterBuilt by Prosper Donkey, 2026

New Giving Garden of Carrollton homepage: a modern hero section with a live harvest chart, clear calls to action, and a warm photograph of the garden

Nothing was broken, exactly. It just wasn't one thing.

Record-keeping here had grown by accretion — notebooks, then spreadsheets, then an Access database, then a Wix site bolted on for members — each one layered on top of the last, none of them built to talk to each other.

The public-facing site ran on WordPress through a third-party host, styled with a generic blog theme and navigated through a sidebar of monthly archive links stretching back to 2010. A separate Wix site, gated behind a login screen, covered a sliver of member self-service — logging volunteer hours, little else.

Plot assignments, harvest weights by pantry, board rosters — the actual record-keeping lived in spreadsheets and an Access database that only one person could really make sense of.

One system, three audiences.

Public site

The front door — now a real reflection of a 16-year-old organization.

Live harvest-impact chart, auto-updating from admin-logged data
Photo gallery with review/publish workflow
News (merged Press & Awards), Calendar, Sponsors

Member portal

Self-service, for the first time.

Log volunteer hours and harvest/delivery dates directly
Personal activity dashboard, own plot & agreement history
Member directory, visual plot layout, searchable reference library

Admin portal

Replaces the spreadsheets, the Access database, and the old member site entirely.

Member, plot, and agreement management — 32 beds tracked live
Harvest logging with per-pantry breakdown, CSV export
Reporting suite: birthdays, member turnover, agreement compliance, hours

The public pages, page for page.

Adopt‑a‑Plot

The primary conversion page for new members

Before

Old Adopt-a-Plot page, plain WordPress page with dense unstyled text

After

New Adopt-a-Plot page with a hero image, clear membership requirements, and a download button for the application

Volunteer Opportunities

Real photos of the actual activities, not stock images

Before

Old Volunteer Opportunities page, a plain text list with no imagery

After

New Volunteer Opportunities page with a photo grid of harvesting, delivery, and bed-care activities

News

Merged Press & Awards — two old sections, one admin-managed page

Before

Old Newspaper/Magazine Articles page, a bare list of blog posts

After

New News page with cover images, sortable list, and search

The part that never had a real interface at all.

Before

Old member site: a free Wix template with a login gate and no visible self-service functionality

After — described, not shown

A separate Wix site stood in for a member portal — useful for logging volunteer hours, little else. The real admin work happened off-screen entirely, in spreadsheets and an Access database.

Now, real members and admins log into purpose-built portals that handle:

Volunteer hour & harvest logging, self-service and admin-verified
Plot assignment across all 32 beds, including shared community plots
Role-based access: admin, content contributor, member
A reporting suite built for board meetings

Screenshots of the live portals aren't shown here — they display real member names and contact information, which stays out of anything public per the engagement's confidentiality terms.