The Minnesota State Fair is the largest state fair in the United States based upon average daily attendance. In 2019 alone, more than two million people attended the fair during its annual 12 day run.
The Minnesota State Fair Foundation is the MN State Fair’s nonprofit partner that assists in enriching the unforgettable memories and traditions people experience only at the Minnesota State Fair.
In addition to creating special programs, the MN State Fair Foundation has assisted in improving, renovating, and creating many new buildings and structures on the fairgrounds.
LuminFire has had a longstanding relationship as a trusted technology partner to the Minnesota State Fair, and has built the fair some of its most advanced technology, such as the technology that runs over 5,000 competitions in real time, and distributes over $1 million in prizes to competition winners.
The MN State Fair Foundation selected LuminFire to improve their website that had been created by another vendor. Their old website was based on Drupal and was difficult to use for both donors and employees. They found that many users were abandoning donations. In addition, tracking data about the site traffic was not available.
LuminFire started by building the Foundation a brand new website based upon WordPress and the Genesis framework. The new site’s primary aim was to help the Foundation increase their online donations. LuminFire’s expert developers revamped the look & feel of the site to better represent the Foundation’s brand while improving the user’s experience. The new site was designed to clarify the options and ways to support the Foundation through their membership programs, personalized bricks, benches and tables, and program area giving. LuminFire also set them up with Google Analytics so that their tracking data would become more visible to them, making it easier to run reports and assess the impact that changes to the site have on donor cart abandonment.
WordPress made the site more manageable and provided a great foundation for future efforts of the Foundation. It is now dramatically easier for State Fair Foundation staff to edit and change the website on their own.
The customized Genesis theme made the site fully responsive for easy access across all devices from desktop to mobile.
Foundation staff were able to easily add/import/utilize online donation forms through the WordPress HTML content block to integrate the Foundation’s new website with their donor management system, Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge.
LuminFire’s Brilliant Hosting provided a reliable and secure hosting foundation for the site.
In future phases, LuminFire will be working with the Foundation to enhance conversion tracking, improve SEO/Accessibility, and implement PPC (Pay Per Click) via a Google Ads Grant.
If you’re looking to improve your website by transforming it into a site that is designed for performance, reliability and the future, LuminFire can make your story a success. Contact us today for a free consultation to start the discussion.
Tim Cimbura – CEO, CFO and Software Engineer
Tim is an expert in creating custom business solutions that make businesses more effective, productive, and profitable. He specializes in rapid application development with the Claris platform including FileMaker, Laravel, and WordPress. He also knows Apple macOS technology inside and out.