Mows for Heroes Website Launch

Mows for Heroes is a Jacksonville, Florida nonprofit that gives free lawn care to veterans, military families, first responders, teachers, nurses and seniors. Jeremy Johnson, its founder, is an active-duty U.S. Navy sailor with more than 17 years of service, and he needed a site that could bring in the people his group exists to help.

That was the hard part. Almost everyone Jeremy has helped told him some version of the same thing: I don't deserve this. The people who have earned a hand are the least likely to ask for one, so a site built around a Request Help button would sit unused. We built it around nominations instead.

A nomination form in the hero

The first thing a visitor sees is a short form asking one question: know someone who'd never ask? From there the whole site leans the same way:

• Nominate a Hero is the main button in the header and at the end of every page.
• The nomination starts with just an email, then moves to a short form, so it takes about two minutes.
• Asking for yourself is still there as Request Help, one step down, for the people who will.

Who it serves, named plainly

People hesitate when they are not sure they qualify. So the homepage lists the six groups by name, each with one line, and adds single parents and other community heroes underneath:

• Veterans, military families and first responders.
• Teachers, nurses and healthcare workers.
• Seniors who want to stay in the home they love.

Three steps and a quiet promise

The how it works section keeps the process to three steps: tell us about them, we reach out quietly, we show up and do the work. The middle step carries the most weight. A lot of people who would turn down help in public will accept it when nobody makes a fuss.

Missions as the proof

A new nonprofit has no long track record yet, so the real work does the talking. Every mission gets its own page:

• Before and after photos from the actual yard, in sliders you drag to compare.
• What the work was, and who helped, including the local lawn company that worked alongside the crew on Mission #2.
• A home is only shown with the owner's OK, and the site says so.

The record, stated as it stands

Donors and partners want to know who they are dealing with. The About page tells Jeremy's story in his own words, then lays out the record in four plain cards: the Florida nonprofit, its registered Florida charity number, the IRS status listed as an application that is still pending, and who founded it. Nothing on the site claims more than the paperwork supports today.

A way in for local lawn businesses

Lawn crews are the group's best volunteers. A Volunteer Affiliate page lets a business give one open slot a month, gets the crew's name on the mission with its OK, and spells out the ground rules before anyone signs up, from carrying its own insurance to keeping the two brands separate.

Giving that stays on the page

The donate page holds the donation form right on the site, one time or monthly, with Florida's required charity registration disclosure directly under it and a short list of what the money pays for.

What we built

• A custom Next.js site with GSAP scroll animation, built on a design system and vector logo kit drawn from the logo the group already had.
• Home, how it works, missions with a page per mission, about, volunteer, lawn business affiliates, partners, donate, nominate, request help and contact pages, plus privacy, terms, cookie, accessibility and disclaimer pages.
• Every form wired into Grow, our CRM, so a nomination alerts the team right away and gets followed up even when Jeremy is not available.
• Google Analytics through Tag Manager that waits for a visitor to say yes to cookies, and a site that loads its background video only after the page is ready.

Running a Nonprofit That Needs People to Raise Their Hand?

See the live site at mowsforheroes.org, or see how we approach web design for nonprofits.