Home PageThe Chicago Public Education Fund home page is focused on presenting results The Fund is achieving.
The Fund Chair Penny PritzkerPenny Pritzker helps The Fund lead the charge to improve Chicago’s schools.
The Fund’s Venture Capital ModelDynamic flash content can be updated from within the GeekPAK CMS.
Videos That Mean BusinessGeekPAK created several short documentaries that demonstrate The Fund’s dedication to results.

Chicago Public Education Fund

Focused on Results, The Fund Uses GeekPAK.

September 15, 2009
The Fund website is a powerful example of brand in the web era. The Fund is focused on results and GeekPAK delivered.
Chicago | GeekPAK CMS Website

The Fund is one of GeekPAK's biggest successes of 2009. For this comprehensive brand and web project we worked to re-envision, reenergize and relaunch the Chicago Public Education Fund brand.

The Chicago Public Education Fund is venture capital for public education. Every four years, they raise a series of funds and invest in high-impact programs and outstanding management teams focused on human capital innovations. Their success is rooted in a strict adherence to a venture capital model, investments that meet critical needs of the school system, and a strong alignment across all strategic partners.

Simply put, The Fund uses a strict focus on quantifiable results to drive their no nonsense approach to helping transform Chicago's schools.

At the beginning of their third fund, CPEF wanted to reinvigorate their brand and create a web presence that would better demonstrate their focus on achieving results through a venture approach to human capital in Chicago's public schools.


The Brand of The Fund
After a thorough analysis and exhaustive interviews of people from all levels of The Fund's work the following key brand elements were identified:

+ Goals: For many organizations goals are words, for The Fund accomplishing goals is the only way for them to continue as an organization.

+ Results: Demonstrating accomplishment of The Fund's goals isn't lip service, it is quantifiable. They announce their goals at the beginning of each fund, and at the end they show their results.

+ People: The core of the work, the core of their focus and the key lever for change is people. The Fund is about investing in good people, The Fund is about leveraging human capital to improve Chicago's public schools.

+ Transparency: When goals and results are your focus, transparency naturally follows. The Fund has the courage to be truly open with their constituents and the world.

+ Action: Their focus on goals and quantifiable results, when coupled with the urgency of a 4 year fund ensures The Fund means action. Action at The Fund means a kind of constructive impatience to improve Chicago's public schools now.


The Fund Website: The Primary Brand Component
Because the website is always available, because the website encompasses The Fund's body of work past, present and future, because the website is the first point of contact for The Fund it had to capture the true essence of The Fund. It had to be the brand.

To accomplish this goal, we worked to create a website that:

+ Demonstrates not just the new aesthetic of the brand, but rather all of the substance of their work.

+ Simply communicates the complex problem and complex factors of working in a large urban school district.

+ Serves the diverse audiences The Fund serves ranging from school teachers working with students up to the amazing, active, engaged board members of The Fund.

+ Humanizes human capital. Human capital means people, and in a public school system it is all kinds of people working in a myriad of ways that help affect change.

+ Demonstrates The Fund's focus on results by demonstrating actual results on every page of the web site.


Leveraging the rich feature-set of the GeekPAK CMS, The Fund website is as dynamic, media rich, and feature packed as any you'll find. Visually it is the center piece of the new brand aesthetic. What's more, this powerful blend of form and function is entirely under the control of CPEF staff enabling them to demonstrate their work and their results in real time.

The CPEF website makes use of:

+ dynamic flash tools that demonstrate results as well as The Fund process

+ rich video content that serves as an introduction to each major section of the site

+ elegant information architecture to simply convey the complex work of The Fund

+ extensive media library that captures the real people and the real Chicago that is the focus of The Fund's work


Using the GeekPAK CMS, The Chicago Public Education Fund has complete control to update the entire website. The flash is data driven, the video, media and photography are organized in the GeekPAK file manager to be used on any page, and the content and site structure are open to continuous refinement and enhancement as the work of The Fund moves into the future.

The Fund website is a powerful example of brand in the web era. The Fund is focused on results and GeekPAK delivered.
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