Marathon Shriners
Century-old Florida Keys Shrine club that drives sick kids to specialty hospitals, free to families. A site that turns a QR code into a donation in under 60 seconds.
The Challenge
The Marathon Shrine Club, a chapter of the Mahi Shriners chartered in 1922, runs one simple, serious operation: drive Keys kids who need orthopedic, burn, spinal, or cleft care to specialty children’s hospitals, at no cost to the family, ever. The hard part isn’t the mission; it’s the ask. Most of their giving happens at roadside paper drives and community events, where a donor wants to help but no longer carries cash. The club needed to capture that 30-second “I’d give if I could” moment, usually a phone held out a car window, and turn it into a real donation before the light turned green.
The Build
We built a mobile-first site on Astro and Netlify designed around a single repeated CTA: give. Donations run through Zeffy, the only truly zero-fee nonprofit platform, so 100% of every gift reaches the kids, one-tap from any page, with the form lazy-loaded so it never slows the first paint. QR codes (generated at build time) point straight at the donation flow for paper-drive signs and car windows. Trust does the selling: 1922 charter, 22 hospitals, 1.3 million kids helped, $0 ever billed to a family, the numbers earn the right to ask before the copy ever does. The design leans into who the Shriners actually are, vintage Florida postcard meets 1950s carnival poster meets old fraternal-order letterhead, gold and crimson and fez crest, warm and joyful, never clinical or stiff. We also baked in IRS fair-market-value disclosure on event-based giving so the club stays compliant and penalty-free.
The Result
A nonprofit site that feels like the club itself, fun, proud, and a century deep, while doing one job relentlessly well: converting intent into a tax-deductible gift in under a minute, on a phone, in full sun, with every dollar landing on the mission. No fees skimmed, no families billed, no cash required.