A website proposal for the Bay Ridge Civic Association — 455 homes, four community funds, one hundred years of tradition, and an all‑volunteer board that deserves tools that simply work.
We didn't just write about the new bay-ridge.org — we built the home page, with your photography, your navigation, and your Fog Horn.
See the live home‑page concept→Built the custom way — this concept is hand-coded exactly as Option A would be, not assembled in WordPress. It's a working preview of the recommended approach.
From our call and your criteria document, the new bay‑ridge.org has three jobs to do.
Dues, donations, boat stickers, camp, clubhouse rentals, and event tickets — routed automatically to four separate bank accounts: BRCA General Fund, Marina, Camp, and Pool. No sorting checks, no forwarding funds.
Residents register, the board approves, and dues run on the calendar year — automatic reminders 30 and 7 days before January 1, and automatic lockout on April 1 if unpaid. No stored credit cards, ever.
The Fog Horn, the calendar, the Heron newsletter, slip lists, and fee changes all need to be updatable in minutes by whoever holds the role that year — not just by a web developer.
Whichever build you choose, the finished website does all of this. Your content is already written — a real head start — and we build every page from it.
| Custom Build | WordPress Build | |
|---|---|---|
| One-time build | $7,500 | $9,750 |
| — BRCA portion | $6,250 | $8,250 |
| — Pool section, invoiced separately to the Pool Association | $1,250 | $1,500 |
| Monthly support | $80 | $120 (includes plugin licenses) |
| Five-year cost of ownership | $12,300 | $16,950 |
| Edit text & photos yourselves | Yes — on every page | Yes — on every page |
| Create brand-new page layouts yourselves | Through your developer | Yes — page builder |
| Four bank accounts / Stripe routing | Built in natively | Configured across plugins |
| April 1 dues lockout | Built in natively | Approximated via plugin settings |
| Per-field directory privacy | Built in natively | Custom-configured |
| QR-code event check-in | Built in natively | Via ticketing plugin |
| Volunteer admin experience | Only what you need | Standard WP dashboard + plugins |
| Ongoing licenses | None | ~$500/yr (covered in support) |
| Timeline to launch | 8–10 weeks | 10–12 weeks |
| You own the design & can move hosts | Yes | Yes |
Yes — under either option. This was the board's biggest question on our call, so let us be precise about it.
The custom build includes a page content editor: every front-facing page's headings, paragraphs, and photos can be changed by any authorized volunteer from the admin area — the same way you'd edit the Fog Horn or the calendar. Prices, fees, events, tickets, documents, and member approvals are all self-service too. The only thing reserved for a developer is building a brand-new type of page or restructuring a layout — which, in our experience with community organizations, comes up about once or twice a year and is covered by your support plan anyway.
WordPress extends that one step further — volunteers can assemble entirely new pages with a drag-and-drop builder. The trade is a busier dashboard and the plugin stack described above.
Every recurring cost the association would carry. Hosting and email are billed directly to BRCA on your own accounts — no markup, no middleman, and nothing tied to us.
Your own account from day one, with free SSL included. If you ever part ways with us, the site stays put — nothing to migrate.
Fifteen @bayridge.org mailboxes at $3 each with 30 GB of storage apiece — versus roughly $105/month for the same on Google Workspace.
Security and malware scanning, backups every 12 hours, all software updates, and your text-and-photo change requests handled for you.
We walk the full criteria document and every content page with your team, confirm the sitemap and the four Stripe accounts, and lock scope — so nothing appears mid-project as “an extra.”
Home page and key interior designs built from your mockup direction and photography, revised with your feedback until approved.
All pages, membership and directory, payments into all four accounts, calendar, ticketing, and the Marina, Pool, and Camp workflows — on a private preview link the board can watch progress on.
Real payment tests into each account, accessibility checks, a recorded training session for your volunteers, then launch on bay-ridge.org — with us on standby through renewal season.
Both options are fixed-price and include everything in this proposal — the feature list, email setup, training, and launch. We'd welcome a video call with the board to walk through any of it and answer questions directly.
Payments are split so nothing is due until you've seen work you approve of.
Explore the live home‑page concept→
The concept above was built with the custom approach (Option A) — no WordPress involved.