Aspen Institute’s New Web Strategy: One Platform, Many Voices

The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization. Founded 75 years ago, the Institute is one of the most influential nonprofits in the world, driving change through dialogue, leadership and action programs. The organization relies on its 50 websites to fulfill its mission. 

It has not always been that way. The Aspen Institute has many programs with specific funding sources, which led to the websites’ decentralized and uncontrolled growth over the years. The organization decided to move to Pantheon for improved security and consolidation of its digital projects. Then, the Institute partnered with web development agency WDG to create a modern, editorially-driven flagship site, unify programming and deepen audience engagement.

Pantheon’s containerized infrastructure makes it really easy for a federated organization like ours to bring so many different sites and programs into one central location. All without disrupting their autonomy and making sure the central IT maintains control they need.” 

- Henry Mesias, Technical Project Manager at the Aspen Institute  

A New Digital Foundation

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Before Pantheon, most of the Aspen Institute's sites lived on shared hosting through a major cloud platform. Programs could launch sites independently, often with little coordination with central IT. While this flexibility allowed for experimentation, it created challenges in governance, scalability, and security.

To address these needs, the Institute adopted Pantheon’s container-based infrastructure. 

The flagship website, aspeninstitute.org, relaunched in 2025 after a full redesign. The overhaul aimed to modernize content workflows, simplify navigation, and welcome back programs that had drifted onto standalone domains.

“We are offering programs a new home,” said John Peabody, Director of Content Strategy at Aspen Institute. “A modern home that works well, looks good and lets them come back into the fold without sacrificing their identity.”

The new site reflects the Aspen Institute’s federated model while encouraging cohesion. Program pages live on the main domain but have their own navigation, giving them a sense of ownership while benefiting from shared infrastructure. 

The redesign involved a deep audit of existing content and taxonomy work to clean up years of decentralized growth. The project took about 18 months and involved consolidating digital assets, rethinking user flows, and building for scalability.

“There were thousands of outdated pages and conflicting categories,” said Vajaah Parker, Director of Strategy at WDG. “We had to make the site more understandable—for both first-time visitors and Aspen Institute staff.”

The new navigation surfaces the Aspen Institute’s five impact areas prominently, aligned with the Institute’s strategic priorities.

The site runs on a custom WordPress Gutenberg theme, giving editors a flexible, scalable interface. Behind the scenes, it's built for performance, accessibility, and seamless integration with enterprise systems. Custom blocks simplify publishing, while Pantheon ensures reliable, high-performance hosting.

Scaling the Aspen Institute Web Presence on WordPress

The migration took four months. The web team used the Pantheon Migration Plugin for WordPress to move some sites independently. Pantheon’s migration team handled the more complicated builds. 

Once on Pantheon, the Aspen Institute web family started growing fast, adding almost one site per month. Today, the Institute has 49 sites on WordPress and one on Drupal. 

The flagship website, aspeninstitute.org, has an average of 440,000 monthly views. It has a shared governance model where various Aspen Institute programs control their own pages, while the central Communications team handles press releases and news. 

“Some programs appreciate the high traffic but want a unique layout to differentiate from the other programs. They have the freedom to launch fully custom sites as long as they are on Pantheon,” explained Mesias. 

The Aspen Institute operates like many higher education institutions, with schools having unique builds and development teams based on funding levels. 

However, if higher education prefers to run on Drupal, Aspen Institute trusts WordPress for its enterprise needs. Mesias said that CMS choices have historically depended on the developer’s preference. 

“I'm biased because I used to be a software developer building enterprise sites for nonprofits. And I've just always found WordPress sites to be pretty simple to build. I also think that WordPress has made very smart upgrades in the last seven years, like the built-in API and the Gutenberg editor. And with so many people contributing to the open-source project, it is easy to build whatever you want on it,” he added. 

Improved Productivity, Governance & Editorial Freedom

Having the Aspen Institute websites in a centralized place improved the web team’s ability to collaborate with stakeholders from all levels on digital projects.

The Communications team working on aspeninstitute.org is 23-person strong. But the platform supports far more than one team.

More than 200 users have access to the flagship site. At least 40 users are in WordPress daily, creating events, publishing blog posts and maintaining their program areas.

“All the feedback since launch has been excellent,” said Peabody. “The editing experience is orders of magnitude better. Improved search functionality and component-based design contribute to smoother workflows.”

The developer team enjoys working with Pantheon’s Multidev environments and the Dev, Test, Live workflow. Pantheon’s Advanced Global CDN safeguards the sites from malicious traffic.

I like how developer-friendly Pantheon is. I like how I already have dev, staging and live environments. I know on other platforms, you have to pay extra for that. On Pantheon, the workflow is forced upon you, but not in a bad way. 'Gifted to you' is a better way of putting it!”

- Henry Mesias, Technical Project Manager at the Aspen Institute  

Aspen Institute is continuing to evolve its digital strategy. Pantheon’s platform provided enterprise-grade security protections and more reliable performance. By centralizing oversight while still empowering individual programs, Aspen Institute gained a balance of freedom and control.

"Even little things like streamlining the login process with Okta go a long way," said Peabody. "When you're working with 50 to 60 programs with varied expertise, ease of use matters. And our new site makes things seamless for everyone: from internal staff to the Aspen Institute community.”