mia malone smitherman


Athens YMCA
More than a Gym

The Athens YMCA is a cornerstone of the local community, offering far more than fitness facilities, from youth programming and childcare to civic engagement and financial assistance. Yet despite this breadth, the organization faced a persistent identity problem: most people in Athens simply saw it as a gym.
Scope:
Research
Art Direction
Production

Credits:
Created as Art Director
with INtegrated campaigns at Grady College

Social Content 

Messaging Guides

Through discovery interviews, a brand audit, website analytics, and audience research, we identified four core problems: a brand too narrow to reflect the organization's full mission, reactive content creation with no strategic framework, messaging that treated a diverse audience as one, and no infrastructure for measuring performance or optimizing over time. 

To solve these challenges, we developed a comprehensive suite of over 30 deliverables spanning strategy, storytelling, content production, and design. These included an audience segmentation and messaging matrix, a KPI framework, a fundraising messaging guide with donor templates, a full content calendar and production workflow, platform-specific content guidelines, and nine ready-to-use Canva brand assets. Every deliverable was built for long-term use so the YMCA could continue operating from a strategic foundation well beyond our engagement.
Final Presentation Deck
Tools Used: Canva, Adobe Photoshop 

Updated April 2026