The default theme sets the bar. So we raised it.
Every organization that signs up for NationBuilder starts from a public theme. That starting point quietly decides what thousands of causes can do on day one — how their petitions convert, how their events fill, how their donation pages perform.
After years of building custom themes for campaigns that had to win, we'd refined a set of patterns that simply worked. Working closely with NationBuilder HQ, we turned them into a public theme available to everyone — not just the organizations who could hire us.
Action-oriented, everywhere.
Raise is built on Bootstrap 4 and organized around the actions that matter: full-width modular homepage sections with featured-content sliders, action forms for petitions, endorsements, and signups, and a navigation that stays fixed while you scroll — so the next step is always on screen.
The details got the same attention as the big moves: an improved UI for event search and user-generated events, redesigned profile cards for directory and leaderboard pages, accordion FAQs, and three color variants so a nation can look like itself without touching a line of code.
The patterns we battle-tested on real campaigns, available to every nation from day one.Why Raise exists
From our studio to the whole platform.
Raise shipped as a public theme and went on to become the default theme for new NationBuilder sites — which means the first thing thousands of causes experience on the platform is work from our studio. It's the rare project where the client is everyone.
One clarification we care about: Raise being available to every organization isn't an endorsement of every organization that uses it. We still choose our direct partnerships carefully — those lines don't move.
Based on "Raising the bar with a new public theme for NationBuilder" by Ryan Vandecasteyen, Van City Studios. Default-theme status via NationBuilder's partner story by Taylor Green.