Six-plus nonprofit sites unified on one Drupal 11 platform with ongoing maintenance

The client

Race Forward is an American nonprofit advancing racial justice through changes in policy, institutions and culture, with a connected family of digital properties including RaceForward.org, Colorlines, the GARE network and the Facing Race conference. Its estate had grown into different technologies stitched together with third-party services. Axelerant acted as direct integration and delivery partner, consolidating the estate and then staying on for continuous maintenance.

The challenge

Parts of the ecosystem still ran on Drupal 7 and WordPress, and when Drupal 7 reached official end-of-life in January 2025 those properties were unsupported, exposed to unpatched vulnerabilities and accumulating technical debt. Sites were spread across multiple platforms and external tools for donations, events, community and email, making every update slower. Real-user measurement also showed key properties failing Core Web Vitals, with largest contentful paint around 3.2 seconds and server response near 1.3 seconds.

The solution

The results

Race Forward retired unsupported Drupal 7 and WordPress in favour of a single Drupal 11 foundation on Eppihost, eliminating the associated security exposure and technical debt. Six-plus digital properties now share one platform backbone that is faster and cheaper to maintain. Through the CDM engagement, properties are deployed onto the latest stable Drupal security release with post-deployment validation.

Tools & stack

Original project by Axelerant ↗ — published by the delivering agency, included here as an industry reference.