The Sallie Foundation

Client returns to develop a brand and website for his nonprofit

In 2024, Josh Cheatham, CEO of Furtado, partnered with Hansen Belyea to revamp the company’s digital presence. We built a custom website with a tailored user experience, compelling content strategy, and a new visual identity, all supported by a scalable codebase. The result was a successful digital platform that enhanced Furtado’s brand and service delivery. Six months later, Josh returned to us with a personal project: the Sallie Foundation, an engineering scholarship fund named after his grandmother, Sallie Mae Cheatham.

Rooted in his grandmother’s values around education and desire to give back to the community, the foundation is focused on supporting minority students pursuing engineering careers in public infrastructure. The budget was more constrained, but both Josh and the Hansen Belyea team had a clear vision and shared commitment to bringing this meaningful project to life with both a stunning visual brand and website.

Scope of Work

+ Discovery Session
+ Custom Clone Website
+ Logo & Brand Identity Design
+ Graphic Standards

The meaning behind the mark

An identity rooted in impact and resilience

This design is packed with symbolism and meaning to match the emotional dedication of it’s founder to this mission. The logomark holistically represents a flower, symbolizing individual growth, learning, and development. The blue hydrangea, a prominent and hardy flower in the Northwest, was chosen to embody these concepts. The stitch pattern along the edges of the mark represents a connection and bond to the community, honoring Sallie’s ability to provide for her family through sewing.

The logo’s motion represents the cycle of giving, the plus symbol signifies positive impact, and the stitching subtly forms the letter “S” for Sallie Mae Cheatham.

While the logo may be simplistic to the unknowing, it was very emotionally received by Sallie’s children due to the layers of meaning woven into the mark.

Josh Cheatham – Founder / The Sallie Foundation
Building a clone site

Leveraging the existing Furtado website codebase

With a limited budget and a need for a simple website to collect donations and applications, we leveraged the existing Furtado codebase to create a clone site in just two months. 

This allowed our team to focus on developing a custom logo and brand identity that captured the essence of the foundation, delivering a high-quality website with a faster turnaround and lower cost.

“Once we downloaded the Hansen Belyea team with our information, we adopted their approach and made quick decisions to allow for a new brand and website to be created in a short period of time.”

Josh Cheatham – Founder / The Sallie Foundation

A positive impact

In March 2025, the Hansen Belyea Team was invited to attend the unveiling of the Sallie Foundation to Josh’s closest friends, family, and colleagues in Seattle in celebration of both three years of ownership with Furtado and Josh’s birthday! We are so grateful to have had the privilege of working on this project that has been so meaningful to Josh and his family and to the engineering students who will be positively impacted by his scholarship program.

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