Nonprofit & Research
Dikoda
Dikoda turns nutrition research into programmes that work in Kenya, Bangladesh, Fiji and beyond. Its website has to satisfy a UN programme officer, an academic checking the method and a member of the public, all on the same page. We built that site in 2021, and five years later we are still building it with them.
Overview
Dikoda is a social enterprise and a network of researchers. They work on malnutrition, food systems and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) for development partners such as WFP, FAO, Save the Children and Mercy Corps. By their own count they have delivered research and advisory work in 52 countries. Most of their researchers are women, and they give priority to experts from the communities being studied.
That shapes the website. Dikoda is not selling one product to one buyer. The same visit might come from:
- a funder or UN agency deciding whether to commission a study,
- a researcher or practitioner who wants the method, the data and the publication,
- a member of the public or the press who wants to know why urban malnutrition matters.
Each of them needs something different from the same body of work, and none of them knows how Dikoda is organised inside. That is the problem this nonprofit research website has to solve on every page.
Problem
The research is organised the way the organisation works: by project, by team member and by country. Visitors think in questions: what do you do in Bangladesh? who led this study? where can I read the paper?
Two things made that harder over time.
The work kept spreading. Dikoda started with urban nutrition in Asia and the Pacific. It then added WASH, climate resilience and a growing programme in Kenya. Each new area needed a home on the site without becoming a separate website.
The team kept changing, and so did the people editing the site. Researchers join and move between projects, and so do the staff who look after the website. A site that only a developer can update falls behind a research organisation within months. A site that anyone can edit, with nothing holding the design together, slowly stops looking like one site.
Solution
Content that is connected, not copied (2021). We built the original site around this idea. It stores countries, team members and data as separate, linked content types. A researcher’s profile lists their projects. A country page pulls in the projects and people working there. So when Dikoda adds a study, it shows up in every place it belongs, and nobody has to update three pages by hand.
Pages for each service and country (2023). We added service pages (maternal nutrition, urban food system analysis, nutrition in the workplace, nutrition services within institutions) and a Bangladesh country page. Each one is written for the practitioner but opens with plain-language context. Smaller requests came along the way: the latest team profiles moved to the top, an About page fix, and a Power BI dashboard embedded on a private page for a partner.
A health check when the team changed (2025). In October 2025 a new team member got in touch with a list of changes and asked us to check the whole WordPress setup. The check found the problem every organisation with a changing team eventually has: after several rounds of in-house editors, the design had drifted. Headings, spacing and styles no longer matched from page to page. We brought everything back to one design system and locked it down, so staff can add and change content without breaking the layout.
New sections as the organisation grew (2026).
- Africa: a regional page on nutrition resilience in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands, with its own team section.
- Climate Change and Nutrition: a page for the newest line of work.
- Partnerships at Dikoda: a page explaining their equitable-research model and the Trust Code they have adopted, which matters a lot to funders.
- News & Insights: one hub for articles, reports, publications and webinars, with filters by topic (urban food systems, maternal nutrition, climate, workplace and more).
A publications directory, not a document store. Dikoda publishes in journals and on partner sites, and did not want to host copies. We built publications as a curated list, each item with its outlet, year and a short summary, linking straight to the source (for example, their review of dietary behaviours in Fiji in Frontiers in Nutrition). It shows the whole body of work without anyone keeping duplicate PDFs up to date.
Results
One site, three audiences. A funder can start from Partnerships and the partner logos. A researcher can start from a publication or a team profile. A newcomer can start from a country page. They all use the same content underneath.
New areas of work arrive as pages, not rebuilds. Africa, climate and partnerships were added in 2026 on the structure we set up in 2021.
Dikoda publishes on its own. Their team adds content when they need to, and since the design system was locked, an edit can’t easily break the layout.
Five years, one site. We built it in 2021 and were still adding to it in 2026, without a redesign or a migration. That kind of continuity is what our WordPress Maintenance Plans are for.
Running a research or nonprofit site that has drifted since your team changed? Start with a free website audit.
Tech stack
WordPress · Elementor Pro · JetEngine (country, team-member and data content types, with relationships between them) · RankMath
Every tool is standard and well documented, so Dikoda’s own team can edit the site, and so could any competent WordPress developer.
More work
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