A support platform for people navigating DNA surprises

The problem

Right To Know serves people in the middle of an identity crisis — someone who has just learned the parents who raised them are not their biological parents. That audience needs peer support, vetted education and a route into advocacy, and it needs all of it delivered with care. Generic website builders handle none of that well: they treat a support community as a blog with comments, and they leak personal detail through defaults nobody audited.

The approach

Four functions that usually live in four disconnected tools — community, education, storefront, advocacy — run on one platform here, because a small team cannot operate four. The harder constraint was tone: the audience is often in the middle of an identity crisis, so restraint is a design requirement rather than a preference. Privacy defaults are conservative for the same reason; the cost of a leak in this domain is not embarrassment.

What we built

• Peer mentorship matching, connecting new members with people further along the same path
• A structured education library covering DNA testing, genetic genealogy and the legal landscape
• E-commerce for books and resources, so the organisation isn't wholly grant-dependent
• Advocacy tooling for campaigns around donor conception and record access

Built with

Where it stands

The organisation runs its community, its education programme, its storefront and its advocacy work from one platform rather than four disconnected tools — and does it with a presentation that matches the seriousness of the subject.