Think Together is a nonprofit organization with a mission to partner with schools to change the odds for kids. Since its founding in 1997, it stands as California’s leading provider of afterschool education and expanded learning programs.
Serving over 200,000 students across 600 schools, it is transforming education in communities statewide by empowering young learners with resources and opportunities that extend beyond the classroom. The organization wants to help students—primarily under-resourced youth—succeed in their journey to college and career readiness.
“Originating in the challenging Shalimar Street neighborhood in 1994, Think Together has a rich history of proactively addressing societal challenges, from crime and drugs to gangs, teen pregnancy, and high school dropout rates.” – Victor Amezquita, Director of Marketing at Think Together
The Shalimar Learning Center started as a safe space for after-school support and has expanded to hundreds of schools from San Diego to the Bay Area.
Think Together now uses a research-based curriculum to boost learning and partnered with Orenda Education in 2022 to transform education systems with a people-focused, data-driven approach. And in 2023, Think Together launched the California Schools Talent Collaborative, an innovative initiative addressing staffing shortages by connecting district leaders with top-tier talent.
In our interview with Victor Amezquita, he highlighted how Kinsta drives Think Together’s growth by improving website performance, visitor experience, and traffic—helping them maximize their impact every day.
Snapshot
- Industry: NGO, Education
- Business size: 4000+ employees
Problem
Slow page loads and inconsistent support
Before switching to Kinsta, the organization hosted its sites with Bluehost and Hostgator.
Think Together manages several projects and websites, including Orenda Education, Think Together, California Schools Talent Collaborative, and Parent Pay Portal. With multiple projects spread across different platforms, their biggest challenge was keeping their sites reliable and high-performing.
“Issues began to arise with page loading and website delivery, which led our team to look elsewhere.”
Site exposed to malicious activity
Beyond the issues with page load times, they experienced inconsistent support from their previous hosting providers. This led them to look for a new web hosting partner. A website hack became the tipping point for the team.
They wanted to make sure their site was secure and accessible at all times, and that they’d be able to rely on a team of experts for quick and effective disaster recovery in the event of hacking. The Think Together team was looking for a team of experts who were available 24/7.
Better UX and WordPress-specific environment
Choosing the right provider was crucial for Think Together, and they knew they needed a partner specializing in WordPress.
Equally important was having an intuitive, user-friendly dashboard that made site management simple and accessible for all stakeholders. With these tools and resources, Think Together could focus on what truly matters—making a difference in the lives of students.
Solution
WordPress-optimized infrastructure with 24/7/365 support
Hosting their sites on a WordPress-optimized infrastructure was one of the non-negotiables for Think Together. Kinsta delivered, providing everything they need to keep their mission-driven work running smoothly with powerful built-in features:
- Google Cloud Platform: Using the fastest servers (C3D and C2 VMs) for unmatched speed and reliability.
- Caching and HTTP/3 Support: Lightning-fast load times, even during traffic surges.
- Global CDN: Ensures site content reaches users quickly no matter where they are with with 260+ POPs.
Plus, with a team of WordPress experts available 24/7/365, Kinsta ensures that any issues are resolved quickly with reliable support when it matters most.
MyKinsta: A built-in dashboard with powerful tools
The MyKinsta dashboard is equipped with an extensive toolset to make site management and development easy.
With its user management features, companies and organizations (even those with a large number of employees) are able to invite as many users with access that’s most relevant to their roles, which ranges from developer access to company billing access.
Additionally, every WordPress site comes with a staging environment which Kinsta users can set up with just one click. This staging area is a safe place to test new WordPress updates, themes, plugins, or code without affecting their live site.
The MyKinsta dashboard lets users with the right roles access the staging environment, making it easy for developers to work on updates and changes. For organizations that work with a group of developers, this feature is invaluable, especially prior to specific campaigns and events.
Kinsta also offers a Premium Staging Add-on, which allows Think Together to create extra staging environments for even more flexibility when testing or developing.
With MyKinsta, Think Together has everything they need to manage their sites efficiently, test safely, and collaborate seamlessly—all from a single, powerful dashboard. This allows their team to focus on what matters most: driving their mission forward.
Security and disaster recovery
Having experienced the nightmare of a hacked site, it was crucial for Think Together to choose a hosting partner that could protect their sites through advanced security features.
Kinsta’s LXD container technology allows for complete isolation of sites on the platform, ensuring that any malicious activity does not spread to other sites. Security is further strengthened with Kinsta’s Cloudflare Integration plus regular uptime checks, automated daily backups, and free SSL certificate, among other proactive features.
Kinsta has Think Together covered if a site gets hacked. They have a disaster recovery plan in place, and their team of experts acts fast to restore your site.
As part of Kinsta’s Security Pledge, they inspect your site, deeply scan files, repair the WordPress core, and identify and remove any infected plugins or themes. This ensures your site is secure and back up and running quickly.
Results
Better visibility and increased site traffic
Site performance is crucial for visibility and directly impacts search rankings. With Kinsta’s speed-optimized infrastructure, Think Together achieved an improved SEO ranking and a noticeable increase in monthly site traffic:
“In combination with various new strategies, including SEO, paid media, and implementing Kinsta along with general organizational growth, our monthly site traffic has increased by about 50% in the last two years.”
Improved development experience and success through staging
Think Together’s team highlighted that Kinsta’s staging environment improved their development workflows and made it easy for all stakeholders to access and review work in progress when launching new pages or projects:
“We use Kinsta’s staging site anytime we are launching a new page for events/campaigns. It’s so valuable to be able to provide these pages for internal stakeholders to view prior to launching.”
Kinsta’s staging environment has become one of the most preferred features for the organization’s team and has contributed to their sites’ success in a significant way:
“We use the staging site made available to use to create the most well-designed and user-friendly pages possible to increase our conversions and goals.”
Conclusion
With Kinsta’s performance-optimized WordPress hosting, intuitive dashboard, and one-click staging, Think Together now operates on a fast and secure infrastructure. Kinsta has contributed to its increased site traffic and conversions, while the built-in staging environment has become an essential part of the team’s development workflow. Kinsta is proud to be part of Think Together’s success!
Kinsta, alongside our digital strategy, is more than achieving higher metrics—it's an extension of our mission to change the odds for kids and close the opportunity gap in education.
