Website Project Leadership for a Non-Profit

From Uncertain to Confident

Website Project Leadership for a NFP

Case Study | Fixed-Price Project | Website Project Leadership

Pet Refuge cares for pets while families escape domestic violence, work that depends on people finding them, trusting them, and donating to keep the shelter running.

Their website was the front door to all of that, and it was approaching end-of-life. Replacing it meant handing project leadership to someone outside the organisation, on something this close to the brand and its systems, a bigger handover than anything else Pet Refuge had delegated before.

Challenges

Pet Refuge knew their website had to change. The challenges they faced were:

1

A Team That Couldn't Make the Technical Calls

Every decision about how the site was actually built needed someone who understood both the technology and what Pet Refuge was trying to achieve.

2

A Handover Bigger Than Any They'd Made Before

The handover meant trusting someone outside the organisation with decisions this close to the brand, and there was no one internally positioned to do it instead.

3

The Capacity to Run It Themselves

Managing a website agency, translating every technical decision, and getting the site built and live was too much to carry alongside running a shelter.
What they needed wasn’t more hands. It was someone they could hand the whole thing to.

Our Approach:

We designed a plan to solve each of these challenges:

1
Project Leadership:

Led the relationship with Pet Refuge’s website design agency through wireframing, design, and development, keeping every decision anchored to Pet Refuge’s brief.

2
Technical Translation:

Turned plug-ins, CMS options, and site architecture into plain language, so Erin’s team could confidently weigh in on their own website.

3
Collaborative Tools:

Introduced Google Docs alongside Pet Refuge’s existing Teams and SharePoint setup, and used AI tools to keep meeting notes and stakeholders aligned.

4
Content Population and UAT:

Took direct ownership of uploading and formatting every page, then tested every form, link, and device before launch.

This ran as a fixed-price project through to launch, with Steph leading it as a genuine member of the Pet Refuge team throughout.

The Transformation

We gave Pet Refuge a leader who could see round corners they couldn’t see themselves.
Someone who saw problems before they existed
Steph’s expertise meant she could walk the team through the project understanding the implications of every decision, catching issues before they became problems.
Decisions made with confidence, not confusion
Plug-ins, CMS options, and site architecture became plain enough for the whole team to weigh in on their own website.
Time back for strategy, not agency management
Translating and coordinating the build gave Erin’s team room to focus on what the website needed to say, not how it got built.
The front door, finally fit for purpose
Pet Refuge now has a website robust enough to be found, trusted, and donated to, not an ageing platform putting that at risk.
“In honesty, considering a specialist for the website project felt like a bigger leap than design and social. It’s a large and complex project which requires intimate knowledge of the brand and charity’s systems and operations. Meeting Steph, was the final comfort I needed to hand over the leadership for this project. Steph listens, seeks to understand, asks great questions, and has a knack for explaining the technical so it’s simple and clear. While it’s been so helpful learning about plug-ins, traditional versus monolithic structures, and the pros and cons of different CMS, the best benefit of Steph is that she’s allowed me to concentrate on our strategy and how we see our website contributing, knowing I have her to help me translate that into our build.”
Erin Roberts, General Manager

Key Takeaways

  • Steph's expertise meant issues were caught before they became problems, not discovered after launch.
  • Developer jargon became plain language, so the whole team could confidently shape decisions on their own website.
  • Pet Refuge now has a website robust enough to be found, trusted, and donated to, the front door their mission depends on.
The website that once put Pet Refuge’s mission at risk is now the reason more families and pets can find and support them.

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