The Gifted Equine

The Gifted Equine needed a public home that did more than describe a rescue. It had to move people. Visitors arrive curious about the horses, and the site had to carry them from a story into a donation without friction, while letting a small, non-technical team keep stories, programs, and gallery content fresh on their own.

1. 01

   Spending a Day With the Horses

   1 week

   We spent a day at the sanctuary before drawing anything. We met the horses, watched a volunteer post a Facebook update from her phone, and noticed she abandoned it halfway through because the wind picked up. That moment shaped the CMS: had to be phone-first, had to survive interruption, had to be forgiving.

   • A content model with the horse as the unit
   • Donor journey notes "moved → curious → giving" in three taps
   • CMS shortlist filtered for "can a volunteer use this in a barn"
   • A short roadmap the team could read at the kitchen table
2. 02

   Designing for Warmth

   2 weeks

   Most sanctuary sites use the same stock photography and the same blue gradient. We started over. Warm typography, lots of room around the horses, calls to support placed where the story naturally leads. Never bolted onto the side.

   • Figma design system with the horse as visual anchor
   • Horse profile and program-page templates
   • Design tokens tuned warm. Never cold or corporate
   • Mobile specs reviewed on a real phone in real light
3. 03

   React + Vite, Light Enough for Rural Cellular

   2 weeks

   Most of the sanctuary's audience reaches the site on a phone over slow cellular. We picked Vite for the tiny production bundles, inlined the critical CSS, and made sure the first paint was a real story. Not a spinner.

   • Production deploy on a fast static host
   • Headless CMS wired so editing a horse profile takes two taps
   • Base UI built from the design system
   • Story templates with inline image lazy loading
4. 04

   Donorbox, Embedded Where It Belongs

   2 weeks

   Donorbox usually drops people into a separate portal. We embedded it inline. The donor never leaves the horse's story to give. That single decision did more for conversion than any copy change we made.

   • Donorbox inline on every story page
   • Recurring donation as the gentle default
   • Horse profile pages with care timeline + current needs
   • Gallery and program pages
5. 05

   Handing It Over

   1 week

   Production deploy, CMS training for the volunteers (one hour, on a phone, in the barn. Fitting), and an accessibility audit because a chunk of the sanctuary's supporters are over 65.

   • Live launch at thegiftedequine.com
   • One-hour CMS training that stuck
   • WCAG AA accessibility sign-off
   • A four-page volunteer-facing runbook

The Gifted Equine asked us for a website. What they needed was a quiet, mobile-first place where each horse's story leads straight to a way to give, and where a volunteer can update a horse profile from a phone in the barn.

The Gifted Equine is live at thegiftedequine.com. Running recurring donations through Donorbox, with the team updating stories and programs themselves through the CMS.

• Donorbox donations integrated

  One-time and recurring donation flows embedded directly into the site, placed where stories naturally lead to a call to give.

• Self-serve content management

  Non-technical team members can publish new horse profiles, programs, and updates without involving engineering.

• Story-first design system

  Custom Figma design built around the horses. Page templates pair narrative, imagery, and supporting calls to action.

• Fast, mobile-first build

  React + Vite stack tuned for quick first paint on mobile, where most donors discover the sanctuary.

• Accessible by default

  Typography, color contrast, and tap targets reviewed across breakpoints so supporters of all ages can navigate easily.

• Live in production

  Running today at thegiftedequine.com, supporting the rescue’s ongoing fundraising and outreach.