Work & case studies | Program Edge

Featured case study · Client engagement

Center X Equine Therapy

A mobile-first, accessible website for a 501(c)(3) equine-therapy nonprofit — helping families understand the program, trust the team, join the waitlist, and support the mission — plus advising on the full stack behind it: inquiry forms, donations, and a HIPAA-ready path.

Role: Product + delivery, design, build & advisory Nonprofit · healthcare-adjacent HIPAA-aware architecture Designed, built & integrated · accessible · fast

center-x-equine-therapy-site.pages.dev

Live preview — the real, deployed site, embedded right here and currently in client review.

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The challenge

A real mission with no front door

The organization had a clear purpose — licensed therapists using the movement of the horse to help children and adults build balance, strength, and confidence — but its domain showed only a “Launching Soon” page. Families couldn’t learn what the program was, referral partners had nowhere to send people, and there was no way to join a waitlist or give. The job was to turn a trusted, in-person service into a website that earns that same trust in the first five seconds.

How I approached it

Two lenses on the same project

Good outcomes need both: the product thinking to build the right thing, and the program discipline to actually ship it.

Product lens

Build the right thing

Start with the user: Three audiences: families new to equine therapy, referral partners (PT/OT clinicians), and donors/sponsors. Each needs different proof before they act.
Name the unmet need: Newcomers don’t know what equine therapy is or whether it’s safe for their child. So the site leads with plain-language explanation, therapist credentials, and the horses’ calm temperament — trust content right where people decide to inquire.
Set a North Star: One guiding outcome: a family or partner can understand the program, trust the team, and join the inquiry list — on a phone, in under a minute. Every section earns its place against that.
Tie it to the business objective: For a nonprofit that means three conversions: inquiry-list sign-ups, donations, and volunteer interest — plus sponsor recognition that keeps supporters engaged.

Program lens

Actually ship it

Meeting notes & action items: The client meeting was captured in writing: model on The Shea Center, large hero, PayPal for launch, Instagram, two therapists and two horses, PT/OT now. Every preference became a tracked action item, not a memory.
A task list, end to end: Content collection, sitemap, prototype, build, donation flow, forms, accessibility, DNS — one list so nothing fell through the cracks between discovery and launch.
Dependencies, made explicit: The site depended on client-owned media (bios, photos), a donation-platform decision (PayPal vs Givebutter/Zeffy), waitlist tooling, and domain/hosting ownership on GoDaddy. Each was flagged early so it couldn’t silently block launch.
Critical path to launch: Content + donation flow + domain/DNS were the long poles. Everything else was built in parallel against a phased plan: discovery → content → design → prototype → build → QA → launch.

The discovery trail

Research before pixels

Before designing a single screen, I studied how the best therapeutic-riding nonprofits earn trust online — then turned the patterns into an information architecture.

Studied four reference nonprofits

The Shea Center, Ride Above Disability, Tara’s Chance, and SD Therapeutic Horsemanship — national polish and local peers, to see what families and donors expect.

Extracted the patterns that convert

Emotional hero + one mission line; three CTAs (Donate / Volunteer / Get started); named parent quotes; an accreditation/trust signal; a “what is equine therapy?” explainer for newcomers; meet-the-horses with sponsorship; and impact numbers.

Turned patterns into an information architecture

A first-launch sitemap — Home, Services (PT/OT), Meet the Team, Meet the Horses, Waitlist/Inquiry, Donate/Support, Sponsors, Contact — each section mapped to a user need and a conversion.

Prototyped, reviewed, and refined with the client

A polished homepage and core pages first, reviewed together, then refined — collaborative, not a hand-off.

Built, QA’d, and shipped

Implemented as fast, accessible pages wired to the services that run the org; checked on a 375 px phone; deployed to a live, HTTPS URL on Cloudflare Pages.

Architecture & advisory

Advising on the whole stack, not just the pixels

A website is only the front door. Beyond design and build, the engagement includes advising Center X on the services that actually run it — how families inquire, how donors give, and how a healthcare org stays on the right side of compliance — choosing tools that keep launch fast and costs near zero, with a clean path to upgrade later.

Fillout GiveButter Airtable / Google Sheets Cloudflare Pages GoDaddy (registrar) HIPAA path: Jane App / IntakeQ / Jotform

Inquiry & waitlist forms — non-clinical by design

Recommending Fillout for launch: a generous free tier and unlimited forms, so one account covers Waitlist Inquiry, Volunteer Interest, and General Contact — each routing to Google Sheets or Airtable with category and source tags. Deliberately limited to basic contact, service interest, and a short inquiry, with explicit “please don’t submit medical details” copy.

A HIPAA-ready path — without slowing launch

Because the public forms collect no protected health information, the marketing and fundraising site can ship now. The form is a swappable module: when Center X needs real clinical intake, it moves to a BAA-signing vendor — Jane App for a PT/OT practice, IntakeQ/PracticeQ, or Jotform HIPAA — separate from the marketing site. (Healthcare judgment carried over from FDA-cleared medical devices at Dexcom.)

Donations & donor CRM

Recommending GiveButter — genuinely free on the optional-tip model (tips on = $0 platform + $0 processing; tips off = a flat 3% + standard processing), with a free donor CRM, recurring giving, and campaign notifications. An Amazon Wishlist is an easy in-kind supplement.

Hosting & deploy

Staying on Cloudflare Pages: free, a fast global CDN, automatic HTTPS, Git-based deploys with preview links for client review, and a password gate that’s trivial to toggle before launch.

Domain, DNS & email

Keep the domain registered at GoDaddy (no transfer needed) and point DNS at Cloudflare — nameservers for free DNS, SSL, and CDN, or a simple CNAME. Branded email (e.g. info@) can be configured alongside without breaking mail.

Data routing & follow-up

Every form lands somewhere with an owner — a shared Sheet or Airtable base per category (waitlist, volunteer, contact) with the tags already built into the form structure, so no inquiry goes unanswered.

The outcome

A trustworthy front door — live and embeddable

A mobile-first, accessible website shipped end to end and deployed to a live HTTPS URL.
Clear paths for the three audiences: an inquiry/waitlist flow, a donation path, and volunteer info.
Trust content built in — therapist credentials, horse temperament and role, mission, and location.
Built so the client can grow into it: room for sponsors, future services, and a polished donation platform.
So solid it’s embedded live on the Program Edge home page — the real, deployed site, not a mockup.

How we worked together matters as much as what shipped: embedded with the client, sharing context, capturing every decision, and making the calls together. A senior collaborator, not a vendor.

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