The Great Rescue Refresh

The Great Rescue Refresh

The goal: an upgraded website for every rescue that wants one.

Rebuilt free, then managed at nonprofit pricing.

No grant application needed.

Nominate a rescue Why this exists
Before
A cat rescue's website before the refresh — a dated, cramped layout
After
The same rescue's website after the refresh — clear, modern and readable

Why we’re doing this

For most people who hear about a rescue, the website is the rescue.

They'll never see the 6am trapping, the foster rooms or the vet bills. They see one page on a phone, and form their whole impression of the organization from it.

A volunteer crouched beside a covered humane trap at dawn
What they never see
What they see

It's where the money comes from

Someone on a couch in the evening holding a phone, a tabby cat asleep beside them

Someone hears about a rescue, looks it up, and decides within a minute whether to give.

A donate button that's buried or broken on a phone is a donation that never happens — and nobody ever finds out it didn't.

It's how volunteers and fosters arrive

Hands bottle-feeding a tiny kitten wrapped in a towel in a foster room

The people who would foster, trap or give up a Saturday are searching right now.

A page that hasn't changed in three years reads as an organization that wound down — so they move on to one that looks active.

It's whether people believe it's real

People at a meeting table with coffee, a folder and a stack of printed reports, one taking notes

Grant committees, corporate sponsors and first-time donors all look at the website before they commit.

Fair or not, a dated site reads as a struggling one — and that costs most where the sums are biggest.

Most rescue websites don’t do the work justice — and that says nothing about how well the rescue is run.

These organizations are almost all volunteer-run, the money is better spent on cats than on web design, and the website is nobody’s actual job — so it’s the thing that quietly slides.

That’s the gap The Great Rescue Refresh exists to close.

Why this program exists

What a refresh looks like

Same organization. Same photographs. But better.

The facts and the photographs were already theirs — we gave the rest a glow-up. Better design, clearer writing, and a site that finally looks like the work behind it.

A cat rescue's website before the refresh
The same website after the refresh

Drag the handle to compare · scroll inside the frame to see the whole page

An all-volunteer TNR project, running on a site that hadn't been touched in years.

What's involved

Free to build, and simple to keep current.

  • The rebuild costs nothing. One monthly fee after that, at nonprofit pricing — hosting, security, backups and support, all in.
  • Anyone can keep it up to date. The things that change — hours, events, news, photos — each get their own simple editor. No page builder to learn, and nothing a volunteer can break.
  • Nothing is locked in. The domain stays in the rescue's name, the site belongs to them, and there's no minimum term.

Nominate a rescue

Know an organization that needs this?

Put them forward and they move up the list.

It helps to know why — whether the site is simply old, or whether it's actively costing them donations. You're welcome to nominate your own organization.

Your connection to them

Hosting, domain, anyone who maintains it.