Not because we made a grand decision about it one day, but because it genuinely doesn’t make sense given why we do this work. When you work exclusively with charities - organisations that exist to end homelessness, support mental health, help young people find their feet - treating a project as a transaction feels completely at odds with the whole point.

This piece isn’t a list of tips. It’s more of a reflection. Because we recently sat down with Sara Bass, Director of Income Generation and Communications at Llamau - a Welsh charity working to end homelessness for women and young people across Wales - and what she said made us want to write about what the relationship between a charity and its digital partner should really look like.

What Llamau needed, and what they found

When Sara joined Llamau around two and a half years ago, the website was a problem. It had been built in 2018 but looked older, felt restricted, and didn’t allow the team to do what they needed. The donor journey was clunky. Data was almost impossible to track. Even the communications team struggled to find information on their own site.

The platform was expensive, the support was poor, and every small change felt like a significant undertaking. Sara and her colleagues were spending time and energy firefighting a system that was holding them back.

When Sara started looking for a new partner, she did what most people do - she cast a wide net. She looked at several options. Some came back with proposals north of £100,000. Others made the quoting process unnecessarily complicated.

Sara found an article we’d written for Media Trust - “Is your website working for you?” - and it resonated. What struck her when she came to our website wasn’t a slick pitch, it was the straightforwardness of it. She could see clearly what working with us would involve: the stages, the costs, the support. Everything was upfront, without her having to ask.

For Sara, that mattered. Charities don’t have time or budget to waste on back-and-forth. Knowing whether something is even feasible - before taking it to a CEO for sign-off - is essential. Being honest about that from the start is just how we think things should work.

The bit that matters most: what happened after the contract started

Once a project is underway, it’s easy to default to delivering exactly what was agreed. Tick the boxes, hit the milestones, get the sign-off. But with Llamau, as with all our projects, the most valuable work often happened in conversations that weren’t strictly in scope.

We kept bringing Llamau back to the same question: what are you actually trying to achieve here? Not “what do you want on the website,” but “why does this matter for the people you serve?”

That distinction is everything.

When members of the Llamau team came to meetings with requests - content they wanted on the site, pages they wanted to create - we’d ask why. Not in a challenging or obstructive way, but in the way a trusted colleague would. Is this for your beneficiaries, or is it really for internal use? If it’s for internal use, it belongs on your intranet, not your public site. If it’s for someone who’s already experiencing homelessness and needs to find help quickly, it needs to be simple, clear, and quick to access.

Those conversations shaped the project. They also, according to Sara, changed how the Llamau team thinks about their digital presence more broadly.

Sara described the experience as being “positively challenged” - which is a phrase worth sitting with. It’s not always comfortable to have your assumptions questioned. But when that challenge comes from people who clearly understand your organisation, respect what you’re trying to do, and are asking because they want the outcome to be right - it doesn’t feel like obstruction. It feels like investment.

Turning up when it counts

After the website launched, we were invited to Llamau’s impact event in Wales at The Senedd - the Welsh Parliament.

We went.

We also took the opportunity to join a tour of the Senedd to better understand how decisions are made in Wales and how that affects the communities Llamau works with.

This wasn’t in the contract. It wasn’t billed. It was just something we wanted to do.

Sara said she was “absolutely convinced” that none of the other partners she’d considered would have done the same. We might be biased - but we don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing to say about how most supplier relationships tend to work. There’s a real difference between a team that delivers what’s in the brief and one that genuinely wants to understand the world their client operates in.

When you turn up to an impact event, you’re not saying anything grand. You’re just showing up. But for a charity working in a space as difficult and emotionally demanding as ending homelessness, that kind of gesture carries real weight. It builds the sort of trust that means a client will pick up the phone for a conversation that has nothing to do with the current project, because they know they’ll get a useful, honest response.

What the new website actually did

The practical results matter too. It would be easy to write a piece like this and float above the outcomes - all warmth, no substance. So here’s what actually changed for Llamau.

The visual transformation was immediate and noticeable. Colleagues, trustees and supporters all remarked on the difference. But the more important shift was in how the website functioned.

The donor journey - from landing on the site to completing a donation - became significantly faster and cleaner. Preliminary data from Llamau’s Christmas fundraising appeal, which coincided with the launch, suggests higher donation conversion rates as a result. Sara is now in a position to track and analyse that data properly throughout the year, which simply wasn’t possible before.

For the women and young people who need Llamau’s support, the biggest gain is being able to find what they need quickly. The previous site was confusing even to the internal team. The new one is clear, accessible, and structured around the people it’s actually for.

For Sara and her colleagues, the day-to-day experience of maintaining the site changed entirely. Sara, who had no prior experience of back-end content management, can now fix a typo, update a page or even make forms without waiting on external support. The wider team has been able to go further - adding new pages and improving fundraising content that had been put up quickly at launch.

That kind of independence matters enormously in small communications teams. When updating your own website feels like a chore, you put it off. When it feels manageable, you do more with it.

The relationship continues

Llamau is now planning to join our Nurture Programme - an ongoing partnership built around quarterly strategy calls, dedicated studio time, and long-term digital support. The next phase of work is likely to include integration improvements and planning for how Llamau’s 40th anniversary can be reflected across the site.

But perhaps more than any of that, Sara described the experience of working with us as “a safe space.” A place where she and her team felt comfortable asking questions, admitting uncertainty, and exploring ideas without worrying about looking foolish or being sold something they didn’t need.

That phrase might sound soft. We’d argue it’s actually one of the most practical things you can build in a working relationship. When people feel safe asking questions, they ask better ones. They share the real problem, not just the symptom. They tell you when something isn’t working, rather than quietly tolerating it until the contract ends. And that means the work is better, every time.

What this means in practice

Part of the reason we pursued B Corp certification was to be held accountable to this way of working - not just in how we talk about ourselves, but in how we actually operate. Transparency on pricing, genuine investment in outcomes, showing up beyond what’s required. Those aren’t values we invented for a pitch deck. They’re things we try to live out in every project, and B Corp is one way of making sure we’re honest with ourselves about whether we’re actually doing that.

The charities we work with have chosen to give their working lives to causes that are genuinely hard - homelessness, mental health, cancer, community inequality. They deserve partners who match that commitment. Not with performance or polish, but with genuine attention.

Going beyond the brief isn’t about doing more than you’re paid to do. It’s about understanding what the brief is actually for - and caring enough to make sure it gets there.

Going beyond the brief: what genuine investment in a client looks like