Dignity, agency, and belonging for all dogs. A new nonprofit on twenty-two acres arrived with a clear mission and nothing else. We built the whole system — brand, bilingual website, and a social practice the sanctuary runs itself.
A place of exhalation · warm, backlit, natural
Walnut Tree Sanctuary came to us as a newly formed nonprofit with a founding team, a property outside Toulouse, and a stated purpose: rescue, rehabilitate, and rehome dogs from France, Romania, and beyond.
What they didn't have was any way to be seen. A placeholder logo, no voice, no website, no social presence, no email, no shared drive — and no in-house digital person to build or run any of it. Every decision that follows answers the same question: how does a two-person sanctuary with no digital staff show up like a serious institution, in two languages, and keep it going after we leave?
Most rescue brands run on urgency and pity — the shivering dog, the countdown, the guilt. It works for a week and exhausts an audience in a month. We made the opposite bet: that a sanctuary whose entire method is calm, patience, and giving dogs time should look and sound like that. Compassion without sentimentality. Professionalism grounded in empathy.
That one positioning decision shaped everything downstream — the mission, the voice, the palette, the photography rules, even how the account answers a hostile comment.
The founders had a purpose, not a sentence. We wrote the mission from the organizing idea outward — dignity, agency, belonging — and built the method into it: safe passage, fear-free handling, rest before readiness, a life beyond rescue. Then we wrote it again in French for a French public, rather than running the English through a translator. The two versions share a spine and differ in cadence, because the audiences do.
Walnut Tree Sanctuary is committed to healing dogs through dignity, agency, and belonging.
Our nonprofit sanctuary — set on twenty-two acres in Southwestern France — is a refuge for at-risk dogs. We are committed to rescuing the most vulnerable dogs from France and around the world. Walnut Tree Sanctuary provides safe passage and life-saving care, guiding our dogs through rest, rehabilitation, and readiness for a life beyond rescue.
We support each dog's journey to wholeness through fear-free handling, expertly crafted programs, and long-term solutions designed to bring each dog safely home.
Walnut Tree Sanctuary est un sanctuaire dédié à l'accueil et à la reconstruction des chiens les plus vulnérables.
Installé sur un domaine de 9 hectares dans le sud-ouest de la France, notre sanctuaire associatif accueille des chiens en détresse venus de France et d'ailleurs. Beaucoup arrivent blessés, traumatisés ou marqués par l'abandon. Ici, ils trouvent enfin un lieu sûr, des soins attentifs et le temps nécessaire pour se reposer et se reconstruire.
Notre mission est simple : offrir à chaque chien la sécurité, la dignité et, lorsque c'est possible, le chemin vers un véritable foyer.
Dignity, agency, belonging aren't adjectives — each names a practice. Dignity is a standard of daily care. Agency is letting a dog set the pace. Belonging is presence over pressure, with no predetermined timeline.
The mission describes a journey with an end that isn't the sanctuary. It tells a donor what the money moves a dog through — and tells an adopter the dog arriving to them was prepared, not just saved.
The closing line became the sanctuary's recurring sign-off — on the site, in captions, on the donation ask. One phrase, said the same way every time, so the promise is recognizable before the logo is.
A brand this small can't afford to say five things. So the three values became the architecture: the first line on the website, the emotional spine of the content pillars, a bilingual social series, a hashtag, and the rule every photographer follows. Someone who sees any one piece has already met the whole brand.
The founders arrived with a mark they loved: a dog reaching for a butterfly under a walnut tree. We pitched alternatives — including a concept that broke the dog out of its circle — and they chose, rightly, to keep their original direction. So the job became refinement: keep the idea, fix the drawing so it could survive a favicon, a watermark, and a sign at the gate.
The tail now traces the ring instead of cutting across it — so the opening in the circle reads as a doorway, not a mistake.
Canopy simplified, roots removed. At favicon size they were noise; at poster size they competed with the dog.
Silhouette reshaped so it's unmistakable at any size; butterfly strengthened so its detail survives being small.
The refined mark became a system: stacked and in-line lock-ups in five colorways, a standalone tree mark for favicons and watermarks, and the butterflies as accents.
Rescue palettes default to shelter-green and alarm-orange. We rooted this one in place instead. Toulouse is la ville rose — the pink city — and its terracotta roofs gave us Roof Red and Toulouse Pink. Deep Azure anchors the system: responsibility, trust, stability. And Rose Gold, an alloy of gold and copper, stands for the thing the sanctuary is actually made of — the mix of breeds that come through the gate.
The founder suggested Angsana — a graceful serif, and the right instinct. Its hairlines vanish on a phone and it isn't a web font. Libre Baskerville keeps the feeling and fixes both problems: heavier hairlines for legibility, and it's Google-hosted, which also helps the site rank. Instrument Sans does the quiet work underneath. Two faces, never a third.
Dignity, agency, and belonging for all dogs.
Headlines · Display · Pull quotes · Sub-headers in caps
Adopt · Foster · Sponsor · Volunteer · Support Us
Body · Captions · UI · Eyebrow labels · Microcopy
Mission in both languages, audience, values, voice, pillars, the logo system, the marks, color, type, and the visual aesthetic — with the kind of do's and don'ts a volunteer can follow on a Tuesday. Seventeen pages. It's the record of the decisions above, written so the sanctuary can make them without us.
Institutions earn trust slowly; people earn it faster. Elizabeth Aga Khan's story — why she started this, what she's building, the dogs she's already brought home — is the sanctuary's most credible asset with donors, press, and partners. We built a profile strategy around her: key messaging aligned to the brand voice, a professional bio for media use, and the assets to carry it — so that when the sanctuary needs a spokesperson, it already has one, in both languages.
One constraint shaped every page: after launch, no one at the sanctuary would be a web person. So the site had to do its three jobs — and then be simple enough that the team could keep it doing them. We built it on a platform they could run, trained them on it, and handed over the keys.
The pack is the homepage. Every dog has a profile with story, status, and an apply-to-adopt flow; the catalog filters to All, Adoptable, and Sponsorable, and a dog moves between them as its status changes.
Adopt, foster, sponsor, volunteer, donate — each a clear path, each framed by a mission the visitor has already read. Applications route straight to the team's inbox.
Bilingual from the first wireframe, not translated after. A CMS the team was trained on and updates themselves going forward — new dogs, new stories, new status — with us on call as counsel.
“Youpi was among the very first group of dogs that we rescued in August of 2025. Because the sanctuary was not open yet, he spent his first few months at a foster where he had ample outdoor space and a doghouse to sleep in at night. We discovered he loved the doghouse, the couch, and being cozied up inside.”
“When we saw him on our first visit to Romania in the fall of 2025, he was extremely sick and skinny, his hip bones jutting out alarmingly. We worried that if he wasn't rescued immediately, he might not survive.”
“Simba, at 12 years old, spent every day chained up in a garden. When we learned about him, there had just been a terrible storm, and he had spent it outside attached to a metal chain without any shelter. It is amazing that he survived.”
A nonprofit that doesn't exist online yet needs an address before it needs a brand. Before any of the above could ship, we stood up the sanctuary's digital infrastructure — the unglamorous foundation that lets a brand, a site, and a social practice actually run.
Secured walnuttreesanctuary.org and pointed it at a platform the team could manage.
Google Workspace on the domain — hello@, and a real address for each founder — so the sanctuary stopped writing from personal Gmail.
A central WTS Content & Media drive owned by the organization, where staff, volunteers, and editors drop raw photos and video for publishing.
Instagram and Facebook set up and secured; adoption and foster application forms built and routed to the team's inbox.
The content won't be shot by a photographer. It'll be shot by whoever is holding a phone when something happens — a volunteer, a founder, a vet. So the guidelines had to make two things true at once: that a non-photographer could capture something that looks like the brand, and that no one would ever stress a dog to get a shot. The first rule settles any conflict between the two.
Content should never interrupt rest, force interaction, create stress, or treat a dog as a prop. A calm, respectful clip is always more useful than a forced moment.
On-site content is serene by design — we control the environment. Rescue and transport footage from Romania is allowed to be hard, because it documents reality. The guide tells people which mode they're in so they don't perform calm where there isn't any, or sensationalize suffering.
Plus a shot list anyone can run: wide, medium, close-up, action, quiet. Enough structure that a volunteer's footage cuts together; not so much that it stops them shooting.
Rescue accounts attract two things: people who care, and people who want a fight. A volunteer moderating at 11pm needs to know the difference in advance. The strategy sets three tiers — respond, hide or delete, block — and an escalation path for anything that touches welfare, legal, or press. And one guardrail we wrote in bold: never block someone simply for asking a hard question respectfully.
Genuine questions, adoption or support interest, thoughtful comments, encouragement, misinformation that can be corrected simply, welfare concerns that need acknowledgement. Not every reply needs to be long — but the audience should feel an attentive presence.
Spam, fraud, repetitive trolling, abuse, graphic or discriminatory content, anything misleading in a way that could harm the community or the dogs, anything invasive about private information.
Threats, harassment, impersonation, coordinated attacks, anything creating safety risk for staff, followers, or animals. Welfare, legal, media, or reputational issues go to the founders before anyone answers impulsively.
An empty account is a credibility problem. We wrote and designed the first eleven posts before launch — the mission, the three values, the first dogs, the property — with every caption in English and French, so the first visitor found a sanctuary that already sounded like itself. Then we built a template for every recurring format, so the twelfth post looks like the first.
🐾 Meet Mannie
Age: 7 Years Old · Gender: Male · Weight: 15kg
🐾 Rescue Story: Mannie was rescued from Romania and is really affectionate. He loves people, and is okay with other dogs and cats. Still, Mannie would do better as the only dog in the home as he likes all the attention to himself. He is okay with children.
📝 Apply to adopt Mannie or one of our other extraordinary dogs today at WalnutTreeSanctuary.org!
🐾 Voici Mannie
Âge : 7 ans · Sexe : Mâle · Poids : 15 kg
🐾 À propos de Mannie : Sauvé de Roumanie, Mannie est un chien particulièrement affectueux. Il adore les humains et s'entend bien avec les autres chiens ainsi qu'avec les chats. Cependant, Mannie s'épanouira davantage en étant le seul chien du foyer, car il aime être le centre de toute l'attention. Il est tout à fait amical avec les enfants.
📝 Postulez pour adopter Mannie ou l'un de nos autres chiens extraordinaires dès aujourd'hui sur WalnutTreeSanctuary.org !
Every dog post follows the same caption framework — name, the important stuff, notes, ideal home, rescue story, the ask — in both languages. Written once, repeatable by anyone.
Every photo carries the tree mark as a watermark — present but unobtrusive — so a dog's image can't be lifted and reused without context.
None of this was built from a distance. We went to southwest France to walk the property with the founders, help choose the site, work through the organization's strategic plan, and direct a small film crew capturing footage for future fundraising. The place made the decisions before we did.
A single walnut tree stands at the center of the property. It became the tree mark, the watermark, and the name of the dog-of-the-week series: Under the Walnut Tree.
Terracotta tiles on every building, the same tiles that make Toulouse the pink city. Roof Red and Toulouse Pink are literally the color of the place.
Late afternoon on open fields, backlit through the tree line. "A place of exhalation" — the photography rule in the guidelines — is a description of this property at six o'clock.
One mission, one mark, one palette, one book, one website, and one way of showing up on social — so a volunteer with a phone on a Tuesday can make something that looks like Walnut Tree Sanctuary. The team was trained on all of it and runs it themselves. We stay on call as counsel, for the next thousand dogs that pass under the walnut tree.
Visit walnuttreesanctuary.org → Back to Our WorkBrand architecture, identity & writing
Website design & build
Social strategy, guidelines & templates
Digital infrastructure
On-site strategy & film direction
Client: Walnut Tree Sanctuary
Founder: Elizabeth Aga Khan
Location: Southwest France · 22 acres (9 ha)
Mission (EN + FR) · logo system · palette · type
Brand Book · Social Guidelines
Social Strategy & Rollout · Foundational Posts
Bilingual website · catalog · blog · forms
Domain · Workspace · shared drive · accounts
Instagram leads. Facebook grounds.
A new brand's first job on social is trust, not reach — so we didn't spread thin. Instagram is the flagship: emotional storytelling, the visual world, international reach, English first. Facebook is where the sanctuary's neighbors and adopters are: local, practical, French first. TikTok we deliberately held for a later phase, because native-feeling video needs capacity the team didn't have yet. The content mix is weighted to what a rescue actually has that no one else does — the dogs' stories.
Instagram
Brand-building · international reach · English first, French second
Facebook
Local · adopters and neighbors · French first, English second
Make people care
Half of every week. Someone to root for and a reason to come back.
Prove the work
Credibility — the care, standards, and intention behind the mission.
Show people how to help
Turn attention into action. A clear role, a tangible next step.