A Day in the Life of a Donkey Content Strategist

What has content strategy got to do with donkeys, you may ask? You’d be surprised how many stories there are to tell about this unique species, that touch everything from international wildlife crime, to gender equality, to pioneering veterinary science, to poverty and mental health. 

As the charity’s first-ever Content Designer and Strategist, Olly Bourne is working to ensure these stories reach the right audiences. He explains more about this “unchartered territory” below.

From dubstep to donkeys

In 2020, Olly was juggling running a record label that specialised in electronic dance and sound system culture, with working in e-commerce. He’d always wanted to work in the third sector, though, and was keen to find a role that aligned with his values. That’s when when a job focused on website content for The Donkey Sanctuary came up.

“Working on the website introduced me to the world of user experience (UX) and search engine optimisation (SEO),” he said.  

“I was working on projects like restructuring the website to make donkey care content more prominent and accessible, and getting the website to rank for searches related to the donkey skin trade.” 

“Since then, I’ve become a little bit obsessed with making content discoverable and accessible.” 

By 2023, Olly was seconded to The Donkey Sanctuary’s new Strategic Communications team, where he took on the challenge of applying the principles he’d been using for the website and applying them to the broader content needs of the charity.

‘It’s the first ever content strategy role at The Donkey Sanctuary’, Olly explains, ‘a lot of what I work on is unchartered ground for the charity’.

A typical day for a Content Strategist

Every day presents new challenges for Olly, so no two days are the same. His time is divided between research, stakeholder engagement, and system development. His work is always guided by two key questions: 

What are the principles that we need to embed in our content? 

How can we streamline content as a varied and busy charity? 

“Content roles are spread far and wide at The Donkey Sanctuary, so it’s important we capture input from across the charity and ensure that anything we develop is codesigned.” 

“At the moment I’m working on a big project building a new content management system that increases the visibility of content created across different teams, and enables us to make strategic decisions about our content offerings.” 

An evolving discipline

Given that content strategy is a new discipline within the charity, much of the work requires navigating unfamiliar ground.  

“Content design and strategy has seen a lot of growth over the last five years, and there are some incredibly skilled practitioners in the third sector. There’s a lot of new incoming, which needs to be balanced with what’s currently happening at the charity.”  

Though this isn’t a challenge unique to The Donkey Sanctuary, embedding systems across such a diverse range of content roles and outputs is an evolving process. However, Olly is confident that this methodology, in a world where content has two seconds to convince someone to continue reading, watching or listening, will deliver “great results for donkeys.” 

Doing it all for donkeys

“If we can make donkeys relevant and interesting for people that wouldn’t normally think about them, then that’s a great day in the office,” says Olly.

When asked what he loves most about donkeys, Olly’s answer is simple. ‘They’re very intentional creatures,’ he says. ‘there’s a strong reason behind everything they do.’ 

This intentionality seems to reflect the approach required for successful content strategy and design. Just as every action by a donkey has purpose, content crafted with clear intent and impact will help to make the world a better place for these special creatures.