Animal Welfare - RE Setup

Lori Long

We are an animal welfare agency and are transitioning from eTapestry to RE. My funds, campaigns, appeals are already setup how I want them (and what the budget reporting needs are) but I was curious if other animal welfare agencies had best practices for what to track in attributes. Pet name of course but what else? 


Other random tips for how best to use RE for animal welfare is always appreciated too! 

Aldera Chisholm

My old org was a zoo, not animal welfare exactly, but we likely tracked a lot of the same things based on my chats with colleagues at local rescues.


I think the best way to figure out what to track is to look at it from the point of view of "What questions will I want answered about this person."  Think about what you regularly report on, or look up, and then find the best place to put that data so that you know how to report on it.   Attributes are handy for those  misc bits of data that don't have a home anywhere else.  We did things where you could sponsor an animal, and at one point, it was tracked in Notes. But notes are much harder to search, so we transitioned that information to attributes.  Comments are handy as you can output that data, but you can't really search on things in comments, so make sure you set it up so the piece you want to search on will be in the Category/Description.


Tracking things like dates/anniversaries and putting an action in to remind someone to contact that person on their adoption anniversary can be an we excellent touch-point with your donors. 


Good luck!