Rescue - Logistics/Tracking

Hi Gang,

Wanted to pick your brain again. I'm now managing and tracking the records for all of the pugs in our (DFW's) care. I've mentioned the sheer volume of pugs in our care: 332 have come through DFW so far this year, and we have another 124 in our foster care (some hospice, some currently in medical care). We have 3 vets, and 60 foster homes.

It seriously takes an army to provide this much care!

I'm very happy to have found a role where I can contribute and help out the board members.

Just thought I'd pick your brains for how your rescues keep track of pugs - incoming, vet care, fosters, etc. Share, pretty please?

I'm the record-keeper for Pugalug and I keep a summary rescue sheet and a comprehensive rescue file for each pug. It took a while but I've refined the system over the years and it works for me. But we don't have the kind of volume you're dealing with. There's a lot to explain to my system but if you PM me with your email addy, I can send you an example and guide you through my process.

Hilary

Hillary - thank you so much for the offer!

I'll send you a PM.

I'm looking to learn anything I can that will help the rescue, streamline the process, etc.

I would think anything that can be saved / accessed electronically would be a good tool. We don't have nearly the volume you do....all our files are paper, and I couldn't even tell you the state of them!

We do a couple things, but it needs work. One of our volunteers keeps an active excel spreadsheet with different tabs for incoming, foster homes, contacts etc. She gets the information from our private forum where the active volunteers post about new pugs etc. It's not 100%, but it works okay.

We also have free copies of Sales Force which is a huge data base, but we're not really utilizing it well. We have one guy who has input a lot of data on there from previous adopter to everyone who has donated to us thru Pay Pal. This is the list that gets our electronic updates and our newsletter to come out soon.

But, these all should be merged and aren't.

Brenda wrote: One of our volunteers keeps an active excel spreadsheet with different tabs for incoming, foster homes, contacts etc. She gets the information from our private forum where the active volunteers post about new pugs etc. It's not 100%, but it works okay.

We have a similar spreadsheet that can be accessed by a few of us thru Google documents. We also have one volunteer in charge of making sure that our files have everything they need in them (relinquish forms, vet records, adoption contracts, etc.). Getting the paperwork in order is one of the hardest parts because our foster homes are so spread out and we don't necessarly have a specific group of vets that we work with. Most of our foster homes take the pugs to their vet & then get reimbursed.

[quote="PugLady3"]

Brenda wrote: Most of our foster homes take the pugs to their vet & then get reimbursed.

Allie, I didn't mention this in my email. Many of our fosters pay and then get reimbursed but we are trying to convert as many vets as possible to direct-bill to Pugalug. That way the fosters are not out of pocket. I contact the vets directly for records because it was too cumbersome and onerous for the foster homes to get them. This way I can send an email to the adopter with the pre-intake and foster records at the same time, with commentary about them (e.g. vaccinations).

p.s. if anyone else is interested in how we do things, I'd be pleased to send you a copy of the email I sent Allie. Just PM me for my email addy if you don't already have it.

And Hilary is the Grand Imperial PooBah of Paperwork. We'd be screwed if she weren't so good at it and on top of it.