RescueGroups.org offers a variety of technology services to animal welfare groups like yours. If you're reading this guide for the first time and haven't yet signed up with us, let us introduce you to the services and help you select one (or more) that fits the needs of your organization. If you're reading this guide because you've added a service or you are looking for help with a feature, may we take a moment to introduce you to some of our other services?
For a brief description of each of our services, please view our slide presentation here.
You can also watch videos about our services here.
Our technology services are designed to work together as well as to stand on their own. Our most popular service, the Pet Adoption Portal, is completely free. If you're new to RescueGroups.org and don't know where to start, this service is a good choice. It costs you nothing, saves you time and effort, and increases your adoption rate all at the same time.
We've developed a table to help you compare our four most popular animal adoption services. Each of these services supports your efforts to adopt out your rescued animals. To find out more about these services, watch the videos or view the presentation, or go to our website to get more details about these and other services.
On this page:
Our services
- Pet Adoption Portal: Your volunteers enter your adoptable animals into your account, and we send those descriptions and photos to hundreds of online adoption sites for you. Enter once, promote hundreds of times!
- Data Management: This service is exactly what the name says, you can manage all the information about your animals in one place, no spreadsheets, no notebooks, everything is online and accessible. In addition, you also get all the features of the Pet Adoption Portal.
- Website Service: Consider getting a website with a set of animal welfare-friendly website templates, plus all the features of the Pet Adoption Portal, Data Management Service, and Online Forms service, with the ability to customize quickly and easily without a degree in HTML.
- Online Forms service: We know you're tired of keeping track of those hard copy printed adoption forms you hand out at adoption events, and you wish you could assign a volunteer to review a form and comment, but other than scanning and emailing a form, you have no way to do these things. Our Online Forms service is your answer. Create custom forms for any use and people can fill them out online. You can then review online, make comments for other volunteers to see, and track the form's progress through your process. (Online Forms service can be added to any website by the use of iFrames.)
Pet Adoption Portal | Data Management | Website Service | Online Forms | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Includes all the features of the Pet Adoption Portal | Yes | Yes | Yes | --- |
| Single site to update all major adoption listing websites | Yes | Yes | Yes | --- |
| Export data and pictures anytime | Yes | Yes | Yes | --- |
| Completely advertisement free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Online support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Easy to use, fast! | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ability to track intakes and outcomes | --- | Yes | Yes | --- |
| Track adoptions, donations, contacts, inventory | --- | Yes | Yes | --- |
| Animal journals to track medical and other information | --- | Yes | Yes | --- |
| Ability to create, customize, assign, and track submitted online forms and add comments and status remarks | --- | --- | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited storage - no limits to numbers of animals, forms, data | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Animal memorials page | --- | --- | Yes | --- |
| Events calendar to highlight organizational events | --- | --- | Yes | --- |
| Animal sponsorships | --- | --- | Yes | --- |
| Donations using PayPal | --- | --- | Yes | --- |
| Highlighted animals on website | --- | --- | Yes | --- |
| Includes customizable, easy-to-use website | --- | --- | Yes | --- |
Watch the video on Selecting the Service that is Right for You
How much does it cost?
Because we are a non-profit organization, our costs are low. You can always see the most current pricing for our services on our website here: https://rescuegroups.org/services/service-pricing/. The Pet Adoption Portal is free, as are a few of our other helpful tools. See the table above for prices for the Data Management Service, Website Service, and Online Forms service.
How do I sign up?
Signing up with RescueGroups.org is really easy.
Information
Please read the information on the following page of our website to ensure that you meet the requirements for our services:
https://rescuegroups.org/partner-requirements-and-expectations/
On the form, you are asked for three types of contact information:
- Your information, as the person responsible for the account. When approved, you will have site administrator privileges and will be able to perform all the roles within the service you are requesting. If that's not a responsibility you want, please use the contact information for the person who is responsible.
- Your organization's contact information.
- The information about your organization that you want public.
You are also asked for confidential organization information, that remains between your organization and RescueGroups.org and is not shown to the public.
The rest of the information requested concerns the service you are requesting as well as information about the services your organization offers.
Once you submit the form, our support staff processes the form and will contact you if there are questions. That's all there is to it!
Fill out the form on this page: https://rescuegroups.org/sign-up/
What else does RescueGroups.org do for me?
We have user-friendly guides for each service, to help you jump right in and start using your service. We offer free support through our support tickets and email, we have how-to videos demonstrating some of the instructions and highlighting some of the features of the services, and we have free tools and other low-cost services.
This page of our website gives you a brief summary of every one of our services, as well as links to some helpful videos about the services: https://rescuegroups.org/services/
And if it's all confusing, just ask us! Fill out a support ticket and we'll be glad to answer your questions.
What other services does RescueGroups.org offer?
You can always view all of our services from the Our Services tab on our website, RescueGroups.org.
Below is a video and written summary of some of our other services and our free tools:
Domain names
Remember, you get a free host name for your website when you sign up for our Website Service. This host name takes the place of a domain name. You will get a website URL like this: adoptablepets.rescuegroups.org. The hostname is the first part of your website address (adoptablepets), and the second part is our name (rescuegroups.org) because we host your site.
A domain name makes it easy for guests to find your website. You're never required to register a domain name if you have our Website Service. However, if you do, we can register or transfer the domain name for you. You will always own the domain name.
Email Marketing
With our Email Marketing Service you can send 500 emails each month to publicize your events, your fundraisers, or your current news. This initial level of the service is completely free, but you can upgrade to a higher level of service (additional emails per month) at any time.
Voicemail Service
We offer a dedicated voicemail or toll-free voicemail, no telephone, number for you to help you manage incoming calls. This service offers nine individual voice mailboxes, with greetings, alerts, and web access to messages.
Fax-to-email
You can get a dedicated incoming fax number that delivers directly to your email with unlimited minutes and usage.
Free organization listing
Even if you don't sign up for any of our services, we're glad to include your organization's public information in our listings that are sent to hundreds of adoption sites.
Pet Adoption Toolkit
You can put all your adoptable pets on your website simply by pasting this code into your website. Just contact us about how this can work for you.
Pet Adoption Tracker
The Pet Adoption Tracker allows you to understand better your animals' exposure on the Internet using graphs to display most popular breeds, when a pet was last viewed, which websites are providing views, and how many unique visitors you've had.
Developer tools
HTTP Data API
Our API is different from the other adoptable pet APIs available. See our website for full details of what our API offers.
Pet Search iFrame
The Pet Adoption iFrame allows you to just copy and paste some simple HTML code onto a web page on your website to have a complete adoptable pet search on your website.
Custom development
We can develop your website's integration with the RescueGroups.org API and other data services.
For more information about all of these services and tools, for pricing, and for some examples of their use, see our web page https://rescuegroups.org/services/. Simply scroll down and click the service or tool name.
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