A RescueGroups.org Website is not just another website service.  It's so much more.

Look at these examples of sites using the RescueGroups.org Website Service. To see more sites, please visit our  website inspiration gallery on Facebook here.

The RescueGroups.org Website Service includes built-in features designed with animal welfare organizations needs in mind.

In this walk-through, we'll briefly go over some of the features unique to the RescueGroups.org Website Service, and how these features can help your organization.

Click here to download a PDF of this walk-through.

With RescueGroups.org, you don't have to be completely dependent on your web person.

This may be one of the biggest benefits for your organization. Organizations often find themselves stuck or feeling abandoned when their web-savvy volunteer leaves. That person may have been the only one who knew how everything worked.

The organization is then faced with questions on how to post the animals, how to pull the animals from the site when adopted, or how to post events. The organization may eventually be able to find a way to do this themselves, or they may not have the software, knowledge or access to do this. Sometimes previously used features are discarded because team members just don't know how to use them.

Perhaps in your organization you're the web person and you're burning out. Maybe you just don't have the time you once did to keep up with everything and you really need a better way to allow volunteers to assist, without giving them access to everything or worrying they will make a mess of the site HTML.

The RescueGroups.org Website Service has many built-in features designed to make maintaining a website easier for animal welfare organizations.

Some of the built-in features included in the RescueGroups.org Website Service. 

Automatically Generated Animal Web Pages

You don't need to manually create a web page for puppies, a web page dogs, a web page for seniors, or a web page for special needs animals. These are built in groups known as Special Lists. You can enable the ones you want to use, select a few options, and your animals will automatically be added to those web pages. Here is a list of these built-in groups:

• Babies (Kittens, Puppies) 
• Teens
• Adults
• Seniors 
• Long Time/Must Adopt
• Recent Arrivals
• Special Needs
• Urgent
• Needs a Caretaker/Foster
• Courtesy Listings

Need another group that isn't there? You can create it using the Custom Animal Group feature. 

There’s also an option where you can separate Courtesy Listings from your adoptable pet list.

Want to display web pages of animals by species? You can do that too!

Here are some examples of what other organizations just like yours are doing.

Built-in Web Pages

Every website comes with built-in pages like About Us, Donation Information, Adoption Information, Contact Information, and more. You don't have to use them, but they're there to help get you started.

Built-in Website Menu

To get you started, we provide you with a menu that includes a list of links to built-in pages on your new website.

Can you customize it? Of course!

You can continue to use this menu, or create your own custom menu where you include any of the built-in pages or custom pages you've created.

Stories Feature

This is great for organizations who want to manually add stories for adopted animals. Below are some success stories from other organizations.

Memorials Feature

We provide you the ability to remember those pets who have passed on. This is the Rainbow Bridge feature. Below are some examples of how other organizations have used this feature.

Automatically Generated Successful Adoptions Page 

This feature allows you to showcase all of your adopted animals. This is great for organizations who may not want to manually add stories using the Stories feature, or you can use both! See below for some examples.

Animal Sponsorship's using PayPal Integration

You can enable this feature to easily allow visitors to sponsor specific animals. They can do a one-time or recurring sponsorship*. When you log in to your organization's PayPal account, you see the sponsored animal's name in the sponsorship.

*Your organization must have a merchant account with PayPal to use the recurring donation feature. See below for an example of how one organization used this feature.

News Feature

There’s no need to create and manually maintain a separate web page for news. Enter news items in your Website Service and they will appear on your News page. You can also choose to have the news articles appear on your homepage or elsewhere by using a snippet. Don't worry, there's more information on snippets later. The news feature is very easy to maintain and there's no web page HTML to edit or update. Take a look at what other organizations have done.

Events Feature with Integrated Animal Event Attendance

Like the News feature, the Events page is built in and automatically generated. There is both a calendar view and event list view. You can also show the events on your home page or elsewhere, using a snippet.

There's even an easy way to specify which animals will be at an event. This is great for adoption fairs! Here are some real-life examples from other organizations.

Online Store with PayPal Integration

With our Website Service, your organization can create and maintain and online store with integrated PayPal payments.

Highlighted Animals Feature

This feature allows you to highlight specific animals to display on your homepage. You can select how many animals and how much of their description appears. You can turn this feature on and off as you need and even use it to rearrange the order of animals on the automatically generated animal web pages.

Featured Animal

Want to showcase a specific animal or cycle through different animals each time a visitor visits your site? There's a snippet for that!

Built-in Website Templates

We provide you with built-in layout templates you can use to define the look of your site. You can use them as-is, or customize them to make them your own.

Color and Font Options

Not a designer? Don't worry, we understand. We tried to keep it very simple. You can select a font family and a font size for your site. There's also a handy color scheme tool at the bottom of the page, but we don't mind if you open a support ticket and ask us for help. Just let us know what you have in mind and we'll help you.

Custom CSS

Want to customize the look and feel of your site even more? You can edit the CSS of your site. If you have a volunteer or web designer who is familiar with CSS we can give them some advice and tips where to start. We can also do this for you and provide you with some ideas and a quote.

Add Custom Javascript or HTML

You can add in that cool script or HTML to your website.

Snippets Features 

Snippets allow you to easily add HTML and built-in features to your web pages. Some of our built-in snippets make it easy to add PayPal, Facebook and Twitter to your pages using your Affiliates, while others allow you to place your News, Events, or a Featured Pet on your web pages.

You can also create your own snippets. Creating and adding snippets is an easy way to add any HTML to your web pages. You might use them to add a fundraiser widget, embed a video, or even add custom PayPal buttons.

Role-Restricted Volunteer Access

Volunteers can help with the website in so many ways.

• Post and Update Animals
• Highlight / Feature Animals
• Add Events and Animal Event Attendance
• Add News
• Add Success Stories
• Add Memorials

With the Website Service automatically generated web pages feature, volunteers can even help maintain the site without editing any HTML.   You can restrict permissions for certain tasks to only one or a few volunteers, or open the permissions to all. You pick and choose what your volunteer can do and see. This role-restricted access is controlled by assigning a "role" with corresponding permissions for tasks.

Also Included with the Website Service: free unlimited online support!

Forgot how you did "that thing" you did last year? We all do. We provide free unlimited online support. If you already have a RescueGroups.org account, you can log in in to your account, click Services, then click the service you would like to add.

If you don't have a RescueGroups.org account, you can sign up here: https://www.rescuegroups.org/sign-up/