Free Digital Upgrades for NYC Animal Rescues

For many small animal rescues in New York City and around the world, every day can be chaotic: a cat needs a foster home, an adoption application just came in; someone needs to pick up a cat carrier, a volunteer is taking an animal to the veterinarian, and there are three unanswered messages waiting on Instagram!

…And this is just an ordinary Tuesday.

The people behind these organizations are often doing a lot with very limited resources. They coordinate fosters, transportation, veterinary care, adoption applications, fundraising, and follow-up, often while balancing jobs and family responsibilities of their own.

And somewhere on that never-ending list is the website.

A Very Important But Less-Than-Urgent High Priority

It’s important, but it is rarely the most urgent thing on the list. When an animal needs help today, building a website can wait. And with so many cats needing help every day, the website project rarely ever happens.

Now, thanks to a new partnership between the website builder B12 and Bodega Cats of New York, that task just got a little easier. The program will provide NYC animal rescues with free B12 websites, taking away the cost of building a site and much of the technical work that can make the process feel out of reach for a small, volunteer-run organization.

Applications open on September 15, with 25 rescues to be selected for the first round. B12 plans to offer the program to more organizations in future rounds.

The process is designed to be simple. A rescue describes its organization to B12's AI website builder, which creates a working website that the team can then customize and update by chatting with the AI. The rescue just needs to provide the information, review the site, and make the changes it wants. It does not need to start from scratch or know how to code. The sites can include adoption applications, donation tools, meet-and-greet scheduling, and listings for animals looking for homes.

For a rescue organization, a website is more than a place to post animal photos. It can give potential adopters a place to learn about an animal, understand their needs, and take the next step toward adoption. It can also give volunteers a central place to direct people who want to foster, donate, or get involved.

That can be especially helpful when information is otherwise spread across social media posts, direct messages, spreadsheets, and text conversations.

Websites Don’t Come Free…Until Now

Building a website is not an inexpensive project. A professionally built website for a small nonprofit can cost several thousand dollars, with current estimates commonly ranging from about $2,000 to $8,000 for a freelancer-built site. More customized projects can cost considerably more, while even a DIY site comes with ongoing hosting, domain, software, and maintenance costs.

For an organization whose budget is focused on helping animals, that can be a difficult expense to justify.

The people running small rescues are already making decisions about where limited resources are needed most. Money may need to go toward veterinary treatment, medications, food, litter, transport, supplies, or emergency care. Much of the actual work is done by volunteers, and some people involved in rescue also contribute their own money when an animal needs something the organization cannot cover.

That makes a free website more than a nice little bonus. It removes one expense and one job from an already crowded list, allowing staff and volunteers to spend their time and money on the most important things – cats in need.

"Rescues are running real operations on almost no infrastructure," said Nitesh Banta, CEO of B12. "The people doing this work should be spending their time on animals, not fighting with a website builder. If our AI can hand them a working site in an afternoon, that's the most useful thing we can do here."

Helping Animal Rescues Focus On Rescuing Animals

Dan Rimada, founder of Bodega Cats of New York, sees the same challenge through his work documenting the cats who live in New York City's bodegas and connecting with the people who care about them.

"Most of these rescues are four people and a group chat," Rimada said. "Somebody's doing intake at eleven at night, somebody else is driving a cat to a foster in Yonkers and coordinating it over text. The website is the thing that never gets done, because there's always something on fire. Handing them one that actually works is worth more than it sounds like."

When a rescue is already juggling animals who need food, medication, foster homes, and veterinary care, a website can understandably feel like something that can wait. But these pieces of rescue work are connected. Finding adopters and foster homes, bringing in donations, and keeping volunteers informed all depend on being able to reach the people who want to help.

A well-organized website can also make the adoption process easier for everyone involved. Potential adopters can find current information about available animals, learn what an animal needs, and understand how to apply. Rescue teams can direct people to the same forms and information instead of answering the same questions across multiple platforms.

Of course, a website does not do the work of rescuing animals. People do. But anything that gives those people a little more time to focus on the animals is worth having.

B12 has also published a gallery of 16 example rescue websites so organizations can see what the sites can look like before applying. The first 25 rescues selected in this round will get a website built for free, with more opportunities to come. 

For small organizations already relying on volunteers and watching every dollar, having a website taken care of could free up a little time and money for what they are actually there to do: help animals.

NYC animal rescues can apply at: https://www.b12.io/nyc-animal-rescues 

About B12

B12 is an AI website builder for small businesses and organizations. Users describe what they do and B12 generates a working website, then lets them edit it by chatting with an AI agent. More than four million sites have been built on B12.

About Bodega Cats of New York

Bodega Cats of New York documents the cats who live and work in New York City's bodegas. It is an independent media brand with an audience built one block at a time, and a photography book out this fall. You can follow them at: @newyorkbodegacats

Did You Know? 

• Our brand-new posts are rounded up and included in our weekly emails. Don't miss out on the latest - sign up for our newsletter below!