Ten Lives Suppawt App

Fixing a broken business model with modern infrastructure.

ARTICLE BY: Freya Langford-Sidebottom, Ten Lives.

Every cat deserves a chance at a happy, healthy life. For tens of thousands of lost and homeless cats in our community over the last seven decades, the chance begins at Ten Lives. For many of these cats, their first interaction with us is with one of our loving volunteer foster carers. To put into perspective just how large and complex this aspect of our organisation is, at Ten Lives over the past year 1,350 cats received 45,000 nights of care, and attended 5,000 vet appointments. We are confident the process can be improved and streamlined for the benefit our carers, and even more importantly, will make everything easier and less stressful for our cats as well.

Animal Shelters worldwide are increasingly using the Foster Care model to provide care services, where animals are kept in private homes until they are ready to be adopted, and we believe we can make this system better for ourselves, and for all other animal shelters.

Ten Lives is excited to announce that we have started developing an industry-leading app that will help make the fostering system more streamlined for staff, foster carers and the cats!

Suppawt App will help streamline processes such as automated matching of foster carers to cats, generate detailed Picking Slips, sending appointment messages to the foster carers, and allow the carers to easily upload info, bios, and photos of the cats to assist with rehoming.

The Challenge

Ten Lives has developed a group of committed foster carers who look after cats and kittens that need extra care before they are ready to come to the shelter for adoption.

One of the key objectives of the Ten Lives Cat Centre is to provide the best possible care for our cats. Our foster care program has been critical to the care that we can provide cats and kittens, enabling animals who need extra care or attention to be handled on a personalised basis by trained volunteers outside the Centre. Fostered cats are returned to the Centre when they are ready for adoption.

The foster care system has worked extremely well for us, though we are keen to improve it further. The work of the foster carers can be difficult, and the current system is time consuming for both the carers and our staff.
Our new project is called Suppawt App, and it aims to streamline and modernise the recently developed foster care system for cats at Ten Lives.


The Solution

Our project aims to make the foster care business model more efficient and close the gap between the costs and income.

The implementation of an online App will improve the system, making it easier, more efficient, and achieve even better outcomes for cats in need, as well as for our dedicated network of volunteers who assist us.

The Suppawt App process is underpinned by an App that links the Foster Care program with our management system, ShelterBuddy, helping streamline new and existing processes.


The Benefit

We propose to use the App to help us interact with our foster carer network enabling our carers to make vet bookings, seek guidance and accept cats into care quickly and easily.

Our 200+ foster carers are vital to the work we do. Just as the cats need special attention, we feel that this important aspect of our business needs special attention too.

Ultimately, there should also be benefits to the community, with reduced numbers of stray and unwanted animals. The introduction of a significant Foster Care Program has seen the number of cats finding new homes double. Improving the foster carer network also reduces the burden on the Centre. We believe this system will also be an invaluable prototype for other animal welfare shelters and help change the way animal welfare solutions are offered in future.