Sara Kent, the first CEO and paid staff member of Shelter Animals Count (SAC), sits down with Stacy to discuss how SAC came to be, what its mission is, and some of its latest statistics.

Sara began her career in animal welfare close to 20 years ago as one of the first people hired at Petfinder, where she ultimately served as the director of shelter outreach and led the creation of Petfinder Pro. You may remember her (in her Petfinder role) from CCP episode #164. Sara is also the founder of Fiver Cats, an online resource dedicated to community cats and FIV+ cats.

Shelter Animals Count first started as a concept back in 2011, when a number of leaders in animal welfare were trying to figure out how to come up with a good count of the animals coming into and going out of shelters. At that point, there had never been a full database whose sole purpose was to collect shelter data, so they created this collaborative project whose mission is to "create, share, and steward the national database of sheltered animals that provides facts and enables insights."

SAC collects basic data – just intakes and outcomes – based on the idea that this is the most basic data that any organization taking in animals should be collecting. The database was launched in 2016, and since then, over 5,000 organizations have registered, with over 3,000 actively and regularly participating.

Sara and Stacy review the data collected for 2017, with a discussion about how the data can be useful for grant-writing purposes (and for organizations looking to grant money), as well as how it can be used to former stronger community relationships among organizations and how it can be used to start to put together a picture of what's going on with animals in a particular area or community.

Sara points out that SAC's role is to collect, convene, and present data, without putting a ton of context behind it, and that this is intentional. The data, she notes, doesn't reflect the full spectrum of what organizations are doing. Instead, it's about being able to collect and share data in a standard way. "The goal," Sara says, "is to have a standard data set that every organization can follow."

To learn more, visit the Shelter Animals Count website. You can register, or you can explore datafrom your local community and beyond – the data is available to everyone. Should you need help or have questions, you can also reach out to SAC at [email protected].