How we aim to change the world with Tech to the Rescue

The Anima International IT Team

All this is possible thanks to the commitment of our activists and employees who make up the IT Team.

The team has met many challenges in the last two years. We:

• Created the possibility for activists to publish fundraising pages and petitions, meaning that they are no longer dependent on the IT department for the most urgent tasks. This greatly improved the fundraising activities allowing them to help animals easier and faster.
   
• Set up the functionality allowing individuals to publish simple websites, so they can achieve their campaign goals quicker.
   
• Introduced the ability to support Otwarte Klatki (Anima International’s representative in Poland) with a regular monthly donation, thanks to which the organization was able to launch the Otwarte Klatki Club for donors, allowing the team to quickly raise funds to plan further campaigns.
   
• Started a cooperation with a new partner - Stripe/BLIK - becoming the first organization to test the beta version of BLIK payments. Thanks to this we are able to reach a young target audience and achieve fundraising goals amongst those most likely to use mobile phones.
   
• We optimised existing systems and pages to avoid repetitive errors. We documented the whole process and can now use the time saved to implement the latest technology. This gives us more time to help other organisations.

In addition, activists working with the IT team come from different countries and assist organizations outside Anima International. 

This has led to, amongst other things, the creation of a website that helps the user to assess the impact of meat consumption on the environment and to know which products to avoid in order to reduce animal suffering to the greatest extent. The idea came from Ville Sokk, one of our Estonian activists. You can read more about the tool here.

The IT team also built the largest publicly accessible library of media and webinars designed to help animal advocates by sharing our knowledge with other organizations and individuals. We want to help animals faster and more effectively all over the world. This project was carried out by team members Piotr Arendt and Max Harris.

We have also supported emerging organizations like Fish Welfare Initiative, helping them to create a simple website, with Max giving his support.

All of this work aims to enable other teams or organizations to develop, even if they don’t immediately have the technical expertise yet.

Dynamic development of the organisation

We did a lot of groundbreaking work in 2020 and we realised that we also needed support from others. As it turned out that we were not able to find suitable specialists with enough free time to help we started cooperating with Tech to the Rescue.

We had two objectives - firstly, to speed up the work with the implementation of Salesforce in Poland which would allow us to better manage data and to audit and potentially improve our infrastructure.

These kinds of tasks are less visible to most people and yet have a great impact on the future and speed of development of our organization. They help us save money and volunteer time, thereby speeding up the change for animals. 

What is Tech to the Rescue?

Tech to the Rescue was first created as a movement of people wanting to help NGOs dealing with the challenges posed during the Covid-19 pandemic and quickly grew into a thriving organization.

Right now, you’ll find around 190 IT companies from around the world on Tech to the Rescue’s website, all ready to help grow organizations that have a big impact on our planet.

Working with Tech to the Rescue’s team we were surprised not only with its planned activities but also with the organization of work. Before we started working together, we took the time to  describe our projects and goals based on documents prepared by Tech’s team.

Working with it as a partner we found that their teams were demanding, but that helped us better understand what angle we should approach our projects from and what goals we wanted to achieve. After approval of our described tasks, we started direct cooperation with our technology partners Codedose and Ten Square Games.

You can find out more about our collaboration by watching this recording of a webinar on the subject.

With our tech partners and the Anima International IT Team, we are moving in a very positive direction. Innovation and new solutions will help us to help our team, and others, end animal suffering effectively.