StayWithPets Batumi
StayWithPets is a grassroots initiative supporting a local 350+ dog and cat shelter in Batumi, Georgia. Though not a formal nonprofit, it acts as a bridge between the shelter, local volunteers, and potential donors. I stepped in to provide strategic support, improve operations, and help build a sustainable foundation for long-term impact.
Client
Organization
Nonprofit Community of Volunteers
Type
Animal Welfare
Target Market
Animal Adopters
Team Size
10
Period
Jan 2025 – present
About this project
Big hearts and yet tiredness mental & physical is what volunteers deal with. They do something nobody pays them for and that’s not their hobby as well. Seemingly basic things can save hours of effort.
Roles
Operations Automation Specialist, Business Analyst
Situation
Although majority of volunteers works for tech companies, within volunteer community important information lived all over the place, in certain peoples heads, in Telegram subtopics, emails, etc.
What I discovered there reflects what many nonprofit organizations face daily:
- Manual processes consuming precious time
- Information scattered across multiple places or heads
- Last-minute firefighting
- Ongoing resource limitations
What I Did
While resource constraints remained a long-term challenge, I put on the Colombo’s hat and:
- Analyzed volunteers’ communication for a period of 1 year
- Interviewed key community members
- Analyzed and mapped key processes
Results
- Created a centralized knowledge hub in Notion: single source of knowledge that eases new volunteers onboarding, tracks animal adoption
- Digitized critical processes
- Integrated systems
- Saved 4 hours of effort every month to the volunteer responsible for finance
How I Did That
Created a centralized knowledge hub in Notion
The Notion setup covers community & the shelter operations: team roles, animal adoption management, logistics, veterinary, kitchen, infrastructure, territory, cleaning events, content marketing flows, etc.
“Start with what you already have to get initial understanding. Spot often discussed challenges & pains.”
- Before interviewing volunteers I opted to analyze their communication for a period of 1 year. It was a good reading: full of insights & challenges they often faced & discussed.
- Implemented Notion workspace – eased onboarding of new volunteers, finding and sharing accumulated knowledge.
“Start with people & their pains.”
- Created a Telegram subgroup to ask questions & grasp better understanding of the topics I read about, so that I could build an FAQ.
- Spotted people who knew the ‘sad realities’ better than others & interviewed them.
- Set up single-account access to Notion
- Enabled guest access to Notion to optimize costs
Digitized critical processes
- Replaced PDF forms with Google Forms
- Automated data collection
- Eliminated print-scan cycles for screening & onboarding of animal adopters
- Visualized the animal adoption workflow in Notion
- Analyzed shelter inventory challenges & needs
Integrated systems:
- Connected tools using n8n
- Developed Telegram bot for team alerts about potential adopters
- Developed Telegram bot to automate processing of the expense receipts, and donations by the person responsible for finance saving
Systems
Support Our Mission
Every contribution, big or small, makes a difference in the lives of shelter animals.