When the world plunged into crisis mode in the early weeks of March, a silver lining of hope appeared for Australian rescue pets as thousands of potential adopters visited PetRescue eager to find their furry partner-in-chaos! This didn’t come without its challenges as the PetRescue site was smashed with double the amount of traffic and rescue groups struggling to handle a 200% increase in pet enquiries!
Pet lovers galore! 📈
With each passing day, we were blown away by the surge of visitors on our platform. In fact, over 2.3 million pet lovers jumped on to PetRescue, collectively contributing to over 49 MILLION page views from March to May, 2020! Holy Macaronnnniii! 🙀
The good news for pets?
As more people began to work from home, they decided to open their home-offices to furry co-workers, and we saw a RECORD-BREAKING number of pets finding their loving homes!
In just three months 20,350 adoptions were successfully made and for the number of listed pets plunged below 3,000 compared to an average of 7,000 - 8,000 normally.
Here's just some of those furry faces...
Over a 200% increase in enquiries for pets 💌
The fan mail just piled in for rescue pets listed on PetRescue with a massive 215% increase in pet enquiries compared to the previous year! 🤯
Understandably there were some challenges as member rescue organisations (many who are volunteers) were not only trying to manage new COVID compliant processes but the influx of growing enquiries.
The PetRescue tech team worked urgently behind the scenes building new features in the member side of the platform to help groups handle enquiries more effectively.
Responding quickly
Although there were a few minor hiccups, we were able to pivot almost immediately and ensure that PetRescue continued to be the first point of connection between thousands of adopters and rescue pets.
The show of love for rescue pets also swamped our Help Desk, responding to 2,328 pet lovers that reached out – thank you to such a fantastic community of pet lovers!
We established a new database of volunteers ready to help rescue groups and invested in developing resources for new foster carers and pet owners to help them settle in a new pet.
With such an incredible surge and momentum, what we do know is there is the love and capacity for every pet in Australia to be safe, respected and loved… And with these big wins for pets, we’re already thinking about...
The way forward 💡
Our work doesn’t stop until every pet in Australia is safe and has a chance of adoption.
At the moment, too many pets end up in a broken system and still, an estimated 100,000 healthy pets are killed in Australian pounds.
Using the adoption momentum the pandemic has delivered, urgently we are leveraging this break to change the future for pets and find solutions to stem the flow of unwanted pets.
Find out more about our plans to change this once and for all.
We are incredibly grateful for the community of pet lovers across Australia who, despite the challenges we all faced (and continue to face) due to the pandemic, continued your support and enabled PetRescue to help thousands more pets find happiness. We couldn’t do this without you.