Urgent Pets on Death Row Inc (“Urgent”) is a 501(c)3, dedicated to saving dogs and cats from the abhorrent New York City Shelter system. Urgent contacted me in 2014 to discuss getting their entire operation to function on their website instead of on Facebook. With an extensive requirements gathering process, we decided that a multisite environment would be best for Urgent’s needs and so the architecture, design, and build began.

After four months of effort, we have successfully replaced Facebook as “the platform” for Urgent’s operations. Facebook is now just another spoke in the wheel. The website enables multiple volunteers to update listings daily and share these animals in need not only to Facebook, but also to Pinterest, Twitter and other popular social media platforms with a single click.

Urgent is now in full control of their methods for sharing animals and promoting change in the NYC Shelter system. Facebook is great but it changes all the time. This creates tremendous stress for page admins to keep pace with the changes and modify their workflow. Having the system function on an independent website removes this risk.

Since Urgent’s new site launched on April 4, 2015, it has had over 44,000 unique visitors to its site and nearly 3 million page views.