For small rescues
Admin software for small rescues and charities
For organisations where the same person feeds the animals, builds the rota and updates the website in the evening.
Tell us what you needMost animal welfare admin programmes are built for houses that have an administration: several full-time posts, someone responsible for IT, a budget for rollout and training. A small rescue or a charity with twenty volunteers has none of that. There, the same person does the animals, the rota, the adoption conversations and the website in the evening — and any software that wants to be a project first is not rejected, it simply never gets started.
The real obstacle is getting started
In small organisations, going digital almost never fails on the belief that it would help. It fails because the switch costs time nobody has while the work carries on — and because the first weeks mean double the effort, with the old and the new filing running in parallel. So what matters to us is that you can start small: with one area that takes a load off immediately, instead of a full migration. If you only move the rota across and stop there, you have still won.
Nothing you have to run
No installation, no server, no updates, no backups anyone has to set up. That sounds obvious, but in this market it is not — some of the established programmes still run on a computer in the office, with everything that entails. For a small organisation that is a concrete risk: if that computer dies or the person who set it up leaves, the administration is gone. Access through a browser moves that risk to where somebody is paid to deal with it.
Usable for people who use it twice a month
In a big house someone works with the system daily and gets practised at it. In a small one, a volunteer comes every two weeks and has to find their way around again each time. That is a different demand on the interface: fewer settings, shorter routes, plain names instead of jargon. Software that needs training fundamentally does not work in a team where someone new turns up every week.
Costs that fit a donation budget
A small organisation funds itself through donations, membership subscriptions and the spring jumble sale. Software with a four-figure setup fee stands against food and vet bills in that budget — and rightly loses. During the pilot phase Taildesk is free, with the full feature set. What comes afterwards is not settled; that it has to suit organisations living on donations is. Our pricing page has both, including what we do not know yet.
Small does not mean undemanding
A small organisation does not need reduced software. It has the same animal records, the same rehoming, the same deadlines and the same data protection duties as a large one — just fewer people to handle them. So there is no stripped-down edition for small teams here. The difference is not in the feature set, it is in how much you have to set up before anything is useful.
How you can tell it was built for you
You can start with one area instead of a complete switch-over.
There is nothing to install and nothing to run.
A volunteer who comes every two weeks finds their way again.
No rollout project and no week of training as a precondition.
The full feature set, no reduced edition for small teams.
Free during the pilot phase, with no contract commitment.
Taildesk is not in use anywhere yet — what is written here are design decisions, not experience from running installations. Whether the barrier to entry really is low enough for a small organisation will only be decided at the first real one, and that is who we are looking for as pilot partners.
Common questions from small organisations
There are only ten of us. Is it even worth it?
The coordination effort depends less on size than on the number of handovers between people. Ten people taking turns coordinate more than two who are there every day. If nothing is jamming for you, you do not need us — that is a legitimate answer and we would rather give it than sell you something.
Do we have to transfer all our data at once?
No, and we would advise against it. One area first, usually the one that hurts most, and the rest when there is time. A migration in one go is the most common reason a rollout gets abandoned while the work carries on.
What if nobody here is technically minded?
Then you are the normal case, not the exception. We assume neither an IT role nor prior knowledge — if something only works with an explanation, that is a fault in the product for us and not a question of training.
Tell us about your organisation
How many people, how many animals, what jams the most — that is all we need to judge whether we can help you at all.
Tell us what you need