Interactive Dashboards: Best Friends Animal Society’s Pet Lifesaving Dashboard
In 2018, Best Friends Animal Society set out to bring every shelter in the U.S. to ≥90% live-release rate. This is their definition of “No-Kill”.
This dashboard provides transparency about animal shelters and a way for the community to take action.
GOALS
Best Friends Animal Society is an animal welfare organization working to bring an end to the unnecessary killing of shelter animals in the United States. Myself, the rest of the analysis team, the data enterprise team and many others built this dashboard to engage with stakeholders and get more people involved in our mission. This dashboard was designed to be a tool that anyone in the US can use to understand data from their own state, county and local shelters.
METHODS
Data was mined from many sources including Shelter Animals Count (a large aggregator of shelter statistics available to the public). As the need for more accurate data became necessary to reach our goal, Best Friends began surveying and collecting their own data directly from shelters. Our Data Enterprise team built a SQL database storing all shelter information from 2006 to the present. Tableau was linked to the Oracle database where myself and the data analysis department set out to find meaningful trends and useful statistics that would help drive our organization’s mission.
RESULTS
More and more communities have submitted their data to us with every passing year. As the effort continues, this dashboard has been a great place for interested people to get valuable information about their shelters while also learning how they can help. Many animal welfare organizations have begun using our dashboard to keep track of their own state’s statistics. A simplified spreadsheet of main findings was also produced for internal distribution.
The Lifesaving Dashboard is an interactive Tableau dashboard allowing users to pinpoint their own state, city, or even local shelter and discover statistics/learn how best to help. Engagement with our mission increased tenfold and we were able to have a record year in public donations.
Best Friends Animal Society’s Pet Lifesaving Dashboard is an essential resource for understanding nationwide animal shelter statistics and much more. We wanted interested stakeholders to be able to explore all the data we’ve collected on their own and see the nationwide picture as well as be able to see their own community compared to others. An interactive dashboard is perfect for this kind of project as it gives any user the ability to interact and get involved with our mission.
