Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi, friends. This maybe a minor concern in comparison to some, but I'm not sure where to turn and I'm tearing my hair out! We are a small, all-volunteer cat rescue and we use Sparkie as our animal database.  We have no complaints about Sparkie, we just seem to have major difficulty getting data entry either done in a timely fashion or done accurately.  With about 160 cats at any given time, data entry, scanning, and uploading is too much for one person to do in a timely fashion but when we have additional people involved, its like the wild wild West in a very short time (we start out great but then creativity creeps in).  How do other all-volunteer groups handle accurate, timely data entry without burning out volunteers on what amounts to a pretty boring task?
#DataandTechnology

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Diane Metz
Volunteer
Orange Street Cats, Inc.
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Hi Diane,

Even with the best database, data entry can be tricky sometimes, so don't feel bad about it.

There's essentially two ways you can look at addressing this.

1. On the database side, and I'm not too familiar with Sparkie but this applies generally, try to get as many pre-set categories as possible.  The less that people have to enter data manually, the quicker they can put in the information and the less likely they are to screw something up.  We're in the processes of switching over to PetPoint and it allows us to preload most categories into a dropdown that lets our staff select the town, breed, intake reason, etc. without having to come up with that information on their own.  If Sparkie lets you do that, great.  There may be a way on the back end to set pre-selected items, or at the very least set drop down items that can be manually changed.  If that's possible that's going to be the easiest way to help sanitize your database inputs. 

This is going to be most effective when you're looking at issues like spelling errors.  I once worked for a hospice where we had our main hospital listed in our database 22 different ways.  Having dropdowns and preselected categories helps reduce that issue immensely.

2. If you can't do that, and even if you can, the other way comes down to training.  If you sit 10 people down at a computer and put a cat in front of them and tell them to enter the details of that cat, you're probably going to get 10 different answers.  The only way to fix that is to give people better training and parameters about how to define the details of that cat.  You may want to look at having a set of checklists or walkthrough sheets that you give to your data entry volunteers to help them know that if Officer Friendly and Officer Dave pick up a cat, that should get entered as Albany Police rather than the officer's name, or helping volunteers identify what a Orange Tabby is and to put that down instead of Tiger Cat.

Rather than getting too complicated here, identify what your most important stats are, do you need to make sure you know the city?  breed?  spay/neuter status?  Make sure those top 5 to maybe 10-15 or so items are part of that training to make sure you're not overwhelming them and to make sure they comply with getting those items right.  If you have a decent size pool of volunteers, you can also try segmenting your data entry, I.E. having one person do intake, one person do medical, one person do adoptions, etc.  That way they're specializing in an area and hopefully being faster and more consistent with their data entry.

There is also a third option of cleaning up your own data.  You can output raw data from most databases and either manually or in Excel using automated macros/formulas, sort through and clean up data.  If you absolutely need to report some item, that may be a good option with your current data set.  However, you'll spend way more time going that route rather than taking care of these issues on the front end to prevent what's known in database terms as "Garbage In, Garbage Out."

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Jeff Okazaki
Humane Society of Jefferson County
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-26-2022 11:20 PM
From: Diane Metz
Subject: Data entry accurateness

Hi, friends. This maybe a minor concern in comparison to some, but I'm not sure where to turn and I'm tearing my hair out! We are a small, all-volunteer cat rescue and we use Sparkie as our animal database.  We have no complaints about Sparkie, we just seem to have major difficulty getting data entry either done in a timely fashion or done accurately.  With about 160 cats at any given time, data entry, scanning, and uploading is too much for one person to do in a timely fashion but when we have additional people involved, its like the wild wild West in a very short time (we start out great but then creativity creeps in).  How do other all-volunteer groups handle accurate, timely data entry without burning out volunteers on what amounts to a pretty boring task?
#DataandTechnology

------------------------------
Diane Metz
Volunteer
Orange Street Cats, Inc.
------------------------------

I agree with Jeff that having selection boxes can both speed up and improve accuracy of data entry. A customizable software system that allows you to create the drop down fields appropriate to your organization, your intakes and your volunteer staff is key to reducing errors and increasing efficiency. Also, flexibility in creating an intake form that is exactly what you need is important, so volunteers aren't required to enter data into fields that they just don't have the information for yet.   A system with a Foster Portal that allows your Foster Volunteers to enter and edit animal data such as Bio , Photos or Weight can distribute the workload. 

I'm a volunteer data administrator for a dog rescue in Colorado, and we went with AnimalsFirst nearly two years ago because it gave us that flexibility, the only software we looked at that did. Full disclosure, about a year ago, I joined the AnimalsFirst team. But, my advice above is from my experience as a volunteer who was putting in 40 hours a week just dealing with data (and mistakes!) before we used AF. I feel your pain.

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Linda Lea
Big Bones Canine Rescue
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-26-2022 11:20 PM
From: Diane Metz
Subject: Data entry accurateness

Hi, friends. This maybe a minor concern in comparison to some, but I'm not sure where to turn and I'm tearing my hair out! We are a small, all-volunteer cat rescue and we use Sparkie as our animal database.  We have no complaints about Sparkie, we just seem to have major difficulty getting data entry either done in a timely fashion or done accurately.  With about 160 cats at any given time, data entry, scanning, and uploading is too much for one person to do in a timely fashion but when we have additional people involved, its like the wild wild West in a very short time (we start out great but then creativity creeps in).  How do other all-volunteer groups handle accurate, timely data entry without burning out volunteers on what amounts to a pretty boring task?
#DataandTechnology

------------------------------
Diane Metz
Volunteer
Orange Street Cats, Inc.
------------------------------

If you are happy with Sparkie, I'd reach out to them and ask for help. Like the others have said, you need to implement some data quality controls so there is no opportunity for people to get creative. This is a problem that's easily solved, so if Sparkie can't help, it may be time to choose a new system.

But data entry is always going to be boring and nobody wants to do it. So your organization will need to make it a priority. Schedule time for data entry. If volunteers work for 5 hours, make sure the last hour is spent on paperwork and data entry as a non-negotiable, for example.  Explain why it's so important! Are donors expecting it? Will funding not be available if you can't show your work? Or you can designate certain people to do data entry. There's a lot of wiggle room between one overwhelmed person doing it and the Wild West. Can three specific people be in charge of it, for example?

Also, what's all the scanning and uploading? That sounds like a big bottleneck. Ideally, information will go straight into the database system and not be on paper at all. See what you can cut out.

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M Saucedo
GIS Analyst
Pets for Life
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-26-2022 11:20 PM
From: Diane Metz
Subject: Data entry accurateness

Hi, friends. This maybe a minor concern in comparison to some, but I'm not sure where to turn and I'm tearing my hair out! We are a small, all-volunteer cat rescue and we use Sparkie as our animal database.  We have no complaints about Sparkie, we just seem to have major difficulty getting data entry either done in a timely fashion or done accurately.  With about 160 cats at any given time, data entry, scanning, and uploading is too much for one person to do in a timely fashion but when we have additional people involved, its like the wild wild West in a very short time (we start out great but then creativity creeps in).  How do other all-volunteer groups handle accurate, timely data entry without burning out volunteers on what amounts to a pretty boring task?
#DataandTechnology

------------------------------
Diane Metz
Volunteer
Orange Street Cats, Inc.
------------------------------