Comfort Dog Nonprofit Tracks Community Impact

Jennifer Dahn is the founder and executive director of PawPrint Ministries, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing comfort dogs to those in need throughout central Illinois. “I started this in 2014 with the mission to bring one comfort dog to our community in Illinois,” Jennifer says. “Now we have 45 comfort dog teams serving across central Illinois every day.” Comfort dogs and their handlers are volunteers who visit care centers, schools, emergencies, and more to provide comfort to those in need and ease high-stress situations.

“I got the idea after being deployed to a tornado disaster area and saw a comfort dog in action and knew that our community needed a comfort dog,” she says. Jennifer is dedicated to the PawPrint Ministries’ mission: sharing the love of Jesus using trained and registered Comfort Dogs with individuals in healthcare facilities, schools, senior homes, and during times of crisis.

“When I started [Pawprint Ministries], I never would have imagined it getting as big as it is today,” Jennifer says. “It’s really due to the dedication of our volunteers. Our teams visit individuals in hospitals, nursing homes, cancer care centers, and are deployed to disasters and tragedies,” Jennifer explains. “To witness the impact of a comfort dog in a situation when the world is crumbling around you–it’s just amazing how it can change the tone of a room.”

It’s clear that PawPrint Ministries has a significant community impact, and Jennifer sees it every day. But she needed a way to quantify that impact. “When we first started, we weren’t tracking volunteer hours…and pretty quickly, we learned we did need to track those hours specifically for community feedback and to be able to explain what we’re doing, and also for writing grants,” Jennifer says. “We started with spreadsheets and we had spreadsheets everywhere and it was a mess.”

She had tried other software programs but none of them really worked for PawPrint Ministries. “Track it Forward really has been the best for our needs,” Jennifer says. “Being able to generate the reports has been so helpful. [We report] on volunteer hours, activities, and the time spent out in the community. That’s vital for us, to be able to relay to our donors what we’re doing in the community.”

With Track it Forward, Jennifer can create custom reports to look at any segment of volunteer and activity data and save report templates for future use.

“I’m very thankful that we landed on [Track it Forward] and have been very pleased with the platform.”

At PawPrint Ministries, new volunteer teams undergo extensive training to work in the field. “Our volunteers dedicate hours to training their own dog so they can walk into these situations…ready to go. For an individual to go through our training program, it takes them one to two years to fully prepare and certify their dog to serve in the community,” Jennifer explains. “Once they pass a certain level of training, they are allowed to go out on some of our more low-key, fun visits in the community to allow their dog some time…to learn where they may thrive.”

This extensive training and deployment requires careful tracking, all of which Jennifer and her team are able to do using Track it Forward. The event calendar with RSVP feature allows volunteers to sign up for training and community events that contribute to their overall hours. There’s also the option to create recurring events for regular service opportunities. “It’s very easy to go in and create the events. I have someone in charge of ensuring the recurring [events] are all taken care of…I think that’s a nice feature that I can have multiple organizers on an event.” Track it Forward offers multiple admins with the option to assign different permissions, such as event manager, approver, reporter, and more. 

With the help of Track it Forward, Jennifer and PawPrint Ministries are able to track and quantify the impact they make in the communities they serve. “Our volunteers are so passionate about what they do–serving with their dog and giving back,” Jennifer says. From schools to courthouses to dental offices, PawPrint Ministries comfort dogs are making a difference. “It is amazing to see how those dogs can be helpful in such a stressful situation.”

For nonprofits and service organizations making an impact on their communities like PawPrint Ministries, keeping track of volunteers is important. From tracking training requirements to shift sign-ups and more, Track it Forward can help! Contact us to learn more.