The first, and most important requirement is the availability of volunteers who love animals. Without volunteers, in addition to yourself and your family, this project will not work and you should not attempt it.

If you can obtain enough regular volunteers you can, and will, make it a success. Yes, there are some basic costs required, but they are easily handled if you have the volunteers with a desire to make a difference and to help save the lives of some of the tens of thousands of pets who become stray each day in this country.

Found! - In Time is an Arizona non-profit corporation with 501 (c) (3) tax exempt status granted by the Internal Revenue Service. It started operations in the fall of 1997 taking photos of stray animals being sheltered by the Pima Animal Control Center (Pima County, Arizona, the County seat of which is Tucson) and placing them on the Internet to better enable owners to find and redeem their pets. In January of 1998 the Humane Society of Southern Arizona began taking photos of stray animals brought in to their shelter and made them available to the Found! Website. This method of assisting owners find lost pets has proven to be very successful and has also had a positive impact on animal adoptions for both agencies.

In mid 1998 Found! began accepting photographs from individuals who were sheltering stray animals in their homes. Today, Found! not only displays photos of stray animals but also displays photos of animals available for adoption from the three sources.

The following statistics should give you an idea of what is involved in providing this service in your area.

Pima County has a population of 842,000 people with approximately 30 stray animals picked up daily, seven days per week, 365 days per year, by Pima County Animal Control officers. This number does not include owner turn-ins, dead animals or animals impounded for rabies observation or cases where the owners are cited for violations of the law.

The Humane Society processes approximately 20 stray animals per day for a total daily average of 50 stray animals from the two agencies. The number of animals being sheltered by individuals does not currently impact these averages.

Found! is operated entirely by volunteers and is supported by contributions from the public, the sale of advertisements on the web site and other fund raising activities. Found! does not accept any funds from tax supported entities. There are three categories of volunteers that make up the operating staff. These are; Photographers, Web Site Specialists, and Web Site Proof Viewers. No one volunteer is required to put in more than two hours per week.

The duties of the Photographers include the taking of the photos of the stray animals, preparation of a photo register containing information on each animal photographed and uploading the photos and the register to the work area on the web.

The Web Site Specialist accesses the work area with the new photos and the register, updates our database and then creates the new web pages with the photographs and data for that day.

Probably one of the most crucial aspects of the operation is performed by the Web Site Proof Viewer whose job entails reviewing each page for quality control. Although our photographs are meant only for identification, they are more "mug shot" than portrait, they still must meet the test - would an owner recognize his or her animal? Photographing animals in this environment is an especially difficult task, in fact black dogs are nearly impossible to photograph to that standard. The Web Site Proof Viewer must make sure that this test is met. Not an easy task for either the Photographer or for the Web Site Proof Viewer.

While the photography, with a volume between 25 and 50 stray animals, can be handled by one person, a number of our volunteers include a spouse, child or friend to assist them. It is always more pleasant to have someone with you while taking the photographs.

We maintain a pool of Photographers consisting of around 8 or 10 volunteers at any one time.

This provides good coverage so that no one must be on duty more than one day per week and there is always a backup should personal matters require that a photographer must skip their regular day.

The Web Site Specialist tasks take approximately 45 minutes per day and we spread these duties among a volunteer pool of between 2 and 4 trained webmasters.

Web Site Proof Viewers can usually complete their duties within 30 minutes per day. We suggest a minimum of two volunteers to share these duties.

Although we have, in our early days while getting started, maintained the web site with only two volunteers we strongly recommend that for this volume of animals that you maintain a staff consisting of between 12 and 16 volunteers. With a staff of this size no one person is required to put in more than about 2 hours per week.

This is important to help avoid the problem of staff "burnout" which can easily occur when too great a load is assumed by a well-meaning, but overworked volunteer. There is an emotional component to this endeavor that far outweighs the purely physical aspect.

Without the existence of the digital camera this project would not be feasible. The cost of film, processing and scanning would be enormous and render the project too expensive.

A good, rugged, digital camera with a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels (perfect for the Internet), a 10 to 1 zoom feature (necessary for photo composition of uncooperative animals), an easy method to store and retrieve the photos (3.5" diskette, cartridge or cables) and a built-in flash are the minimum requirements. We recommend that you talk with a local camera shop.

You can easily operate with just one camera, however, we strongly recommend that you acquire a second camera for backup and to use to take photos of individually sheltered animals.

Computers. Yes, we also need computers, and pretty good ones at that. It has amazed us that most of our volunteers have up to date computers and know how to use them. We have, however, made an arrangement with the Pima Animal Control Center to make a computer available to us should we have a volunteer that does not have a computer or have one that is temporarily down. Because of the availability of volunteers with computers we have had no additional expense required to purchase computers.

Minimum requirements for computers would be any recent, 3 yrs. or so, manufactured PC and, of course, a high-speed Internet account with a reliable Internet Service Provider. The web site itself can be hosted through your own Internet Service Provider or the company that provides our web hosting.

WebTackleDomains.com is a web hosting company that was started specifically to provide economical web hosting services to non-profits and animal related web sites.

We have found their rates to be very competitive with excellent additional features included in the basic cost that are usually charged extra with other web hosting companies.

Software required for maintenance of the web site includes an FTP program like CuteFTP, a photo processing program, such as Adope Photo Shop, an integrated business package like Microsoft Office or better, and the Found! web site maintenance program, FoundUpdate, for the Web Site Specialists. The Photographers only requirement is an inexpensive FTP program. We recommend CuteFTP with a non-profit price of around $20.00.

There is no software requirement for Web Site Proof Viewers other than a standard web browser, which are available without charge.

The web site maintenance program, FoundUpdate, is a Visual Basic program custom designed exclusively for Found! that would cost approximately $10,000 if developed independently.

This program will be provided at no cost to qualified applicants by Found! This software package includes User Manuals and on-line and telephone support.

If you are serious (remember, the key is volunteers, not money) about saving animal lives by starting a Found! project in your area, please contact us for information on how to get started at one of the addresses below;