How a Humane Society Improved Access to Critical Knowledge

Organization Overview

An Austin-based humane society with approximately 50 employees and a large volunteer network provides animal sheltering, adoption, foster coordination, community outreach, and support services.

The organization depends on employees and volunteers working across multiple departments, schedules, and locations. Many people need accurate answers about animal care, adoption procedures, volunteer responsibilities, donor programs, safety requirements, and daily operations.

Over time, this information had become scattered across emails, shared drives, PDFs, handbooks, training materials, and the knowledge of experienced staff members.

The Challenge

The organization was growing, but its internal knowledge systems had not kept pace.

Employees and volunteers frequently asked the same questions:

• What is the correct intake procedure?
• Which animals can be placed with foster families?
• What steps are required before an adoption is approved?
• Who should handle a medical or behavioral concern?
• Where is the latest volunteer handbook?
• What information can be shared with donors or the public?

Staff members spent significant time answering routine questions and locating documents.

New employees and volunteers received information through orientation sessions, emails, printed materials, and informal guidance. This sometimes led to inconsistent answers and uncertainty about which version of a procedure was current.

The organization also relied heavily on a small number of experienced employees who understood how different departments worked together.

What Was at Risk

Inconsistent information created more than administrative inconvenience.

Incorrect procedures could affect animal care, volunteer safety, adoption decisions, donor communication, and public trust.

Delays in finding information also pulled employees away from direct animal care and community services.

Leadership recognized that important operational knowledge needed to remain with the organization instead of depending on individual employees, inboxes, or informal conversations.

The Pixeldust Solution

Pixeldust began by meeting with leadership and representatives from animal care, adoptions, foster services, volunteer coordination, fundraising, and administration.

The discovery process identified the questions employees and volunteers asked most often, the documents they relied on, and the areas where procedures were unclear or undocumented.

Existing information was collected from SharePoint, email, PDFs, handbooks, training documents, forms, spreadsheets, and internal notes.

Pixeldust then organized the material into a secure SharePoint knowledge hub covering:

• Animal intake procedures
• Adoption requirements
• Foster program guidelines
• Volunteer roles and responsibilities
• Animal handling and safety procedures
• Medical and behavioral escalation rules
• Donor and fundraising information
• Community program details
• Employee onboarding materials
• Emergency and incident procedures

Outdated documents were flagged, duplicate information was consolidated, and missing procedures were documented through interviews with experienced employees.

Permissions were configured so employees, managers, and volunteers could only access the information appropriate to their roles.

Maisy was then connected to the approved SharePoint content and made available through Microsoft Teams.

How Maisy Was Used

An adoption employee could ask:

“What documents are required before an adoption can be completed?”

A volunteer coordinator could ask:

“What training must a volunteer complete before handling dogs?”

A foster coordinator could ask:

“What is the process for reporting a medical concern about a foster animal?”

A new employee could ask:

“Who approves an exception to the standard intake procedure?”

A fundraising employee could ask:

“Where can I find the approved description of our community programs?”

Maisy returned answers based on approved internal information and directed users to the supporting documents when additional detail was needed.

When the knowledge hub did not contain an answer, Maisy identified the gap instead of generating unsupported information.

Implementation

The project began with an assessment of the organization’s systems, departments, recurring questions, and operational risks.

Pixeldust collected and reviewed existing documents and interviewed employees who held important institutional knowledge.

The information was organized into a consistent SharePoint structure with clear ownership, permissions, naming standards, and review dates.

Missing procedures were documented, including escalation paths, volunteer responsibilities, foster reporting requirements, and cross-department workflows.

Maisy was configured to retrieve information only from approved content within the knowledge hub.

The system was tested with questions from employees, managers, and volunteers before launch.

Employees received training through Microsoft Teams, while volunteer access was structured around the information required for their assigned responsibilities.

Results

Employees spent less time searching through folders, emails, and outdated documents.

Volunteer coordinators answered fewer repeated questions and were able to provide more consistent guidance.

New employees and volunteers gained access to the same approved procedures, reducing confusion during onboarding.

Animal care, adoption, and foster teams could find escalation instructions more quickly when unusual situations occurred.

Leadership also gained a clearer view of missing or outdated knowledge that required review.

Most importantly, critical information remained available even when experienced employees or volunteers left the organization.

Before and After

Before Maisy, employees and volunteers depended on handbooks, emails, shared folders, and individual staff members for answers.

After Maisy, approved information could be accessed through a simple question in Microsoft Teams.

Before Maisy, different departments sometimes followed different versions of the same procedure.

After Maisy, teams worked from centralized and reviewed information.

Before Maisy, onboarding depended heavily on live explanations from experienced employees.

After Maisy, new team members could find reliable answers while still receiving guidance from supervisors.

Before Maisy, important knowledge could leave when an employee or long-term volunteer departed.

After Maisy, that knowledge remained documented and available to the organization.

Key Takeaway

The humane society did not need to replace the systems its employees already used.

It needed to organize its knowledge, document missing procedures, control access, and make approved answers easier to find.

By combining a secure SharePoint knowledge hub with Maisy inside Microsoft Teams, the organization reduced repeated questions, improved consistency, strengthened onboarding, and gave employees more time to focus on animals and the community.