How Arizona Animal Welfare League Streamlined Volunteer Management

What does it take to rescue more than 3,000 animals a year? It takes medical staff and behavior trainers, adoption counselors and educators. It takes generous donors and a community that shows up. And it takes a small army of volunteers who give their time, their energy, and often their hearts to animals that need them. For the Arizona Animal Welfare League, keeping that army organized used to be one of the hardest parts of the job. Then they found a better way.

The Organization

In 1971, a group of animal lovers in Phoenix decided they were done waiting for someone else to act. They started rescuing cats and dogs, finding them homes, and doing whatever they could with the resources they had. That grassroots effort became the Arizona Animal Welfare League, and more than five decades later, it has grown into the largest and oldest no-kill shelter in the state.

Today, AAWL is a full-service animal welfare organization with a reach that extends well beyond shelter walls. Their programs cover everything from innovative behavior training and medical care to adoption services, community education, and outreach initiatives. The league rescues more than 3,000 animals each year, and with the recent opening of the Sonia Breslow Adoption Center, they are working to grow that number to 5,000 annually.

Behind every rescued animal is a network of staff and volunteers who make the work possible. AAWL's volunteer program is one of the most active in the region, powering weekly adoption events, orientation and training sessions, specialized pairing programs, and large-scale fundraisers. Managing all of it well is not optional. It is the foundation the mission stands on.

The Problem

Running a volunteer program at scale is a logistical challenge on its own. Running one that spans orientations, multi-stage training, recurring weekly events, one-on-one pairing sessions, and a major annual fundraiser is something else entirely. For the AAWL team, doing all of that through phone calls, emails, and spreadsheets had become unsustainable.

Volunteer and Event Coordinator Amber Durand was the one carrying most of the weight. Every scheduling request, every change, every confirmation had to pass through her. The volume was relentless and the tools were not built for it. She was always behind, no matter how much time she put in. The coordination work was consuming the hours she needed to focus on the things that actually moved the mission forward.

The organization had grown significantly over the years, and the gap between what their volunteer program demanded and what their systems could handle had grown with it. Something had to change.

The Solution

The answer came from inside the organization. A volunteer who had used SignUpGenius elsewhere mentioned it to the team, and Durand and Director of Volunteers and Events Kay Wilder decided to take a look. What they found was a platform built for exactly the kind of complexity they were dealing with every day.

They moved quickly. Orientations and training sessions shifted onto SignUpGenius. Weekly adoption events were scheduled there. When it came time to organize the Walk to Save Animals, their signature annual fundraiser, SignUpGenius handled the coordination of more than 100 volunteers in one place.

One of the most valuable applications was for Buddy Days, an ongoing program that pairs new volunteers with experienced ones for their first day of hands-on training. Before SignUpGenius, matching and notifying each pair required manual effort from the coordinator. With the platform in place, volunteers could visit the sign up on their own time, choose a slot that fit their schedule, and even swap times with another volunteer without involving staff at all. The coordinator was freed from the middle.

Beyond scheduling, AAWL put SignUpGenius to work as a communication tool. Durand could send mass emails directly through the platform to everyone registered for a specific event or training session, no separate list required. The team also created unique sign up links to include in their e-newsletter, giving their entire volunteer community a direct path to registration with a single click.

The Results

The change in Durand's day-to-day was immediate. With volunteers managing their own sign ups, cancellations, and schedule swaps, the constant back-and-forth that had consumed her time dropped away. She could focus on larger initiatives instead of fielding individual requests.

Volunteers adapted without friction. They knew where to go, how to register, and how to handle changes on their own. That reliability created consistency across the program and reinforced what every good volunteer coordinator wants: a community that feels organized, respected, and easy to be part of.

The timing could not have been better. When the Sonia Breslow Adoption Center opened, made possible by a generous community donation, the added operational complexity that came with expansion was not the crisis it might have been before. AAWL had the infrastructure to absorb it. They were not scrambling to keep up. They were ready.

In Their Words

We asked Amber Durand about her experience using SignUpGenius to manage the AAWL volunteer program. Here is what she shared.

"Learning about SignUpGenius was a Godsend. It was a nightmare before, and I was always behind." — Amber Durand, Volunteer & Event Coordinator, Arizona Animal Welfare League

"It is very user friendly and helps to keep track of the volunteers, as well as allows us to do mass emailing to all the volunteers who signed up for a particular event or class." — Amber Durand, Volunteer & Event Coordinator, Arizona Animal Welfare League

"We now have an easier, more efficient way to communicate with volunteers, which enables us to focus more on other aspects of our events." — Amber Durand, Volunteer & Event Coordinator, Arizona Animal Welfare League