Pets Help: How to Help Homeless Pets in 30 Seconds

With the application, you can help homeless cats and dogs right from the comfort of your home, taking just a few seconds of your time. How the application works, its creator, Ilya Viktorovich Goretov, told.

• Before moving on to the app, tell us why you chose pet care? Why is this area important to you?

– Helping pets is important, first of all, because pets cannot help themselves. 

They say that once there was such a case: the great basketball player Michael Jordan walked past a man begging for alms and did not give him. When asked why he did this, Jordan replied that if a person can reach out and ask for money, then what prevents him from raising his hand up and saying: “Cashier is free!“?

In my opinion, people are quite capable of taking care of themselves. At worst, there are friends, relatives. Animals don’t have any of that. They cannot get a job to pay for their treatment. They have no relatives who could help them.

Animals have to live in a world that is often hostile to them. They don’t deserve it.

• How did you come up with the idea for the project? ?

– A similar project, but in the web version, wanted to create a Russian girl in Silicon Valley, but it was never implemented. I accidentally found out about him, and this idea stuck in my head. And then it turned into an app.

• How long did it take from idea to app launch?

– Less than a month. First, we put together a “skeleton” application with minimal features. Then we found a developer, he built the application in just a couple of weeks. And then I wrote an article about the application to see how the audience would react to my idea. Will it be of interest to anyone at all?

The feedback was overwhelming: 99% of the feedback was positive! In addition to feedback, the guys offered ideas on how to improve the application, what else can be done. We realized that this is an interesting, in-demand project and took up full-fledged development.

There were no problems with development. But there were financial difficulties. We made the application at our own expense, as volunteers, and were very limited in funds. We knew developers who could put together an app quickly and cool, but we couldn’t pay them. We had to spend a lot of time to find developers.

• How many people worked on the app in total?

– I was a generator of ideas, and two programmers were engaged in development, but at different times. There are also two partners with whom I discuss potential improvements to the application. Without their help, including financial, nothing would have happened. 

For almost a year we have been looking for a developer who would write an application for IOS. Nobody took it. And literally two months ago we found a person, a great programmer, who finally did it.

• Can you briefly describe how the application works?

– Everyone who has smartphones has launched the game at least once from the AppStore or GooglePlay. Downloaded for yourself or for children. In almost all of these games, to speed up character development or help in passing, it is suggested to watch ads. As a reward for these views, you are given any bonuses: lives, crystals, whatever. It turns out that the user watches ads, receives a bonus, and the owner of the application receives money from the advertiser. Our application works like this.

We work like this game. Our users watch ads in the app and the app receives funds from the advertiser. We transfer all these funds to the accounts of volunteers and charitable foundations.

Help for pets is targeted. If you watch ads from the page of a particular pet, then the funds go specifically to support it.

• That is, to help a pet, it is enough just to watch an ad?

– Exactly. You enter the application, scroll through the feed with pets, select one or more, go to their pages and view ads.

A few seconds – and you have already helped.

I’ll tell you a secret: you don’t even have to watch the entire ad. I pressed play and left to make tea. That’s how it works too!

• Tell me, what are HELPs?

– We introduced helps at the request of people who want to make a donation. Helps is an internal currency, 1 help is equal to 1 ruble. It turns out a simple donation scheme, without intermediary banks. The user, as it were, buys help from us, and we transfer the funds received in rubles to shelters.

• What does registration in the application give?

– You can use the application and view ads without registration. But when you register, your personal account is formed. The pets you help are displayed in it. You can always see who you have already helped and at what stage the fees are.

• In the application, you can ask a friend to help. How it works?

– Yes, there is such a possibility. If you use the application yourself, help a pet and want to quickly raise money for him, you can invite your friends to participate. They will receive a message with the text “Let’s help together!“. If they wish, they will also be able to enter the application, watch ads or buy help.

• How many people respond?

– The social component, unfortunately, did not work as effectively as we expected. We see that mostly “our own” help pets. For example, there is a fund that has launched a fundraiser for a particular pet. And ads from the card of this pet are viewed by people from the same fund. New users practically do not come.

Commercials are 10 to 30 seconds long. Taking 30 seconds to help homeless animals – what could be easier? We spend much more time every day on absolutely meaningless things.

• Why do you think this is happening?

– Heads of foundations or shelters do not like to actively work with the audience. To attract people, you need to regularly tell, remind, explain, repost. And we usually post a post and forget about it, do not work with it further. Like, “already done everything they could”. But it doesn’t work that way.

It gets to the point that I write the texts myself and ask people to host them. For example, about how much money has already been raised, and how much more is needed, elementary words of gratitude. I tell you what you need to remind people about the collection. Let me know when is the best time to post. And that’s when people start coming.

• What are your future plans for the development of the application?

– We constantly support feedback from users of the application and are interested in what they would like to improve. In the near future, we plan to break down pets by city, display a fundraising scale so that you can immediately see how much has been collected and how much is left. We want to introduce user ratings to reward the most active users. Everyone likes when their achievements are seen and celebrated.

• How do shelters and organizations get into the app? Can everyone contact you?

– We are open to all volunteers, shelters, curators. Usually they send me a link to a post with a pet. I check if they are real people. If everything is in order, I create a card with a pet in the application.

The card displays information about the pet, the city, the amount of the fee, what exactly the fee is for.

Then I ask volunteers to post a link to the card on their social networks. The scheme is as simple as possible.

• How many pets are currently in the application database?

– While the base is not very large, but we are not striving for this. We try to accommodate one or two pets from one organization. This is necessary so that fees are not blurred. It is better to close one collection, and then start another.

Now we have several private volunteers, 8 shelters from Moscow, Ulyanovsk, St. Petersburg, Penza, and other cities – the geography is extensive.

When the current camps are closed, the same shelters and volunteers will be able to start new camps with new pets.

• How many pets have already been helped?

– At the moment, we have transferred more than 40 rubles to foundations, shelters and curators. I can’t name the exact number of pets: it happens that the first time we fail to collect the required amount, and the collection is placed again. But, I think, the users of the application helped at least a couple of dozen pets.

• What are the difficulties in work now, except for the technical side?

“It saddens me that we are not getting the support we would like. I often encounter distrust and even hatred. There were cases when I suggested that volunteers use our application and explained that the money would go to the pet’s account later, after watching the advertisement and receiving funds from the advertiser. And they told me I was a scammer. People did not even want to understand how the application works, they did not try to figure it out, but immediately went into the negative.

• Thanks for the interview!

Thanks to projects like , each of us can help pets, from anywhere in the world. We wish the application responsive users and that in the near future everyone will have it on their phones.