Flow Coordinator

Your main responsibilities are to deep-dive into your FP dog's history and ensure your dog is making forward progress along all the Care Pathways.

You are interested in the details and you can appreciate the bigger picture. You are a solid communicator, information synthesizer, and you are comfortable with ensuring your Flight Crew are each progressing apace helping your FP dog handle meeting new people (and/or dogs) more successfully, get the training they need, get the promotion they need, get the outings they need to stay as relaxed and happy as possible while in shelter.

How to advocate for your Flight Paths dog
When you need the Flight Paths Managers to take action on behalf of your dog, use submit a Flight Paths Action Request form. For example, does your dog need a Training Plan? Send in a request! Does your team need help with a marketing plan? Send in a request! You can also use the form to submit pictures, videos, or other documents.

Flow Pathway goals and Deadlines

Flow Coordinator Goals / Milestones

Upon Intake - All dogs receive Care Pathway assignment, handling color assignment and attributes. As Flow Coordinator, your work involves helping your fellow Crew members meet their goals and milestones. So it's important to go through their web pages and see what they are committing to do on behalf of the dog.

Flow Coordination Dashboard

You can avail yourself of the Flight Paths dashboard, which provides a quick look at information you can also find in ShelterLuv. The "Watch This Presentation" video gives you a quick over view on how to navigate it.

What you are committing to

This is an ideal job for a dog-lover that can't make it to the shelter in person on the regular

You will do your best to:

  • Ensure your dog has all of its needs met on time according to the Care Pathways. You provide the bird's-eye view:What opportunities are we missing? What needs are being overlooked?

  • Ensure your Flight Crew has created a way to communicate with each other and regularly you on their progress with your FP dog.

  • Be your Crew's touchstone for your FP dog's medical, behavioral, and placement histories;

  • Be another set of eyes on important staff-generated documents like your FP dog's Lifesaving Protocol Checklist, and Behavior Consult;

  • Create your FP dog's Matchmaker Summary and keep it up to date;

  • Ensure someone on your team introduces your FP dog to the Matchmaker teams;

  • Report to Flight Paths Program Managers weekly on your team's efforts and progress along all of the Care Pathways.

There can be only one Flow Coordinator, and you can delegate less responsibility than the other Coordinators because you will have access to key information that lives in ShelterLuv, for example, and direct communication with key staff. But we highly encourage you to have at least one lower-level walker shadow you and learn how to Flow Coordinate so that when real life intervenes, you rely on them to cover you, and so that they can Flow Coordinate for yet another dog! And you can always always ask Flight Path Managers for help.

Your time

You might spend anywhere from 15 to 75 minutes each week as follows:

The bulk of your time spent will be on the front end - deep-diving into your dog's notes, creating (or revising) their Matchmaker Summary, setting up communications for your Crew, and relationshipping with your FP dog (if you haven't already). (If your dog doesn't have a long history, that will take less time.) Once this is done, your weekly time will be spent as follows:

  1. Roughly 30 minutes each week gathering reports from your Flight Crew on your FP dog's progress;

  2. Roughly 10 minutes each week submitting your Crew's report to Flight Paths Managers;

  3. Roughly 10 minutes in ShelterLuv each week checking for new entries on your FP dog;

You'll also spend roughly 15 minutes each month looking at the big picture - reviewing your FP dog's progress and possibly working with Flight Paths Managers to come up with a plan for your FP dog.

HOW TO FLOW COORDINATE - Click here to see everything you need to get set up and start working your dog's pathway outta here!

The Care Pathways were developed by a brilliant team of people to give APA Staff and Volunteers guidelines, goal posts and deadlines for how best to care for the animals most in need of our limited resources with the goal of making them as placeable as possible. Learn more about the Care Pathways here.

Want to be on this dog's Flow Coordinator team, but not lead it? Read on!

If there is a Flow Coordinator, you may join their team. If your FP dog does not yet have a Flow Coordinator, you must wait until there is one before you can join the Flow Coordinator team. In order to join an FP dog's Flow Coordinator team you must:

  1. Be a volunteer Dog Walker trained up to any level. If you are not trained up to your dog's handling level ("collar color"), no worries! This job does not require any dog handling. But it does require a higher level of understanding regarding how APA! "works" - how Dog Staff Teams function, how the Care Pathways flow, and who is responsible for meeting your dog's needs.