Best Software for Animal Welfare Charities in the UK (2026)

Animal welfare is the most popular charitable cause in the UK, with an estimated 15 million people donating to animal charities each year, according to the Charities Aid Foundation. Yet the organisations doing this work — rescue centres, sanctuaries, wildlife rehabilitation services, and campaigning groups — often run on outdated systems that cannot keep pace with the complexity of their operations. The right software can transform how your charity tracks animals, coordinates fosterers, manages veterinary partnerships, and reports outcomes. The wrong choice leaves your team drowning in spreadsheets and disconnected tools.

This guide compares the best CRM and management platforms for UK animal welfare charities in 2026, with honest assessments of what each does well and where it falls short.

Who this is for: Managers, trustees, and operations leads at animal rescue centres, sanctuaries, wildlife rehabilitation charities, community animal services, and animal welfare campaigning organisations in the UK.

TL;DR

• Plinth is strongest for charities that need configurable case management for animal records, volunteer coordination (especially fosterer networks), and impact reporting. It does not have animal-specific case fields out of the box, but its flexible case management adapts well. It is not a fundraising platform.
• AniLog is the UK's specialist animal welfare management system, purpose-built for rescue and rehoming with veterinary records, microchip integration, and kennel management.
• Beacon and Donorfy are better choices for animal charities where donor management and fundraising are the primary need.
• Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud suits large organisations with complex data requirements and dedicated IT resource.
• If your charity still runs on paper and spreadsheets, any structured system is a significant step forward.

Why Animal Welfare Charities Need Purpose-Built Software

Animal welfare charities are not a single category. The sector spans RSPCA branches and independent rescue centres, wildlife rehabilitation hospitals, breed-specific sanctuaries, community neutering programmes, and national campaigning organisations. What they share is operational complexity that generic business software handles poorly.

The scale of the sector is substantial. The RSPCA alone investigated 61,000 complaints of alleged cruelty in 2024, and its cruelty line received 907,797 calls — the equivalent of one call every 32 seconds (RSPCA Annual Review 2024). Beyond the RSPCA, Cats Protection helps around 166,000 cats and kittens a year, Dogs Trust cares for over 15,000 dogs annually across 21 rehoming centres, and Blue Cross supports over 40,000 pets every year. Hundreds of smaller independent rescues operate alongside these national organisations.

Animal welfare has been the UK's most popular charitable cause since 2018, with 28% of donors giving to animal charities — ahead of children and young people (23%) and medical research (21%), according to the Charities Aid Foundation. Despite this public support, many animal charities operate on tight budgets, and software needs to deliver clear value without enterprise-level costs.

What to Look for in Animal Welfare Software

Before comparing platforms, it helps to understand the core capabilities animal welfare charities typically need.

Animal case records are the foundation. Every animal that enters your care needs a structured record covering species, breed, age, medical history, behavioural notes, intake circumstances, microchip details, and outcome (rehomed, released, transferred, or deceased). This is the equivalent of case management in human services, but with animal-specific data requirements.

Rehoming and adoption tracking matters for rescue centres and sanctuaries. You need to manage adoption applications, home checks, matching processes, post-adoption follow-ups, and — in some cases — fostering placements before permanent rehoming. Nearly 383 cats, 301 dogs, and eight horses are rescued and rehomed daily by charities across the UK, according to Hepper's analysis of UK shelter statistics.

Volunteer management is critical. Animal charities depend heavily on volunteers for dog walking, fostering, transport, fundraising events, and charity shop staffing. The RSPCA has 236 dedicated Animal Rescue Volunteers supporting frontline operations (RSPCA Annual Review 2024), and most independent rescues rely on volunteer networks even more heavily. Coordinating fosterers — matching animals to suitable foster homes, tracking placement durations, and managing handovers — is a particularly complex volunteering challenge.

Veterinary partnership tracking helps charities manage relationships with vet practices that provide pro bono or discounted treatment. Recording which vets treat which animals, tracking outstanding treatments, and monitoring costs across multiple practices requires structured relationship management.

Fundraising and donor management sustains the work. Donations to animal charities accounted for 9% of the total value of all UK charitable giving in 2021, with an average monthly donation of over 20 pounds, according to the Charities Aid Foundation. For charities that depend on public donations, Gift Aid processing, regular giving management, and supporter communications are essential.

Event and booking management supports adoption days, fundraising events, volunteer inductions, and educational workshops that most animal charities run regularly.

Platform Comparison

Plinth

Plinth is a UK-built platform designed for charities that focus on service delivery, community engagement, and volunteering rather than fundraising. For animal welfare charities whose core work involves managing animals in care, coordinating volunteer fosterers and dog walkers, and demonstrating impact, Plinth covers the operational essentials well.

Strengths for animal welfare charities:

• Case Management that can be configured to track animal cases — while Plinth does not have pre-built animal-specific fields (species, breed, microchip number), its flexible case structure allows you to create records for individual animals, track their journey through your organisation, assign case workers, and record interactions and outcomes
• Volunteering is particularly strong for fosterer coordination — matching volunteers to roles, tracking availability, managing placements, and communicating with your volunteer network
• Bookings for adoption events, volunteer inductions, and fundraising activities
• Surveys for collecting adoption application data, post-rehoming welfare checks, and community feedback
• Impact Reporting that aggregates outcomes across your work and presents them in funder-ready formats
• Partner CRM for tracking relationships with veterinary practices, local authorities, other rescues, and corporate supporters

Where Plinth falls short: Plinth is not a fundraising platform. If your animal charity depends heavily on individual donations, regular giving, or legacy fundraising, you will need a dedicated donor management tool alongside or instead of Plinth. It also does not have built-in animal-specific features like microchip registration lookup, kennel management, or veterinary record templates — for these, a specialist platform like AniLog is more appropriate.

Best for: Animal rescue charities and sanctuaries that need a flexible operational platform for case tracking, fosterer coordination, and impact reporting, and that are comfortable configuring case fields to suit their animal records.

AniLog

AniLog is a UK-built, web-based animal welfare management system designed specifically for the rescue and rehoming sector. It is used by organisations including Wood Green, The Animals Charity, which has used AniLog throughout its organisation since 2011.

Strengths for animal welfare charities:

• Purpose-built animal records covering origin and ownership history, veterinary and treatment history, behavioural history, kennelling and location history, weight and diet plans, and microchip details
• Integration with microchip registration services including Chipworks, Identibase, PetLog, and PETtrac
• Rehoming workflow management from intake through to post-adoption follow-up
• Document and image storage attached to individual animal records
• Reminder system for vaccinations, treatments, and follow-ups
• Accessible on desktop and mobile devices

Where AniLog falls short: AniLog is an animal management system, not a charity CRM. It does not handle donor management, volunteer coordination at scale, impact reporting for funders, or broader organisational functions. Most charities using AniLog will need additional tools for fundraising and volunteer management.

Best for: Rescue centres and rehoming organisations that need specialist animal record-keeping, microchip integration, and rehoming workflow management.

Beacon

Beacon is a UK-built charity CRM that combines donor management with event ticketing, volunteer tracking, and case management in a single platform. Pricing starts from around 30 pounds per month, scaling based on the number of contacts stored.

Strengths for animal welfare charities:

• Excellent donor management with Gift Aid, direct debit integration, and supporter segmentation
• Event and ticketing functionality for adoption days and fundraising events
• Case management capabilities that could be adapted for animal records
• Clean, modern interface with award-winning customer support (average response time under five minutes)
• Strong reporting and data export features

Where Beacon falls short: Beacon is designed as a fundraising-first CRM. Its case management is functional but not designed for the specific workflows of animal rescue (intake, fostering, rehoming, post-adoption monitoring). Volunteer coordination features are basic compared to a dedicated volunteering platform.

Best for: Animal welfare charities where fundraising, donor relationships, and Gift Aid processing are the primary operational focus.

Donorfy

Donorfy is purpose-built for UK charity fundraising and has a dedicated page for animal and wildlife charities. It is used by organisations including Birmingham Dogs Home and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. Donorfy is ISO 27001 and 9001 certified.

Strengths for animal welfare charities:

• Strong fundraising management across donations, memberships, events, and Gift Aid
• Automated tagging to categorise major donors, event attendees, and animal adopters
• Integration with JustGiving, Stripe, GoCardless, and Mailchimp
• Affordable pricing for smaller charities
• Good supporter segmentation for targeted appeals and campaigns

Where Donorfy falls short: Donorfy is a fundraising tool, not an operations platform. It does not handle animal case records, volunteer coordination, kennel management, or rehoming workflows. You would need separate systems for your core animal welfare operations.

Best for: Animal charities and wildlife trusts where fundraising administration and donor relationship management are the primary pain point.

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

Salesforce is the largest CRM platform in the world, and its Nonprofit Cloud edition offers up to 10 free licences for eligible charities. It can handle virtually any data requirement but requires significant configuration.

Strengths for animal welfare charities:

• Extremely flexible data model that can accommodate complex animal record structures, fostering workflows, and rehoming processes
• Large ecosystem of integrations and add-on applications
• Free licences for qualifying nonprofits (up to 10 users)
• Powerful reporting and dashboard capabilities
• Can scale from small teams to large national organisations

Where Salesforce falls short: Salesforce is not ready to use out of the box. Animal welfare charities without dedicated IT resource or budget for a Salesforce consultant will struggle with implementation. Most charities spend between 5,000 and 30,000 pounds on initial configuration. For smaller rescues, the total cost of ownership often exceeds that of purpose-built charity platforms.

Best for: Large animal welfare organisations (typically 20+ staff) with complex data needs and the budget or internal capacity to configure and maintain the platform.

Comparison Table

How to Choose: A Decision Framework

Start with your organisation's primary operational challenge and work outward.

If animal record-keeping is your biggest gap — you need structured records for every animal in your care, with veterinary history, microchip details, and rehoming workflows — AniLog is the specialist choice. It does one thing and does it well.

If volunteer and fosterer coordination is your core challenge — you rely on networks of fosterers, dog walkers, and volunteers and struggle to manage placements, availability, and communication — Plinth's Volunteering feature is designed for exactly this kind of coordination. You can also configure Case Management to track animal records alongside your volunteer operations.

If fundraising is your lifeblood — you depend on individual donations, membership subscriptions, legacy giving, or event fundraising — prioritise a strong donor management system. Beacon or Donorfy will serve you better than a platform that treats fundraising as secondary.

If you need animal records and fundraising in one system — and you have the budget and technical resource — Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud offers the most flexibility, though at the cost of implementation complexity.

Many animal charities will benefit from combining two systems — for example, AniLog for animal records alongside Plinth for volunteering and impact reporting, or AniLog alongside Donorfy for fundraising. The key is ensuring your core operational workflows are well supported rather than forcing everything into a single platform that compromises on each function.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best CRM for a small animal rescue in the UK?

For small rescues where animal record-keeping is the priority, AniLog is the most relevant specialist option with purpose-built features for intake, veterinary records, and rehoming. If your primary challenge is coordinating fosterers and volunteers rather than animal records, Plinth offers stronger volunteer management with configurable case tracking. If fundraising is your main concern, Donorfy is purpose-built for small-to-medium UK charities. Many small rescues benefit from pairing a specialist animal management tool with a broader charity platform.

Can Plinth track individual animal cases even though it is not animal-specific software?

Yes. Plinth's Case Management feature is designed to be configurable rather than prescriptive. While it does not have pre-built fields for species, breed, or microchip number, you can create custom case structures that capture the information your organisation needs for each animal. Cases can be assigned to staff or volunteers, tracked through configurable status workflows (such as intake, assessment, foster, available for adoption, rehomed), and linked to interactions and outcomes. This approach works well for charities that need animal tracking alongside broader operational features like volunteering and impact reporting.

How do animal welfare charities manage fosterer networks effectively?

Fosterer management is one of the most operationally complex tasks in animal rescue. Finding foster homes is widely cited as the number-one challenge rescues face. Effective management requires tracking fosterer availability, matching animals to suitable homes (considering species, breed experience, existing pets, and household setup), managing placement durations, coordinating handovers, and communicating updates. Plinth's Volunteering feature handles the coordination side — matching volunteers to roles, tracking placements, and managing communication. For the animal-specific side of fostering (medical needs, behavioural notes, dietary requirements), a specialist tool like AniLog or configurable case records in Plinth can complement the volunteering workflows.

Is there a single platform that handles everything an animal charity needs?

No single affordable platform excels at animal-specific record-keeping, volunteer coordination, fundraising, and impact reporting simultaneously. Salesforce comes closest in terms of raw capability but requires significant investment in configuration and maintenance. For most animal welfare charities, combining two focused tools delivers better results than one compromised system. Common pairings include AniLog plus Plinth (animal records plus volunteering and impact), AniLog plus Donorfy (animal records plus fundraising), or Beacon alone if fundraising is the dominant need and animal records can be kept relatively simple.

Do Shelterluv or PetRescue work for UK animal charities?

Shelterluv is a US-based animal shelter management platform that is available in the UK, with pricing based on a per-adoption fee model (approximately 2 dollars per pet adoption). It offers strong medical record functionality designed by a shelter veterinarian. However, it is not built for the UK charity context — it lacks Gift Aid integration, is priced in US dollars, and its support is US-timezone-focused. PetRescue is an Australian platform and does not operate in the UK. For UK-based animal charities, AniLog is the closest equivalent specialist option, with UK-based support and integrations with UK microchip databases.

Recommended Next Pages

• Case Management — Configurable case tracking for animal records, rehoming workflows, and welfare monitoring
• Volunteering — Coordinate fosterers, dog walkers, and volunteer networks
• Bookings — Manage adoption events, volunteer inductions, and fundraising activities
• Surveys — Collect adoption applications, welfare check data, and community feedback
• Impact Reporting — Demonstrate outcomes to funders and supporters
• Partner CRM — Track relationships with veterinary practices, local authorities, and partner rescues

Last updated: February 2026

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