About DART Command Central

DART Command Central evolved from team meetings of the Central Vermont Disaster Animal Response Team (CVDART) working to improve our readiness to set up and run an emergency pet shelter on short notice.   It began with a series of training sessions. Volunteers were presented with a handful of documents - intake forms, special instructions forms, medical care forms, forms for items that came with the pet, forms to be filled out when a pet left with its family for the day, forms for feeding and cleaning. It seemed endless. There had to be a better way to organize all the needed information into something more manageable than a folder full of papers – and there had to be a better use of volunteers’ time than filling out form after form. That realization led to the launch of DART Command Central.

What started as an exercise to learn the paper forms evolved into a laptop-based prototype for the registration process, and then into a detailed method for data management. Two years of monthly CVDART meetings and training sessions as well as full-on simulations of numerous sheltering situations has put this prototype to the test and led to constant revisions and improvements until it matured into a robust system that can be adapted to any type of disaster.

DART Command Central is designed to ease the burden and stress of sheltering and will benefit both humans and pets. Our plan is for anyone who helps manage an emergency pet shelter to have free access to the Emergency Shelter Module.

We have received grant money from State Farm allowing us to implement the first part of the software development, which will provide users with a system for organizing and operating an Emergency Animal Shelter. The next stage will incorporate more detailed information used during sheltering and allow for more complete documentation between organizations and agencies. The final stage will be to make DART Command Central a mobile app that can be used on phones and tablets even without internet access, making it yet more nimble and user friendly.

In March 2022 DART Command Central obtained 501c3 status.  This opened the door to many more grant opportunities, as well as making individual donations tax-deductible.