Hi all - My name is Garth Jordan, and I’m the new Executive Director for Alliance of Therapy Dogs (ATD). While I would appreciate the opportunity to meet and chat with you all under different circumstances, I think it’s important to respond to the ongoing inquiries about our longer-than-preferred processing times and the subsequent communication challenges they present. I will do my best to be brief and high-level. First, our small team has been understaffed for at least 4-5 months. Alone, that created a backlog of work. Unfortunately, the staffing shortage is also coupled with a variety of manual, paper-heavy, labor-intensive processes. Even with a few changes (such as suspending our Alternative Review Process), we have gotten further behind. It’s a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle. As the backlog of emails/paperwork increases, so do the Member service phone calls and inquiries about membership status, and subsequently spending time answering calls takes time away from processing memberships. It’s a bit of a doom-loop, vicious cycle, systemic trap, or whatever modern business label you prefer that describes difficult self-perpetuating, circuitous challenges. While I’ve left out many details, the above story is the essence of what we’re trying to solve. What’s more important is the forward-view. For now, we are focusing on the following:
- Short-term: we are hiring at least one additional Staff member, and we hope to bring in a few volunteers and part-time paid Staff to catch up this month before the next membership renewal wave is upon us in October. As such, our goal is to get closer to ’normal’ processing times within the next 4 weeks. That is a goal, not a certainty, and I really can’t be exact with what our processing times can or should be right now.
- Medium-term: we are looking at redesigning a handful of labor-intensive processes to improve our Members’ experiences and/or to improve our ability to execute our mission more efficiently.
- Long-term: we must modernize our technology/processes and invest in our Staff to be more efficient. Today, we cannot grow the organization (or keep it at its current size of ~20,000 Members) and maintain operational and financial stability. That also means we will need to reduce our cost-of-service per Member and/or increase revenue-per-Member. To do that, there are many ideas and levers for us to work with, but it will take time to plan, acquire, and integrate the systems that allow our organization to operate efficiently.
I trust this is at least a little bit helpful. Hopefully I will have a chance to speak with some of you at our next town hall. All my best, Garth Jordan Executive Director Alliance of Therapy Dogs
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