StandUp Weekend 2026
How Team Animal Style spent a weekend using Salesforce to give Lamb’s Haven Rescue the tools to help more animals find their forever homes.
What a Weekend.
TDigital StandUp Weekend is an annual event where the Salesforce ecosystem — admins, developers, architects, and consultants — donates an entire weekend to build real, production-ready technology for a local nonprofit, completely free of charge. This year’s beneficiary was Lamb’s Haven Rescue, a local animal rescue working to create a safe and sustainable future for animals in need. Five specialized teams came together at UT Dallas to build Lamb’s Haven a complete Salesforce platform from the ground up — and delivered it in a single weekend. Massive congratulations to Thanawalla Digital and the organizing team — Sarah, Moyez, and Pamela Thanawalla — on another incredible event.
From Alignment to Delivery — 48 Hours
The weekend didn't start with laptops. Friday evening, we met the animals, heard Lamb's Haven's story, and spent time at a t-shirt upcycling station. The intention was clear: understand why before you build anything. Then we got to work.
Saturday was requirements day — but not the kind where someone disappears into a document. Requirements were validated live. If we didn’t know, we asked. If we weren’t sure, we confirmed, came back, and kept moving. With a team ranging from a 15-year-old with zero Salesforce experience to enterprise architects, shared understanding mattered more than anything. Once that clicked, everything moved faster.
Sunday was where it got real — trade-offs, dependencies, cross-team collaboration. We pressure-tested everything, not just within our team but across all five teams and with Lamb’s Haven directly. Building in a silo is easy. Building something people will actually use takes real collaboration.
Different skill levels. Different perspectives. One team mindset. That’s what stood out most.
Five Teams. One Complete Platform.
What made StandUp Weekend 2026 extraordinary was the scale of collaboration. Five specialized teams tackled different pillars of Lamb’s Haven’s operations simultaneously — each led by an experienced Salesforce professional volunteering their expertise. Together they delivered an end-to-end platform that would have taken a professional services firm months to build.
Animal Lifecycle Management
Tracking every animal from intake through vetting, fostering, and adoption — the core system that gives Lamb's Haven a single source of truth for every animal in their care. This was our team's mission.
Foster & Volunteer Operations
Building the systems to recruit, onboard, and coordinate the volunteers and foster families who are the lifeblood of any rescue organization.
Grant Management
Creating the infrastructure to track grant opportunities, applications, reporting deadlines, and funding outcomes — helping Lamb's Haven pursue sustainable funding.
Donation Management
Building donor tracking, recurring donation management, and acknowledgment workflows so Lamb's Haven can nurture the relationships that keep the rescue running.
Platform Foundations
The unsung heroes — setting up the Salesforce org architecture, security model, data structure, and integrations that all five teams built upon.
Our Team’s Piece of the Puzzle
While all five teams built out different pillars of Lamb’s Haven’s platform, our focus was the Animal Lifecycle Management system — the beating heart of any rescue operation. Every animal, tracked from the moment they arrive to the day they find their forever home.
Animal Intake & Records
Staff can now create a complete animal profile in minutes — name, breed, gender, microchip number, bonded animals, health notes, and intake photos — all in one place and searchable instantly.
Lifecycle Tracking
Every animal moves through clearly defined stages: Intake → Vetting → Pre-Adoption → Adopted. Staff can see exactly where each animal stands at a glance, with a full history of updates.
Vet Appointment Scheduling
Vet appointments are logged directly to each animal’s record and tied to the responsible team member, so nothing falls through the cracks and everyone stays informed.
Foster & Adopter Management
Fosters and adopters are tracked as contacts linked to the animals in their care. The system flags ineligible contacts to prevent unsuitable placements — protecting the animals first.
Adoption Applications
Applications flow automatically from a Google Form into Salesforce via a data connector — no manual data entry required. Staff can review, approve, or flag applicants directly in the system.
No more siloed spreadsheets. No more manual lookups. One system, every animal, every step of the journey.
The People Behind It
A team of ten — ranging from a 15-year-old tackling Salesforce for the first time to enterprise architects with decades of experience. Led by Anh Phuong Ta, and made extra special for me personally by getting to build alongside my son Jude.
Team MVP — Austin Wells
Austin didn’t just help — he mentored. Watching him guide Jude, asking thoughtful questions, and letting him take the lead showed what this experience is really about: building confidence, not just solutions.
Why This Weekend Matters
There’s something electric about a room full of people who showed up on a Friday evening — not because they had to, but because they wanted to. The kick-off event at UT Dallas had adoptable dogs wandering the room, a live donation tracker climbing toward $5,000, and a proclamation from the City of Richardson recognizing the event’s impact on the community.
By Sunday afternoon, Lamb’s Haven had a working Salesforce platform built by dedicated volunteers who gave their weekend freely across five teams. That platform will help them track animals, manage volunteers, track grants and donations, process adoption applications, and grow sustainably for years to come.
This was my second StandUp Weekend. It won’t be my last.
Technology built with care, by people who care, for causes that deserve care. That’s what this weekend is about.
Help Lamb's Haven Do More Good
Every animal at Lamb's Haven is waiting for their story to have a happy ending. You can be part of that — whether by adopting, fostering, donating, or just spreading the word.
More from Technology & AI
I Learned a New Word: Sycophantic
And then I built something so I'd never have to think about it again.
I Didn't Start With a Plan — I Started With a Question
I didn’t set out to become a gardener. I set out to get better at using AI. A low-stakes raised bed experiment turned into a lesson about feedback loops, staying in the conversation, and why squirrels are basically production bugs.