ASPCA Research: Fosters as Adoption Ambassadors

This research project tested the premise that empowering fosters to find adopters and adopt out their foster dogs is a valid strategy for saving more lives. The Louisiana SPCA (LA/SPCA) used this approach during the 2010 ASPCA $100K Challenge and received an R&D Innovation grant after the Challenge to research the impact of the program.

What We Did

We followed two groups of dogs adopted through the LA/SPCA. Each group was randomly assigned and consisted of 45 dogs:

• Dogs in the Traditional group were adopted directly from the shelter.
• Dogs in the Adoption Ambassador (AA) group were adopted out by their foster families.

We collected data on age, breed, size, and total length of stay for the dogs in both groups. In addition, after an adopted dog had been in his or her new home for two weeks, the adopter was given a survey to complete.

From this data, we looked at:

• The time between the date the dog entered the shelter or foster home and the date of adoption (Time to Adoption)
• Returns
• Whether the people who adopted from fosters represented a new market

Research Results

The data collection is complete and the potentially game-changing results are in.

Time to Adoption: It took a little longer for the AA dogs to be adopted. However, since the dogs were in foster homes, they weren't taking up cage space in the shelter.

Returns: The return rate for the AA dogs was significantly lower than it was for the Traditional group, 2% versus 14%.

Adoption Pool: The key differences between the two groups of dogs turned out to be the characteristics of the people who adopted them:

• Only 30.3% of those adopting from the fosters had adopted from a shelter or rescue group in the past compared to 51.9 percent of the people adopting directly from the shelter.
  
  
• People adopting from fosters found their dogs through a wide variety of sources, including word of mouth and seeing the dog out in the community. People adopting directly from the shelter found their dogs primarily by visiting the shelter or the searching the Web.
  
  
• The AA adopters were much more likely to have purchased pets from a breeder in the past than people adopting directly from the shelter.

The data suggest that adopting directly from foster homes enables a shelter to reach a pool of adopters who might not have considered visiting a shelter to adopt.

The ASPCA is collecting data from other shelters who are testing this program. We want to further investigate the strength of this program and ensure that it is not a single-shelter phenomenon.

What's the Bottom Line?

The research strongly supports the notion that empowering fosters to adopt out the animals in their care is a powerful, life-saving tool for:

• stretching shelter capacity,
• reducing returns, and
• most importantly, opening up a whole new market of good homes for shelter animals.