Shelter’s Edge

I was recently on a phone meeting with a shelter, trouble shooting flow issues in the implementation of some new programming. While we were chatting about their intake flow, they shared that a significant percentage of their intake is coming from night drops in their drop boxes. These are unmanned cages in a lobby area that automatically lock once a pet is placed in.

I am philosophically opposed to these boxes for many reasons – all adding up to decreased lives saved. The senior team at the shelter shared that there was some interest to move away from the drop boxes, but that much of the staff was dead set against it. They were concerned of what would happen to the animals who come overnight if there is no box to place them in.

I think not what would happen to the animals, but what is happening to the animals. Animals with infectious disease are placed in cages next to animals who are healthy, because there is no staff to shuttle animals to the appropriate space. Suffering animals may languish overnight in the box; cats and dogs are co-housed in cages side by side… The ASPCA’s own Dr. Lila Miller – often referred to as the founding mother of Shelter Medicine – says this of drop boxes: “I don’t believe there is any place in 21^st century shelters for treating animals like merchandise by placing them in an untended drop boxes.”

What message are we sending to the community regarding our dogs’ and cats’ places in our lives? There have been some interesting articles on the subject:

“Animal Shelter To Close After-Hours Night Drop”

“Night-Drop Kennels for Animals: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”

“Citing disease and costs, Palm Beach County’ s animal shelter closes night drop-off for unwanted pets”

When animals placed in overnight drops are processed into the shelter, they come with little or no information, increasing the time and resources needed to process the animals effectively. Owner-relinquished animals who may have been quickly transitioned onto the adoption floor are instead housed for the stray period – increasing costs and increasing the likelihood of disease for that animal, and all others in the population.

It is this piece that offers us some light – as I know many of you are looking for options to move away from drop boxes. If you are a larger shelter, add up the costs for stray holding for the many likely relinquished animals who come to the drop box, along with the costs associated with increased disease and the lost relinquishment fees of those dropping off overnight. You will likely find the funds to have either an on-call position, or an in-shelter position to properly care for and process animals who come overnight.

Smaller facilities may also be able to cover a staff person with the shift, but if not, proper messaging in the community can go a long way. There are likely emergency vets, or relationships with vets, EMTs, fire stations and more to help support the few who truly can not wait until morning. It is time to explore those options.

Many of you have transitioned away from drop boxes. Your stories would be very meaningful to others reading this forum – I hope you will share.

We’re just two weeks away from our big annual benefit so, of course, I’m eyeball-deep in event planning. To make sure I’ve covered all the bases, I just took a look back at Purple Carpet Event blog from June 8 entitled Event Planning – 8 Common & Costly Mistakes to Avoid. This post is actually directed at meeting and conference planners, but there were a few Common & Costly Mistakes that hit home with me. This one, in particular, got me right where it hurts.

Being Cheap – If people are paying good money and time to show up at your event, make sure they are getting their money’s worth.

It’s oh-so-tempting, when planning our major fundraising events, to squeeze out every dollar assuming that our audiences will tolerate some corner-cutting because they want us to raise as much money as possible. If I didn’t know this was a bad idea before, I surely figured it out at a recent benefit where I felt so underserved that I probably won’t attend future events even though I wholeheartedly support the mission.

The problem was simple. The event was a pricy dinner dance with a lot of costs involved. To maximize their profits, the planners sold reserved tables. So far so good – the problem arose when they sold so many tables that they didn’t have enough places for unattached couples or individuals. When my friends and I walked into the room, all we saw was a sea of RESERVED signs, making us feel like party-crashers – and after we went through the absurdly long buffet line (another cost-cutting measure), we wandered aimlessly as our food grew cold looking for a place to sit and eat. Finally, after asking a committee member, we were directed to an abandoned table (no centerpiece or other decoration) in a back room away from the action where we ultimately connected with a number of other lost souls. All in all, a very unsatisfying experience for us – and since we and our fellow travelers were far removed from the silent and live auctions and other income-generating activities, it actually ended up hurting the bottom line.

So why did this hit me so hard this morning? Because we’re at that crucial point in planning our event, where we’ve sold as many tables as we should for the comfort of our guests and it’s absolutely going to kill me not to take any more table sponsorships. Ouch!

To keep from giving in to temptation, I keep telling myself what I know to be true – people come to our events to have fun. Yes, many come because they believe in the mission, but even they want to have a good experience. And if we’re using events to expand our audiences (and in this case, we definitely are), we have to assume that many of our guests are coming for the event – not the cause. It’s our job to provide them with the best possible experience so they’ll keep coming back – and that means treating each and every guest as if he or she is the most important person in the room.

Heck, if they come back often enough, they may even become wedded to the mission – but even if they don’t, their continuing attendance at our events will go a long way to helping us do our work.

There never seems to be enough time or money for all of the important work in animal welfare. But one thing there is no shortage of in our field is disagreement. And all too often it seems that we deal with disagreement either through escalation (louder and nastier attack behavior) or splintering (walking away with our resources to start our own groups). What a waste! Both of these behaviors drain resources from our ultimate aim – i.e., helping animals.

Duke University professor Dan Ariely teaches Behavioral Economics – which examines the ways that human social factors disrupt traditional economic theories. For example, why people frequently make choices against their own self interest, yet believe – even in the face of evidence to the contrary – that their decisions are in their best self interest.

In this sobering little clip, Ariely discusses research that may help explain why it is so difficult to achieve conflict resolution. Ariely and associates have been able to prove that our expectations of a situation are powerful enough to change our physiology. What’s more, our expectations – or belief systems – shape our reality.

Say, for example, that you think cats are the best pets and I think dogs are. When we sit down to negotiate, we are actually approaching the situation from two distinctly different realities. That’s right – our thinking and beliefs have created our own sense of reality. And according to Ariely, it is not likely that we’re actually going to be able to understand each other’s reality enough to come to a mutually satisfying conclusion.

Obviously this isn’t a big deal when arguing something trivial. But what happens when we sit down to discuss – say – adoption policies? Let’s say, for example, that I believe that cats should never be declawed, and therefore I want an adoption policy to deny adoptions to anyone who intends to declaw. And let’s say you believe that discharging cats alive takes precedence over whether cats will be declawed. How would we arrive at an adoption policy that we are both happy with? More importantly, how would we arrive at an adoption policy that is in the best interests of the cats and communities we serve?

Ariely concludes that the best approach is for both parties to recognize and acknowledge their biases, and to turn the conflict over to a neutral third party to determine the resolution. Perhaps, but I’m actually more interested in that interim step of recognizing our biases.

I think there would be tremendous value to our field if we all refined the skill of understanding – first of ourselves, and then of each other. What if we started asking ourselves questions like: Where did this belief of mine come from? What events and people influenced my belief? What if my belief is true? What if it’s false? And then, imagine if we took the time to walk each other through the story of how we formed our beliefs. I think we’d reach a whole new level of understanding and respect for each other.

Personally, I’m less interested in finding the one correct answer (in part because I think anything involving humans is too complex for there to be one correct answer) than in seeing our field mature in a way that we can debate respectfully. Who knows what solutions we might begin to uncover with an expanded view of “reality”!

The ASPCA $100K Challenge contestants have just completed their 4^th week of competition, continuing to roll out innovative programs and promotions that engage their communities. Here’s the latest and greatest. And P.S., if your agency is featured here, click that green button at right—and ask your followers to retweet, too.

Start spreading the news: Jacksonville Humane Society has been busy painting the town—or at least plastering it with some clever and compassionate advertising. In conjunction with participation in the ASPCA $100K, the Florida agency last week kicked off its “Suddenly” adoption and giving campaign, including print ads, radio spots and even gas station pump signage.
“We want to spotlight how dogs and cats can do wonders for people, while encouraging increased foot traffic to our organization,” they blogged.

And while we’re on the topic of poster dogs, The Humane Society of North Texas proved to the community 15 times over that “with just a little bit of time and love, untrained shelter dogs can be valued family companions.” The Fort Worth organization hosted the 2010 Extreme Mutt Makeover, in which 15 HSNT dogs—selected for their, er, extreme greenness when it comes to basic manners—were hooked up with volunteer trainers who spent 8 weeks preparing them for competition. Here, trainer Blake Ovard helps Cowboy show off his new skills:
More than 40 dogs were available for adoption at the event, and all of them—including the 15 “makeovers”—found homes. “Watching our dogs compete was amazing in and of itself,” said HSNT’s Nelda Corbell, “but to add in such a large number of quality adoptions to really great people, especially in the same day, made all the work worthwhile.”

And teaming up to save lives was the order of business over in Georgia, too. “Here at the Atlanta Humane Society, we are very grateful for our sponsors who are helping with the ASPCA $100K Challenge,” blogged the agency. The Westin has donated collapsible water bowls to be given out with each adoption, and when folks order a Bruster’s ice cream pie, half gallon or coupon book online, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to AHS. Sweet!

And for some eye candy, check out this video from Tallahassee-Leon Community Animal Service Center. First in the Pet-ertainment Tonight series, it features fun tabloid TV-style coverage of the community’s Reaching for the Stars adoption event, in which the shelter’s animals were given names like Tomcat Cruise and Scarlett Johoundson. Congrats on the 102 adoptions that evening, TLCASC, and kudos to the city’s elected officials for agreeing to sponsor and act as “star agents” for individual animals:

Wisconsin Humane Society didn’t disappoint in the celebrity department either:
That’s WHS’ ASPCA $100K Challenge spokesdog Gracie next to a life-size bronze of the Fonz, Henry Winkler’s character in the Milwaukee-based Happy Days series. The pooch hit the streets to raise awareness about the contest, and to let residents know how they can help out. And Aaaay!!! It’s Gracie again at the city’s ultimate orange landmark, “The Calling,” by artist Mark di Suvero:
Fun, right? So until next week…say good night (and good job, Challenge contestants!), Gracie!

I know, I know, this series just never seems to end—but it’s not my fault! You guys keep cranking out brilliant work that so effectively promotes adoptions and raises public awareness about spay/neuter and at-risk animals. I’ve compiled a representative sampling here—some are golden oldies I’ve been raving about since day 1 of this blog; some are new vids on the block. Sit back and enjoy the show, courtesy of your colleagues—and if they inspire you to create a mini-masterpiece for your agency, send the link to puned@aspca.org. Part 5, anyone? 

P.S. Is your agency featured here? Hit that retweet button—your followers should know you’re getting props!

“He would if he could,” PetFix Northeast Ohio
Poodle’s got some acting chops.

“The Matey Bunch,” Humane Society of Boulder Valley
Anyone want to tag-team on a Purrtridge Family spin-off with me? (I’m serious.)

 

“Black Pets PSA,” Nevada Humane Society
Keepin’ it simple packs a profound punch.

“The Real Morris the Cat with Sunglasses,” San Francisco SPCA
In Sensurround, thanks to some shaky camerawork from a cat.

“Need a new wing man?,” Denver Dumb Friends
“Fresh and modern,” says the viewer who pointed this one out to me.

 

“Help Lilly Find Her Lifeline,” Nebraska Humane Society
Heartstrings? Tugged at.

“Cash: The Movie,” Berkshire Humane Society
A preview you’ll want to sit through.

“I Wanna Be Spayed,” Animal Friends Pet Adoption & Resource Center
20-20-20-4 puppies to go…

“What You Can Do,” South Suburban Humane Society
Lovin’ how the viewer gets a shelter tour in the process.

“They’re Everywhere,” Colorado Pet Overpopulation Fund
Unexpected, and brilliant, use of setting.

What’d you think? Add your review in the comment box.

Image: Telegraph.co.uk

A very exciting study focusing on collar use and cats has just been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA). The study was conducted by some big hitters in the field—Dr. Linda Lord, Dr. Brenda Griffin, the ASPCA’s own Dr. Margaret Slater, and Dr. Julie Levy. I am so excited about this study because it debunks the belief that many pet owners hold that cats cannot wear—and can even be hurt by—collars. These concerns can limit guardians from placing collars—and therefore simple personalized ID tags—on their cats.

The objective of the study was to determine the percentage of pet cats who were still wearing collars and had functioning microchips 6 months after they were placed on the cats.

Three different collars were used for the study—plastic buckle collars, breakaway plastic buckle safety collars, and elastic stretch safety collars. A total of 558 cats (and 338 owners) participated in the study. Each cat was randomly assigned one of the 3 collars. The collar, a microchip tag, and a microchip were all applied to the cat at the start of the study. Guardians were contacted after 1 week, then 1 month, and then monthly until the study’s end (6 months after the intervention).

Here is where it gets wicked exciting! Of the 538 cats enrolled in the study, 391 (72.7%) wore their collars through the completion of the study. 72.7%! Wowza!  

The style that had the fewest reports of loss, forelimbs caught in collar, and mouth caught in collar? The simple buckle collar. The authors explore other collar issues, too—and the buckle collar most often comes out the winner. This is really important information as we are ultimately aiming for collaring and tagging of all cats who leave shelters. By choosing the collar that is least likely to be troublesome, and least likely to be lost, we will be truly decreasing risk by helping to ensure that cats can be quickly identified and reunited with their owners.           

The authors had surveyed the cat guardians at the time of intervention about their expectations of how well their cat would tolerate the collar, and then asked post-intervention about how well the cat was tolerating the collar. They found that 56.3% of the guardians reported that their cat’s tolerance of the collar exceeded their expectations, with only 8% reporting that their cat’s tolerance was worse than they expected. Think about the education opportunities we may have by simply putting the cat collar on the cats before they leave the shelter!

I have only touched the surface of this exciting research—I suggest you grab a copy and read it through. Tell me what you find most interesting and how you would use this research to help cats in your community.

Late last month, I used this space to whine about the meager results we’re achieving from our efforts at online fundraising. Having received notice of a hefty fee increase from our online donation service, I asked the question, “Do we crawl back into the dark ages and hone our snail mail appeals, grant proposals, and events – or do we continue trying to build an online following? And if we decide to stick with it, what can we do to make this whole thing more productive?”  

Well, I got an answer – a very detailed and helpful answer from none other than ASPCA Director of Member Communications and online communications guru Ayumi Stubbs. After taking a look at our Facebook Page and website, Ayumi sent along so many good tips, I thought I’d just share them with you. I left in the references to our organization for clarity but you can easily just substitute yours. I hope you find Ayumi’s tips as helpful as I did.

To: Timy Sullivan, PetFix Northeast Ohio
From: Ayumi Stubbs, ASPCA Director, Member Communications

The link to Facebook from www.petfixnortheastohio.org
The current link goes to the Info tabbed page, which is blank! That might be confusing for a user. You should link to the Wall tab, which is where there is the most up-to-date info.Can’t believe we didn’t figure out that one for ourselves. We made that change in about a minute.

And speaking of Facebook links…
You should grab yourself a Facebook shortcut by going here. First, they’ll ask you to set a shortcut for your personal profile. Then you can choose your Facebook Page and pick a shortcut for that – maybe something like, www.facebook.com/petfixohio. The shorter, the better! You can promote it on print materials, add it to your email signature, etc.

Donate Buttons on Facebook Pages
You can use this application to add HTML to your page (which will allow you to add whatever button you want – the donate button on the website would be a great choice). Here is a tutorial on how it works.You can see it in action on our Facebook Page – scroll down until you see a bunch of bright orange buttons on the left side.Website
In addition to the Facebook button you already have, you could consider adding “Share” buttons to every page on your website. This allows people to add it to their own Facebook Wall, which all their friends will see. Here is where you can go to customize and download code.

If you visit a page within the ASPCA website, you’ll notice we always have the Facebook Share button in the upper right corner. The counter will show you how often something is shared. Here is an example:YouTube Video
The video linked from your website is hysterical! Here are some suggestions for increasing traffic to the video.
- Add it to your Facebook page! You have a video tab option in Facebook – once you upload it, post it to the wall!
- Change the YouTube title. “He would if he could” is funny, but doesn’t look exciting in a long list of videos, and won’t show up in searches for keywords like “spay/neuter,” “dog,” etc. Maybe something like… Funny Spay/Neuter Dog Video. In the description, you should indicate it’s for PetFix Northeast Ohio, and include a link to the website.
- Apply to join YouTube Nonprofits. Once you join, you’ll be able to ask for donations directly from the video page, and also add links to your website directly into the video that people can click on. Here’s an example.

Anyone else want to chime in?

It’s our annual planning season and we’re knee-deep in goals and strategies and budget spreadsheets. I love and hate this time of year because it’s loaded with possibility, but it also tends to draw a sort of shade over the work we’re currently doing. And that’s bad because we’re in the middle of really important work – ironically, the very work we were so excited about last year at this time.

So I went looking for a little Zen to help me stay in the moment. Zen Habits is loaded with simple, practical guidelines for achieving big by focusing small. Leo Babauta nicely describes important concepts like figuring out what’s essential, clarifying the impact you’re looking for, and why and how to place limits.

Now I think I need more than just a little Zen, because I’m realizing I’ve been here before. I’ve told myself to narrow and focus. But I always get lured away by the forbidden fruit of “just this one other project.” This devilish voice in my head starts shouting, More, I want to do more! And my coworkers and colleagues are forever tempting me with these new exciting opportunities. I delude myself into thinking that I can chock my days fuller and still get my work done, and I end up multitasking. But am I really doing more?

I took this nifty test developed at Stanford University to see how well I multitask. Try it: Multitasking Test

Wow, I scored off the chart… in a bad way. Bottom line, I stink at multitasking. Humbling!

Take the test. You might score better than I did, but don’t get too cocky – because according to Neuroscientist and MIT Professor Earl Miller, none of us really multitasks. It isn’t physically possible. What we’re doing is switching from one thing to the next really fast. And, he says, every time we do – we lose time because we’ve got to refocus. Net result: multitasking = taking longer to do a poorer job.

So is more less? Well in my case, at least, yes!

Mark Twain said, “It takes nine months to have a baby, no matter how many people you put on the job.” This is now written on my 2011 planning folder. And I’ve bookmarked Zen Habits, because I recognize I need help kicking my addiction to “more.” I don’t want more, what I really want… is to achieve impact!

Photo 1: Geo Images

WOW! How blown away are we by the ASPCA $100K Challenge contestants? Check out what they’ve been up to during the third week of the contest. And P.S., if you’re rooting for any of the agencies featured here, please retweet this article (see that green button to the right?) and help spread the word about their amazing work.

Yes, good grooming and hygiene can help save animals’ lives—and possibly even break a Guinness World Record! As we type this, Kansas Humane Society’s $100K Challenge event at Lomantini—the Salon is in full-swing…or should we say, full-snip? Wichita salon owner Patrick Lomantini is attempting to cut hair continuously for 72 hours—with all haircuts free and all tips donated to KHS. Here’s a shot of the master on his fourth haircut (given to KHS’ own Melissa) on Friday:

And South Suburban Humane Society has set a fun goal for themselves, too—100K fans on their Facebook page, in honor of the ASPCA $100K! The Chicago Heights, IL, agency is urging the community to ask all their friends and family to become fans, too—along with spreading the message about SSHS’ great services.

And while we’re talking community outreach… The Humane Society of Greater Dayton has left the building…literally. The Ohio agency has set up an offsite adoption center, the MeowZa! cat boutique, at the Dayton Mall. “Cats and kittens are flying out of the store,” they blogged. View the vid here:

We love to see the contestants thinking big—but we’re also loving their success stories focusing on one special cat adopted, one litter of kittens heading off to a foster home, one little lost dog reunited with his owner…

Animal Rescue League of Boston’s Intake Department shared the story of Bailey, a stray Chihuahua who slipped off his collar on the evening of August 18 and found himself at the shelter the next morning. “We scanned Bailey and found a microchip,” blogged ARLB, “helping us reunite him with his owner (pictured below) 24 hours after he was lost.”

And nothing can wrap up the week better than this photo demonstrating the human-animal (stuffed animal-animal?) bond, taken at the Bark in the Park event at Joseph L Bruno Stadium, cohosted by Menands, NY’s Mohawk & Hudson River Humane Society:

“Attendance was 4,077 people and 196 dogs, enough to break the single-game dog attendance record,” they blogged. 

Way cool, you guys. And we’re thinking our contestants are gonna be breaking all kinds of records by the time the Challenge is over…

After reading “Jargon Hunting,” my coworker Valerie Sheppard forwarded me a post on the Wild Apricot non-profit technology blog, “In Defence of Jargon.” Citing examples like “Ping me” and “Drink the Kool-aid,” Rebecca Leaman argues that jargon can potentially be “the quickest and most efficient way to convey an idea.”

Leaman’s not what I’d call—watch out, corny pun coming at ya—a total Jargonaut, though. “Another problem arises when sector-specific terms are used in conversation with those out of the loop, those in other sectors, industries or networks who may use their own, different, internal code,” she writes. “To expect them to understand your organizational jargon is rather like shouting in Mandarin at a unilingual English speaker. Not productive.”

Based on the feedback I received from you, the above situation often applies to communications between the animal sheltering sector and the public it serves. Check out what you added to our list of regularly used terms that the public does not always understand:

Kitten Season, as contributed by Cleveland Animal Protective League’s Sharon Harvey. “My favorite jargon aha moment came while speaking in front of a group of animal lovers about our challenges with cat overpopulation,” Harvey tells us. “When I mentioned kitten season, a woman’s hand shot up, and in a trembly voice she asked, ‘You mean they’re out there shooting them and it’s OK…they give people permits?’ Needless to say, I approach that topic differently now!”

DSH, DMH, DLH: “We’re frequently getting questioned regarding their meaning on the feline cage cards,” comments one of our Facebook fans.

DHLPP and FVRCP vaccines, HESKA testing: “We encounter confusion over those terms,” reports Rockwall PETS‘ Michael Kitkoski.

Spay/Neuter/Alter: Many of you, including The Social Animal’s Emily Garman and Animal Rescue League of Boston’s Susan Ruderman, reported these and/or variations thereof. “Spay/neuter—as well as ‘altered’ and especially ‘surgical sterilization’—may not translate as well, to at least some sectors of our constituents,” says Ruderman. “For some people, what they understand is fixed.”

Spaying vs. Spraying: “The confusion between these two seems to happen more than you would think!” adds Ruderman.

Feral: More evidence to support confusion around this term comes from Shelters’ Edge’s own Timy Sullivan: “I was taken aback recently when a college student who was volunteering to help us with our Facebook posts asked if feral cats were cats without hair. I’m sure glad she asked. Guess we still have some educating to do…”

I’m thinking about keeping a running list of these terms, as an ongoing reminder that, as Ruderman so eloquently puts it, “The words matter, and the more we can consider the layperson’s perspective when we explain things, the more successful we can be.” Email me at puned@aspca.org or, better yet, leave a comment below if you think of anything else to add to the list.

But I’d like to leave you with some, ahem, food for thought, courtesy of Julie Morris, ASPCA Senior Vice President, Community Outreach: “Our Accounting Manager decided to bake a cake for someone’s birthday,” recalls Morris of her early days of animal sheltering in Michigan. “She had never worked with decorative frosting before and found it harder than anticipated so just went to initials—HBC. When she presented the cake, everyone stood there awestruck, and she asked what was going on. Some brave soul responded, ‘Why would you put Hit By a Car on a cake?’  Turns out it was short for HAPPY BIRTHDAY CATHY!”

There is a saying that goes, “There are 3 types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” As you can imagine, as a scientist this is not my favorite saying. However, there is some truth to it. Numbers, rates, and stats make many of us a bit dizzy – we shut down to the details – and when we can’t understand the details, we sure can’t see the big picture.

The numbers actually never lie. We just need to understand what the numbers are actually representing – and when an increase or decrease is reported, what the change is compared to. This is naked data—and I am ready to bare it all.

Imagine a shelter with an intake of 1,500, 500 live releases and 500 euthanasias. The shelter can report these numbers in a variety of ways:

• The shelter can choose to say that they have a “save rate” of 66.66%. Save rate is normally reported as intake minus euthanasia divided by intake.  This formula includes as “saved” the population of animals who still do not have a final disposition.
• The shelter might choose to report a euthanasia rate of 33.33%.  This still leaves that population that has yet to have a final disposition unaccounted for.
• The shelter might report their numbers using the formula that we at the ASPCA use – the Live Release Rate, where we take all live releases and divide that number by all live intake. In our example above, we would have a live release rate of 33.33%.

As you can see, these different formulas can make it very difficult to compare apples to apples. The same shelter has a save rate of 66.66% (where ‘saved’ includes animals who will likely ultimately be euthanized) and a live release rate of 33.33% (where animals without a final fate are included in the formula of intake). While a shelter reporting save rate sounds like it has a higher number of animals finding homes, it in fact has the same exact amount… they are just counting non-dispositioned animals in their formula. Now in the real world, I would hope that no shelter would ever have half of its total intake without a final disposition… but you get the point.

My gut screams that we need NAKED DATA. In our ASPCA partner communities, we have had the opportunity to use this naked data and have the ability to compare the data – with all numbers consistent in what they represent, using terms defined in our glossary!– from Spokane to Tampa, thus allowing us to move toward true black-and-white benchmarks. As an example, check out Austin’s numbers for the 4^th quarter of 2009, broken down from intake to outcome.

Want to learn more? We will be facilitating workshops about naked data at the 6 PetPoint summits and a few other regional workshops this year. I hope to see you there. If you cannot come or want to chew on more, be sure to check back here often, as I will be revisiting this topic and showing you some real-world examples of the power of naked data.

Golden dogs...get it?

Honestly, I didn’t title this post after the Golden Girls theme song just because I wanted you, too, to have the pleasure of it repeating in your head for the next 3 days  (…traveled down the road and back again…)

Nah, I just wanted to pass on some things I’ve heard and seen recently about your friends — your Facebook friends and fans, that is — and the importance of engaging them offline. You know, kinda like if Blanche wanted to take one of her casual flirtations to the next level and build a relationship.

Shelters, your Facebook page can be a powerful tool in building relationships with your community. And even if you’ve grown your fanbase to your liking, now the challenge becomes how to keep them engaged.  “Liking” something or commenting on a cute photo is great, but wouldn’t it be great if your fans became volunteer dog walkers, attended your next benefit at a local restaurant, adopted that cat in the photo, or told their friends to adopt that cat in the photo….As Farra Trompeter, social media strategist and Big Duck vice president, explained during her recent NTEN webinar, “10 Social Media Practices Your Non Profit Should Know & Do,” it’s important to “emphasize the social in social media” — that was #5, by the way — “and connect offline and realtime with online.”

And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew…

Well, that’s one way to build relationships—and that’s exactly what Charleston Animal Society (CAS) did. As a way to thank their devoted Facebook fans, CAS planned a special reception at the shelter for them last summer. “We couldn’t save and improve so many lives without the support of the community,” read the invite. “Please come by and grab a beer and a tour of our beautiful facility.” Says Kay Hyman, CAS director of outreach and communications, “We’d just started getting our Facebook page up to about 600 fans, and thought they’d enjoy seeing our building as well.” Did they ever! The 60 attendees met the adoptable pets up close and personal, and got a tour of the spay/neuter surgery suite. A fabulous example of connecting online with the offline.

MSPCA-Angell’s Facebook fan page also does a great job of offering ways for the community to become involved—whether it’s by urging folks to take action on humane legislation or asking fans to get their friends to become fans. “When we write about an event or an adoptable animal on Facebook,” says Rachael Kaplan, MSPCA-Angell’s web content manager, “a good portion of our fan base tells us that they will be attending that event or will spread the word about that animal. And, when we ask for donations for a certain cause – many of them give.”

And Kaplan doesn’t forget follow-up either—for example, MSPCA-Angell invited fans to their annual Walk for the Animals, heavily promoted the event and then posted a Photo Album of the event. The comments left by fans who attended help stir excitement for future events and create a real sense of community.

So are you inviting your online supporters to continue the conversation—and the engagement—offline? Have you gained any adopters or volunteers through social networking? Do you think you’d hook up with these folks at all if it weren’t for Facebook?

P.S. And also important–will you be joining the 500K fans of this page in watching Saturday Night Live on May 8?!

My staff have been working their tails off lately so I sent them each a thank you note.  As the mail made its way across the continent (we work remotely from around the country), I was inundated with calls and emails expressing their appreciation.  They were thanking me, for thanking them.  Wow!  Now granted, these were not your ordinary notes – I chose just the right card for each person and then I wrote a special note to each one of them, acknowledging their particular efforts and the way their work makes a difference for our group or our work overall.  But even so, I’m a little blown away by the depth of the “thank yous” in return.

I don’t know why I’m surprised.  I actually teach the importance of feedback in staff management workshops and I wrote an article about it a few years ago. So of all people, you’d hope that I would know how important positive feedback is.  Well, I do know it, but sadly knowing and doing are two different things, aren’t they?

Happy Brain

So I started updating some of my know-how re: positive feedback and I got happily lost for a bit in cyberland when I landed on Positive Psychology.  In a nutshell, Positive Psychology seeks to balance our understanding of people and our capacity to help them by learning as much about the nature, causes and supportive structures of happiness as that of negative states such as sadness, depression and anger.  In other words, looking at the whole picture instead of just half of it – wow, yin and yang, genius!  There’s even an alternative to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the American Psychological Association’s index of all things unwell.  The alternative, co-authored by Martin Seligman, who chairs The Positive Psychology Center at UPENN, is Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (CSV).  According to the CSV, the impact of happiness – or lack thereof – is profound.  Happiness enhances our ability to learn, gives us determination to accomplish things in spite of obstacles, strengthens our ability to form relationships, and helps us think before responding to situations.  The list goes on, but these four attributes are enough to convince me that it’s well worth my time to help my staff be happy at their work.  Yes, I want staff who learn, achieve, form relationships and think before they leap!

So this is my wake-up call.  And heck, why not make it your wake-up call, too.  Staff represent well over 50% of our organizational costs.  The cost of replacing a staff member is astronomical.  And while money may lure people to a job (okay, maybe in other fields, but probably not in ours), no matter what resource you consult – you’ll find job satisfaction in the number one or number two position of what employees want most.  A sense of accomplishment comes from the work itself and from knowledge that our efforts make a difference.

Plus, people just plain like to be noticed.  Come to think of it, I like being noticed, too.  So send a comment – tell me how you give your staff positive feedback.  And hey – thank you!

Photo: Dan McLean

In 1999, Geauga Humane Society was a small, worthy, but underfunded organization working from an uninviting, substandard shelter that made good husbandry almost impossible and attracting adopters a major challenge. Within just two years, the organization raised over $2 million and opened Rescue Village, a new state-of-the-art facility where people of all ages now come together to care for and celebrate animals. This is the story of Hugh, the plain brown street dog who became the centerpiece of the campaign to build Rescue Village.

Hugh may not have been the brightest penny in the jar, but he taught me a lesson that toy makers and sugary cereal companies have known for years – there’s no better way to get to parents than through their kids.

Actually, that was the farthest thing from our minds when we signed Hugh up for training with Therapy Dogs International. We had recently created the GHS Ambassadors Therapy Dog Program to train a group of reliable dogs and owners who would represent the organization, and shelter dogs in general, at community events. It just seemed logical to include our new spokesdog in the mix.

Once he earned his yellow tag, Hugh became the mainstay of our fledgling humane education program. Even then, we didn’t think of humane ed as having anything directly to do with the campaign to build a new a shelter. It was simply part of our mission. Staff members and volunteers went into classrooms and presented the usual lessons on dog bite prevention, choosing an appropriate pet, proper animal care, and the importance of spay/neuter. Hugh’s role was simply to get the kids’ attention and make the sessions more memorable by allowing the children to run their hands through his soft brown coat on the way out the door. As a souvenir, each child received a personally autographed Hugh bookmark to take home.

The school visits had been going on for about a year when Hugh and I were invited to march in the local Blossom Time Parade. Now this parade is a big, big deal with fire trucks and floats and bands and lots of little girls in sequins dancing their way from the high school down a long grade to the center of town.  People come from miles around to line the parade route.

As Hugh and I stepped out, I saw a little girl pull on her mother’s sleeve saying, “Look mom, there’s Hugh.”  Cool, I thought, she recognizes him from school.

Then the crescendo started to build. “Hugh.” “There’s Hugh.”  “It’s Hugh, Daddy, it’s Hugh.” By the time we made it halfway down the hill, the Hugh chorus was deafening. Children began running into the street just to touch him. Cameras were flashing everywhere. It was all I could do to keep moving.Behind us, volunteers walking shelter dogs handed out fliers with information about our plans to build Rescue Village. Thanks to Hugh, and the enthusiastic response from his young fans, those fliers didn’t just end up in the gutter.

That was the day I realized the power of Hugh – or really, the power of one dog to engage a community of children – and through them, a community of adults, in caring for its animals.

Next: Turning Hugh’s Celebrity into Financial Support

Over the past few months I have been hearing the same ‘facts’ from a variety of sources – that shelter intake around the country is increasing, and adoptions are down.  The accounts usually point to the economy and are filled with heartfelt stories about abandoned pets and full shelters, much like this one.

These stories sit heavy on our hearts, and may affect shelter traffic and operations.

But this may not be the way it has to be!

As some of you know, I am a data geek, and one of my responsibilities at the ASPCA is overseeing our ASPCA Animal Stats Dashboard, a management tool that sorts data into a series of key indicators. These help you know where your work toward increasing the live release rate is on track or off track.

We use the dashboard to measure progress within our partner communities.  On a monthly basis, shelters and spay/neuter clinics that are part of the ASPCA Partnership program submit their data to the ASPCA Dashboard team.  The team vets the data, checking for issues like potential problems with data entry and totals not equaling the sums of their parts, as well as conducting trends analysis.  We currently have nine active communities in the ASPCA Partnership, plus we have access to similar data for New York City, which is vetted by the amazing team at the Mayor’s Alliance – giving us 10 communities around the country for which we have accurate vetted NAKED data.

As I reviewed the year-end data at the end of 2009 for each of our partner communities, I was struck by the trend – from Spokane to Tampa – of decreased intake. In fact, all but one of the communities had decreased intake, with one community, Charleston, having a tiny increase of 62 animals.  Two of our Charleston partners opened new facilities in 2009 – and we had actually anticipated a much higher intake, as the fanfare of shelter openings often increase intake.  Just as compelling was that all but two partnerships had increased their adoptions compared to the year previous.

This is powerful and exciting news – if those reports we have been hearing about from around the country are accurate, the ASPCA Partnership communities are bucking a trend with great success.  They are not just remaining stable, but are successfully decreasing intake and increasing adoptions.  The energy in these communities is focused on live release rate (total live releases/intake) which increases quickest when intake decreases while live releases increase.  In these communities, animal control, humane societies, and S/N clinics are partnering with the ASPCA to work together to effect this LRR change. It is reasonable and plausible to assume that this focus is fighting the trend toward increased intake and decreased adoptions that is occurring around the country.

While the results in our partner communities are exciting and powerful, I am curious to know more about what is happening in your facilities.   There certainly are some heartbreaking stories of clients needing to rehome their pets because they have fallen on hard times – but are there that many more of these stories?   Maybe more cages are full because some shelters are keeping animals for longer periods of time, increasing animal care days.

This is where you come in…  What is your data showing?  Is intake up at your shelter?  Adoptions down?  Please let me know… and if the trend in your community is opposite that of the ASPCA Partnership communities’ trends, don’t despair – we have programs and processes to help you turn the tides!

Last week I attended a lecture hosted by the Metro-NY chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Connie Hsu, an assistant editor at Little, Brown discussed the importance of creating a believable reality for writers of (mainly) fantasy fiction for young adults.

What the heck does this have to do with animal welfare professionals telling their stories to the public? Not much, I thought, until Hsu began talking about treating the setting of a story like a character. “Let your setting inspire you,” she encouraged. “It tells its own story.”

This really got me going. Think of your setting—the shelter—as a character. If you tell your story successfully, the reader/your community grows to care about the main character (in this case, your shelter) and, by extension, the animals in it…

We’re totally immersed in the reality/world of the shelter—but what does the world of the shelter look like to the public? People don’t likely know what goes on behind-the-scenes at a shelter (I know, I was there once—even as a supposedly “enlightened” adopter and pet parent.). They see animals for adoption, but probably don’t know about that isolation ward, or the mamma cats and their litters filling up staffers’ offices during kitten season, or the veterinary exam rooms that turn into a spay/neuter surgery suite for the monthly feral cat clinic. I’ve heard frustration from the field—“But it’s just the same story, over and over…how can we make it compelling?”—so let’s think about ways to present your shelter in a different light…

…how about at night?

People are endlessly curious about what goes on when the doors of anything close for the evening. Remember that Twilight Zone episode when the department store mannequins come alive at 5?! Or Night at the Museum, in which Ben Stiller’s night watchman character is chased through the Museum of Natural History by the likes of Attila the Hun and a T. Rex?!

Austin Humane Society(AHS) uses evening as an evocative setting for its annual Shelter Sleepover, a volunteer event that helps to raise community awareness about pet overpopulation. Volunteers and staff don their jammies, set up a dog park in the auditorium and let kitties explore outside their condos. Some staff, including marketing director Lisa Starr, even spend the night with the dogs.

“Yes, I have slept in a kennel,” Starr told me. “It’s a fun event and we typically get a lot of media coverage, but the message to the public is serious—that more than ever, these animals need a warm and cozy place to call home.” (Brilliant, huh? And this event also presents shelters in a such a positive light—would you agree that’s not always easy?!—as places that bring a little “home,” with staff acting as an extended family, to the animals there.)

You mean a dog photocopying his butt cheeks isn’t warm and cozy? No, but it’s wickedly clever and employs a surprising setting—a typical office—to make a strong point. Take a gander at this project of the Colorado Pet Overpopulation Fund, a group that focuses on educating the public and subsidizing spay/neuter for animals in the state:

It’s the absence of an appropriate setting for the animals that drives the story here. The viewer naturally has to think about where these animals should be—in a shelter, in a home, not drooling on desks and stealing company funds for trips to Vegas. Oh, and the dog exiting the bathroom dragging a piece of toilet paper sure is funny, too…

So how’s the video doing? To find out, I checked in with Jayme Nielson, the Colorado Pet Overpopulation Fund’s board president—that’s her dog, Hanna, starring in the bathroom scene by the way. “With over 7,400 hits and tremendous feedback, we’re very happy with the new approach and hope it translates to increased awareness and donations,” says Nielson. “Instead of a traditional PR campaign, the Fund’s board decided to try viral messaging in hopes of reaching the thousands of Coloradans, and a potentially broader audience, at virtually no cost.”

What stories have you told the public about your shelter? Thrown any events or taken any photos that have shown your facility to the public in a different/unique light? What’s your take on the examples shown here? Got others?

Even though I teach a lot of workshops on the topic, I recoil at the term “customer service.” To me, “customer service” all too often translates into a set of superficial practices that may be successful at keeping customers’ behaviors in line, but misses the whole point of the potential gold mine that could result from good relationship development.

Here’s what I’ve learned after a decade of running a shelter and a lifetime of being a customer: the best customer service practices are no replacement for genuine regard for – or better yet, love of – people. And if you disagree with me, I invite you right now to think about your last experience with your medical insurance provider, your computer manufacturer or one of the traditional airlines and then come back and tell me that you think plain old customer service rocks!

Forget customer service, let’s have some rapport!

When I worked at Monadnock HS, we had incredible rapport with our customers. Every day when the shelter opened to the public, the lobby (cramped and dumpy as our early 1960’s cinder-block structure was) transformed into a cacophony of talking, big smiles and lots of laughter – the joy was infectious. And thanks to Dr. Jane Vella’s comment on last week’s post, it turns out mirror neurons offer a compelling argument that joy and other emotions are, indeed, infectious – that our brains can actually pick up on what others are feeling and cause us to feel that feeling, too. Research on mirror neurons takes us down a pretty intriguing path of the physical basis for empathy.

I’d love to take the credit for the rapport building we had at MHS, but it happened by luck of hiring people with a pronounced capacity for empathy toward humans. Our DO was also the captain of the local EMS squad. (Imagine, working the shelter all day and then rushing out at 2 a.m. to save your neighbors’ lives!) Our manager had a degree and a passion for special education. Our admin coordinator was a social worker (as am I). And several of our staff were moms who reveled in nurturing and watching the amazing things that kids do on their way to growing up. Nobody had to teach these people “customer service” because it was in the fiber of their being to care about every person they encountered. They had empathy, and it showed in their ease with helping everybody who came through our doors – with pretty much anything they needed.

It wasn’t entirely intentional at the time, but looking back now I can see that hiring “people people” made all the difference in our rapport with our community – and that led to phenomenal adoption rates – which of course is the fundamental reason we care about “customer service” in the first place….to save more lives!

I was talking with Angi Baber, Adoption Center Director at Richmond SPCA the other day. She says she looks for more than good social skills…and she tells her people doing interviews that if you don’t instantly want to know and spend more time with the person you’re interviewing, move on to the next applicant. Angi says, “I want people with magnetic pull…our staff should naturally draw customers to them.” Wow! People magnetism. When Angi looks at resumes and cover letters, if somebody highlights their love of animals, their resume goes to the bottom of the pile. But if they highlight their love of people, they rise to the top.

Dori Villalon, Vice President of the San Francisco SPCA, will be teaching a workshop on Client Focused Animal Welfare at SAWA’s spring management conference this June. Client focused work refers to a system in which you begin your program design by analyzing your customers’ needs and wants and then integrating customer testing and feedback every step of the way until you have a perfectly responsive program. Essentially, it’s building your “customer service” program together with your community. Intriguing! I, for one, am headed to Sacramento on June 1 to learn more. Maybe I’ll see you there. In the meantime, I’d love to hear what role empathy, rapport building, people magnetism, or client focused animal welfare is playing in your hiring practices?

Photo courtesy of Ron Leone, Volunteer, Richmond SPCA.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about streaking and goals, with a suggestion to the field that we shift our goal and focus from euthanasia to live releases.  Many of you connected with me to let me know your thoughts about this. “I wonder how many more animal lives could have been saved,” wrote Karen, “if we spent less time arguing over definitions of healthy and treatable and focused on getting animals out of the sheltering system quickly and alive.” Thank you for the thoughts and feedback – it is great to begin this conversation with such a passionate, focused and positive field.

Some readers voiced the need to continue the dialogue and to give some examples of how this shift might make a difference in the numbers.  Recently I visited a community that is struggling in a very real way with the goal of no euthanasia getting in the way of saving lives.  This community was proactive in focusing the field toward the importance of decreasing euthanasia – and, at that time, the focus of a goal to decrease euthanasia was a great stride toward developing a humane community.

The major nonprofit shelters in this community teamed with the local animal control organization and agreed to work toward no euthanasia of animals who met particular criteria of adoptability.  They successfully rallied the community around this goal and began reporting great success.

Donors, supporters, and those with an animal welfare focus rallied behind this goal – and this lead to some significant issues around increasing the live release rate.  Many of the animals in the community did not fit the model of the easy or moderate animal to adopt or shelter.  These might have been dogs or cats with moderate aggression, significant undersocialization, illness, or any variety of issues that require a shift in resources and focus.  If the nonprofit animal shelters took these animals in and were not able to successfully rehabilitate them, then the goal — which, remember, is a no euthanasia goal — would be hurt.  The safest thing for the nonprofits to do to avoid losing donors and attracting protesters was to not risk rehab.  Not risking rehab means that those animals are not transferred to the facility with the resources to best support them.

By shifting the focus from a euthanasia goal to a Live Release goal, both of these dogs would be more likely to be supported.

So imagine we were able to switch the goal and the culture in this community. Ultimately, the live release rate would increase – even if the success rate at rehab was low – as often those at-risk animals sat for months in animal control.  If 25% of the animals at risk could be rehabilitated, that would mean that while 75% of those were unsuccessful, more animals would still leave the sheltering system alive…

I know you may be scratching your heads a bit, but it is the case.  If we could eliminate the focus of no euthanasia, it would allow this community to try to work with the animals they currently define as not adoptable – or not placeable.

What about your community? Is the focus on euthanasia? What shifts would you like to make, or have you made?  Please share!

"Do I look like a &*#$@*! furry friend?!"

I remember when I first encountered the term “forever families.” It was around 2002, and I was proofreading some materials intended for the general public. I tripped over it, temporarily blindsided by the vision it brought up of a pack of Care Bears romping in the forest. But my editor at the time wanted to start using it and see if it would resonate with ASPCA supporters.

It did strike a chord with the pet-owning public, and I noticed it all over shelters’ and animal welfare organizations’ websites and email communications. Some of our supporters adopted these words as their own, and “forever families” would regularly pop up—along with derivatives like “furry friends” and “fur kids”—in letters and emails I’d get from ASPCA News Alert readers and visitors to ASPCA.org. I figured it was here to stay, and even dragged it out every now and then in my new role writing for animal welfare professionals…

…until the day I got the email from the big boss.

“Do me a favor,” wrote Bert Troughton. “Can you scrub ‘forever families’ and ‘forever homes’ from your lexicon? This probably sounds harsh, but we actually lecture (literally) against this in our Meet Your Match workshops. It’s simply unrealistic to assume that adoptive homes will be ‘forever’ (since most marriages end in divorce, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that human/animal bonds end, too)…and by holding that up as a goal, we run risk of over-screening potentially fine homes. We try to promote the idea of loving homes and families—because if the love is there, god forbid the relationship has to end, the likelihood is good that the human will go the extra mile to get Fido or Fluffy to a good next home.”

It dawned on me that I hadn’t been looking at it from a sheltering perspective at all, and swiftly uncapped my bottle of proverbial Wite-Out.

"It's &*#$@*! hard to measure the public's response to language."

I got a similar reaction when I brought this up with others in the field—“forever” just isn’t realistic. “We also avoid using the term ‘forever family’— or similarly, asking adopters to be ‘100 percent sure’ before they adopt — and instead focus on the animal’s needs and making a good lifestyle and personality match,” explains the San Francisco SPCA’s vice president, Dori Villalon. “‘Forever’ can sound awfully intimidating to the average person who may already be experiencing general angst simply around the decision to add a new animal into their home. I would also surmise that if the ‘forever home’ expectation is truly part of an organization’s culture, staff morale can be affected when an animal is returned. Of course, we want every adopter to fully bond with their pet and enjoy a lifetime together, but it’s not something we can expect people to promise. We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know what a shelter animal needs right now: a good home.”

“Forever families” and “furry friends” never felt truthful to me as I wrote them, never grounded in the present. More at home in a fairy tale. You could substitute “furry friend” in ad copy for Care Bears and it would work just fine.

But I still keep getting stuck on the fact that the public I was writing to responded positively, at one time at least, to these terms. Does that still fly? Leslie Harris, ED and Keeper of the Editorial Standards at Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society, isn’t finding that.

“You have to keep in mind that a good percentage of the people in our service area are well-educated, super-liberal animal lovers,” says Harris. “We simply could not get away with putting animal names in quotes or referring to animals as ‘it’ with many of our supporters. They keep us honest! But that’s not the only reason we do it. We believe that the local humane society should be the leader in shaping the community’s attitudes about animals, which means we’ve got to be ahead on issues of language (and food and entertainment and…).”

Heck, yeah—you know, that whole, beautiful thing that we as communicators have a responsibility to be as honest and truthful as we can. It’s not like we’re selling Care Bears, but talking about animals’ lives.

And this all makes me really want to know — what’s “forever” looking like to you? Are there other “dirty” words you’ve washed out of your style guide? Any words or phrases that pop out as resonating in your community? (And I truly apologize if you happen to have an affinity for Care Bears.)

My in-laws are often my window into the world of those who love and respect animals but are unconnected to the animal welfare world. They are what we in animal welfare refer to as “the general public.”

A while ago my in-laws told me a story about these two stray dogs they had found. It was early evening on a Saturday, and my in-laws were taking a stroll before heading to a party. One dog had a rope dragging and had wrapped himself around a tree. The second dog was standing just a few feet away. They untangled the dog and brought them both back to their home. They have a dog who is not fond of other dogs, so they just brought these 2 into their garage, gave them water and looked for ID.  Finding none, they called around to the local vets and humane society, but did not get an answer. Unable to reach anyone, unable to confine the dogs easily, and late for the party, they did what they thought was the best thing — they let the dogs go to hopefully find their way home.

Now… don’t be angry with my in-laws. They are incredibly kind, humane and caring people who tried to get these dogs home and they inspired me to conduct the research around ID ME. If those dogs simply had an ID tag with their pet parents address and phone number, they would have been reunited with their family immediately.

Rowan Animal Shelter

Stray dogs and cats represent a large percentage of the animals who enter the sheltering system. The Return to Owner (RTO) rate in most communities hovers between 10-30% for dogs and less than 5% for cats.

Many members of the general public view finding the owners of lost pets an important task, and one well worth taking on. In fact, some great recent research by Dr. Linda Lord overwhelmingly (87% of finders) “considered it extremely important to find the owner.”  Tragically, often the owner is not found.

The recovery of lost dogs and cats differs, with dog owners more likely to find their companions at an animal welfare organization, and cat owners more likely to have their pets return home on their own or found in the neighborhood.  For both dogs and cats, ID increases the likelihood of recovery.

The use of a simple ID tag that includes the name, phone number and address of the guardian would support community return of a lost pet.  Ideally, lost pets with ID tags should never enter the sheltering system, as they are returned directly by the finder who calls the guardian’s number clearly displayed on the tag. This means we could decrease intake by increasing the use of simple ID tags.

ASPCA ID ME

I developed the ID ME research to investigate tag use – why are folks not tagging their pets, and what are their thoughts around tagging – and ultimately decrease stray intake and increase community return of pets.  Through easy access to tags and collars, as well as providing the service of placing the tag directly on the pet, the research will raise awareness, and increase the behavior of tagging pets.

With help and consultation from the Humane Research Council, we conducted the ID ME research in Oklahoma City (one of our ASPCA Partnership communities), and our partners at the Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Division , the Central Oklahoma Humane Society , and OK Humane Place spay/neuter clinic did a remarkable job assisting us with the project. The study design was to collect baseline survey information from pet guardians who brought their pet to either a s/n clinic or one of 4 participating vet clinics, and to then impact those folks with an ID tag intervention – by providing an ID ME brochure and placing a tag (and collar if needed) directly onto their pet. We then followed up with these folks with a phone call about 6 weeks post-intervention.

Our study also included a population that had just adopted a dog or cat from either OKC animal welfare or Central Oklahoma Humane. These folks did not take the baseline survey (as their pets were new), but they received a collar and ID tag (with their contact info, not the shelter’s) and we did also call them 6 weeks post-adoption.

The results surprised us in that we were more successful than we thought we would be!

- 33% of pet guardians in the baseline survey reported that their pet wears an ID tag all the time.

- In the follow-up post-intervention, 73% reported that their pets now wear ID tags.   How great to know that once the tag was on, most guardians were keeping it on their pets!

- Of those who had just adopted their pet, 89% had the ID tag on at the six-week follow-up call.

- And here is where I get the chills: We asked on the follow-up if the pet had been lost since the intervention — and if so, did the guardian recover the pet, and what contributed to the recovery…  Ten pets were recovered because of the tag we provided them!

Even while we are conducting research, the ASPCA is saving lives!

Why do I think we were so successful?  - Well…  One of our survey questions might hold the answer: When asked how important wearing an ID tag is, 48% said “extremely important,” and 32% said “very important” — with only 4% saying it was not at all important. Now remember, only 33% of folks had tags on their pets all of the time…  So my hypothesis is that their attitude about tagging was already changed. We just needed to make the behavior easy enough to do — in this case, actively making and placing the tag on their pet for them.

We are now working on the next phase of the research and intervention. Now that we have data to support that folks keep the tags on, that the tags assist in recovery, and that pet parents think tagging is important, we need to develop a large-scale intervention that gets the tags directly onto the pets of a large population and measures impact at the animal control level. Stay tuned!

In 1999, Geauga Humane Society was a small, worthy, but underfunded organization working from an uninviting, substandard shelter that made good husbandry almost impossible and attracting adopters a major challenge. Within just two years, the organization raised over $2 million and opened Rescue Village, a new state-of-the-art facility where people of all ages now come together to care for and celebrate animals. This is the story of Hugh, the plain brown street dog who became the centerpiece of the campaign to build Rescue Village.

As I mentioned last week, a wedding was the last thing on my mind when we started planning our first big event to get the humane society on the philanthropic map. In fact, when the florist we approached to do the flowers agreed to do so with the stipulation that we showcase their wedding business, we were stumped. This was a celebrity fashion show with dogs. How could we showcase wedding flowers?  Then, of course, it hit us. Hugh would simply have to get married.

Once that decision was made, the planning moved into high gear and everyone we approached was eager to get involved. Suddenly the celebrity models and shelter dogs became the wedding party. Dick Goddard, a beloved local TV weather personality and friend to the animals, agreed to be Hugh’s Best Person. The Mayor agreed to perform the ceremony. A volunteer made Hugh a formal black coat emblazoned with sequins. The florists made plans to fill the tents with thousands of gerbera daisies and create floral necklaces for the shelter dogs and a band of flowers for Hugh’s new top hat. A lovely white poodle was chosen to be Hugh’s bride.

As we spread the word that our celebrity fashion show had become Hugh’s wedding, the reservations came pouring in. This was an event people did not want to miss.

And so, on a beautiful day in July, with a decked-out Hugh by my side, I was able to stand in front of a thrilled-to-be-there group of women in a position to make a difference and tell them about the work of Geauga Humane Society and our dream of building Rescue Village.

Dick Goddard spoke briefly in support of our work and we presented him with our very first Hugh Award, acknowledging “extraordinary service to companion animals.”  From then on, Hugh and Dick were bonded. The next year, Dick even featured Hugh on the annual weather calendar that he distributes throughout northeast Ohio.

After a beautiful box lunch, the guests moved to white chairs set along the flower-bedecked runway (actually a path separating two show rings) for a fashion show worthy of Bryant Park.

The press was everywhere – and, since we were outside, all sorts of bystanders flocked to the area to try to get a peak at the proceedings. The crowd even included some of the Cleveland Indians players, unexpected but very welcome guests who had come to watch their wives on the catwalk – or in this case, the dogwalk.

As you know, every fashion show has a finale. For ours, all the models paraded the runway decked out in the presenting boutique’s best wedding garb and then formed a semi-circle at the end of the runway. The mayor stepped solemnly to the podium. Our bride, a game yellow Lab plucked from the audience at the last minute when the elegant white poodle failed to show, made her way down the aisle in her custom-made wedding attire.

Then, after a moment of silence, “Get Him to the Church on Time” blared from the loud speakers as Dick Goddard and Hugh came running across the field and down the aisle, Dick throwing dog bones as he went. The crowd went crazy.

Newspaper clipping: Weatherman Dick Goddard stands up for Hugh as best person

There was a brief ceremony during which we stressed that this was one marriage that would not be consummated and the still-smiling guests milled around the magnificent show grounds until every last shelter dog had left the area.

Now here’s the thing. We cleared only about $16,000 that day and the funds didn’t even go to the new facility. They went to operations. But this event wasn’t about the money. This was about bringing new people to the table so we could raise significant funds for the new building in the coming months.

In addition to making 165 women very, very happy that day, we hit every major TV and print outlet in town. People were talking about Hugh’s wedding for months to come. Those who hadn’t been there wished they had. We were on the map and people were eager to see what we’d do next.

It wasn’t easy to top our first big effort, but we did – and everything Hugh touched brought more and more support for the animals and our campaign to build Rescue Village.

Next: Every village needs a Mayor.



Today we’re launching Save More Lives – ASPCA $100K Challenge. It’s a contest to save more animals’ lives this year than last. There’s $125,000 in prize grants at stake, but really – the stakes are much higher than that.

Perhaps the Challenge spurs some shelter and its community to discover the solution to supply and demand – raising community demand for adoptions to keep pace with the animals in need of adoption. Or how about a shelter and a group of its high-tech friends develop the perfect system for return-to-owner? Strays constitute more than one third of shelter intake nationwide. Solving the return-to-owner puzzle would be a solution of avalanche proportions! Sound outlandish? Not to me. I’ve been in this field long enough to remember when performing six to ten spay/neuter surgeries in a day was a banner surgery day. Many clinics now routinely do four to five times that number per surgeon daily.

In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki explains that the many will reliably come up with better solutions than the individual when four conditions are present: independence – the ability to decide and perform on one’s own, diversity of opinion such that there is ample information for creative problem solving, decentralization – enabling participants to focus and specialize, and aggregation – a method to collect and coordinate results. If Surowiecki is right, we have a golden opportunity to tap the collective genius of our profession. The first three conditions – independence, diversity of opinion and decentralization – are inherent in the structure of our field. And the aggregation? That’s where the $100K Challenge comes in. The community website created to support Challenge contestants will showcase innovations and solutions as they unfold throughout the Challenge – allowing for real-time information and learning exchange, among contestants and with the entire field.

We’re also counting on the wisdom of another crowd. The $25,000 Community Engagement Award will be granted to the contestant that does the best job of involving their community in saving lives. $25K is a nice reward – as is the $100K for the greatest increase in lives saved – but the bigger goldmine here lies in leveraging these potential awards to inspire your community members to help you. Once you’ve got their attention, your leadership, the dedication of your staff, and the simple but powerful everyday stories of the animals in your care will surely capture these people as organizational assets.

Sorry, does that sound cold to you when I describe people as “organizational assets”? Take my advice and embrace this concept. Study the websites and earned media of the organizations with the most impressive live release rates and the strongest financial assets and I guarantee you’ll discover they all have one thing in common – they make it a top priority to engage their community in their work. In recent posts I’ve talked about rapport building and gratitude. Combine these with strategic leadership and you’ve got the recipe for turning your community into a guardian angel for the animals.

And while we’re on the topic of people as organizational assets – there’s one more really important group of people who stand to benefit from the $100K Challenge: your staff. Last Friday, Judy Varner, ED of Nebraska Humane Society, sent this out on the SAWA listserv, “…since our new strategic planning process that is involving every single staff member, more ideas are surfacing. Amazing what happens when you ask the people who do the direct work with the animals for ideas for change.” This was in the context of explaining how her staff developed an honest, respectful approach to working with the public to reduce intake. Judy’s inclusive strategic planning process is saving lives and strengthening one of Nebraska Humane’s greatest assets – the staff. Challenge contestants will gain strategic advantage by similarly tapping and developing their staff.

So there you have it, the true intentions behind the Save More Lives – ASPCA $100K Challenge. Spur innovation, increase public support, empower our staffs and save more lives. You can find all of the Challenge details here:

http://www.aspcapro.org/challenge

I hope you’ll check it out and seriously consider firing up your staff and your community to mount a competitive run for the $125K in prize grants, to inspire and teach your colleagues throughout the country with your very best work, to demonstrate to the public at large that our field is competent, creative and results-driven, and most of all – to save more lives this year, and many more lives in years to come. Good luck. May the best animals win!

3rd photo courtesy of Stewart Butterfield

4th photo courtesy of Jack Deutsch

Derrick illustrates (metaphorically, of course) a goal that any website must meet to be effective: Give the people what they want!

There’s no expiration date on the basic components of good, effective writing. In my mind I can still see Mr. Colleary’s note—“Show, Don’t Tell!” —in the margin of a short story (about buzzards, no less) I wrote for 6th-grade English. And I keep coming back to and expanding on information like that shared by Hoa Loranger and Janelle Estes in their “Writing for the Web 2” session at last year’s Nielsen Norman Group’s Usability Week.

(P.S., These tips can be applied not only to the content you write for your website, but to any written materials—e.g. a brochure outlining your adoptions policies and procedures, ad copy for a cruelty awareness campaign—you prepare for the community you serve.)

- Who’s Your Audience?
Here’s a classic writing technique to ensure that your message stays on target. Create personas—fictional characters that represent the various types of people in your target audience—and write to and for them. Who are the personas you might write to?

Communicating with your community online is all about knowing your community. Can you speak their language?

When I started writing for the ASPCA’s quarterly publication, Animal Watch, in 1993, our average donor was 50 or older, female, with grown children. When we’d get letters to the editor, I’d carefully read them and add little details to the persona—she’s someone passionate enough to mail off a handwritten letter on a controversial article on the very day the issue came out, someone who’d send us her only copy (hey, this was before everyone had digital cameras!) of a photo of her pet. The personas will change over time and with medium, of course, but the more you fully develop them—age, level of education, occupation, hobbies, how they interact with their animals—the more you’ll be able to focus your writing. Check Web Writing that Works.com for more on personas.

- What Does Your Audience Want?
Does your shelter or organization have a website? Then you better know, say Loranger and Estes, the top 5 things that your site visitors want. Not sure? Check your search logs. Read your Facebook comments. Ask the staff who answer the phone and respond to emails—what kinds of information is your community looking for?

- Keep it Simple
A big challenge of writing for the Web is figuring out how to give your users the juicy, detailed, meaningful content they want—knowing that the average Web user doesn’t read word for word, but scans text. (Read the research on that here.) To see how easily digestible your content is, you can use tools like the Flesch-Kincaid grade level and reading ease tests. It’s standard practice to write at an 8th grade level for the Web. Would love to hear if any of you are testing this out?

I understand that these are just a few small steps—and that they’re part of a much bigger journey, beyond the Web world and into the real world.

As Leslie Harris, ED at Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society, puts it, “If we want our messages to be taken seriously by all of our constituents, we are going to need to find a way to communicate with all of them—and that means doing more than translating a few flyers into Spanish. We are currently in the process of finding in-roads into long-neglected, but very needy low-income, mostly minority, communities who could really use our services for their animals but who have never been approached in a respectful manner that seeks their partnership. I’m particularly interested in finding other organizations that have done this successfully so we’re not re-inventing the wheel.”

Invented any wheels? Tell us about them—and any other thoughts on this topic—here.

I had an opportunity last week to visit the Animal Rescue League of Boston (ARLB). From the minute I stepped inside the back door, I could tell I was in for a great day. Staff were bustling back and forth getting set up for cleaning and feeding, but no one was too busy to smile and acknowledge each other. The back end of the shelter is dated and no frills, but clean and not cluttered – except for peoples’ desks, which are obviously occupied by people with a few too many things on their “to do” lists. (Sound familiar?) The back hallway walls and the animal cages bear evidence of staff looking to communicate with each other…scheduling boards, volunteer sign-in, customized erase boards as animal cage cards, and graphs tracking progress on one of their current initiatives – shortening cat length-of-stay.I was at ARLB to teach a workshop on how to enhance learning that takes place at the point of adoption (and surrender, etc.). There were 42 ARLB staffers in the room – from pretty much every angle of their operations – and they were loaded with ideas about things they’re already doing to support learning, as well as ideas about ways to improve.But it was one moment in particular that confirmed my first impression of this place. We were halfway through the day and all of the conversations thus far had been pretty easy.  But then a staff member asked a question of the full group. It was one of “those” questions. You know the ones – the critical moment in any workshop when the proverbial elephant gets plunked squarely on the table. If workshops were stories, these questions would be the climax point in the workshop, because what happens next leads either to continued rich conversation or a stampede into entrenched positions. And so this staff member bravely and respectfully asked how the intake staff make the tough decisions that they do, and whether they should be making these decisions. (If you’re not feeling your gut tighten right now, it’s only because I’ve done a poor job of capturing the power of this moment in writing.)

So what did the ARLB staff do? The first thing I noticed was that they kept their faces turned toward their coworker asking the question. They didn’t shoot sideways glances to each other; they didn’t turn to side conversations. I also noticed that the group listened to the whole question, there wasn’t a frenzied race to cut off the question or a barrage of hands flying up with “the answer” before she had a chance to finish the question. And then, when another staff took the first opportunity to respond, she started her answer and then paused, pointed to her colleague with the question and said, “love ya” – with a wink. The entire room exhaled. And the conversation that ensued was rich, full of important information and details, completely void of defensiveness, and – judging from the postures in the room – completely engaging.

If you’ve been in this field for a year or more, I’m willing to bet you’ve been in numerous conversations that hit this climax moment – and I’m also betting that you’ve experienced many of these conversations turn volatile. So how come ARLB is having tough conversations so constructively?

I think ARLB has what Peter Senge coined a “learning organization.” In The Fifth Discipline, Senge argues that while there are many skills important to successful organizations – in the complex and ever-evolving day to day reality in which we operate – the most important skill of an organization is the ability to learn – continually, at every opportunity. And that means that every single employee is a point of information exchange and sense-making. The more we empower all employees to see information as opportunities for learning, the more opportunities the organization has to understand its complicated environment and adjust in little and big ways to succeed at our missions and as businesses.I don’t actually know if ARLB set out deliberately to create a learning organization in Senge’s sense of the term. Perhaps some ARLB staff will submit comments and tell us what they do to foster the relationships and learning that I observed. I do know that ARLB has impressive longevity in their staff, they have staff who respect and like each other, and they conduct both formal and informal research as a matter of their day to day business. Whether by design or as a by-product of the organization’s larger strategy, these attributes are without question critical to a learning organization. My first impression was right – I had a great day at ARLB. I bet their visitors (potential adopters, volunteers and donors) do, too.

In 1999, Geauga Humane Society was a small, worthy, but underfunded organization working from an uninviting, substandard shelter that made good husbandry almost impossible and attracting adopters a major challenge. Within just two years, the organization raised over $2 million and opened Rescue Village, a new state-of-the-art facility where people of all ages now come together to care for and celebrate animals. This is the story of Hugh, the plain brown street dog who became the centerpiece of the campaign to build Rescue Village.

Our capital campaign strategy was pretty conventional – raise 80% of the funds through major gifts (in our case enough to pay for the construction of the facility itself without taking on any debt) – then break ground and launch a broad-based public campaign to raise the money for furnishings and equipment. Hugh’s wedding helped us wrap up the first phase and pave the way for the second. But it was the election that brought the whole thing home.

Like virtually every other area nonprofit, Geauga Humane Society sets up tables at events around town to raise awareness and collect donations. For me, staffing those tables was one of those necessary but frankly not very rewarding parts of the job. Sure, we got to talk to some people and sure, we got some donations, but all in all, it was kind of a yawn for all concerned. Clearly, if we were going to get the community’s attention, we had to come up with something new and engaging.

Since we had already named our new facility Rescue Village (a clear attempt to play off the whole “it takes a village” idea and engage the community in our work) and every village needs a mayor, Hugh would now have to enter the world of politics. But who would be his opponent?

As luck would have it, a handsome tuxedo cat named Marino had been returned to the old shelter several times because of litter box issues. We shamelessly decided to pit the cat people against the dog people and run Marino against Hugh.

At all the summer events, instead of our usual education booth, we set up a voting booth with giant ballot boxes, banners, bunting, Souza marches – the works. We charged $2 a vote and encouraged stuffing. Hugh, of course, had a distinct advantage, as he thoroughly enjoyed meeting his constituents in his new red, white, and blue coat. Marino was no campaigner but we made sure to have his picture liberally splashed around the booth. Our most enthusiastic volunteers and GHS Ambassador Dogs were on hand to entice voters.

To prepare Hugh to meet his public, we got him a personal trainer – not so much to get him in shape, though all the treats were starting to take a toll on his boyish figure, but more to teach him the tricks of the political trade – high five, shake, jump through hoops (ok, in his case walk through hoops).  Sharon Harvey, a hospital administrator and dog trainer who had been spending some time providing enrichment for the dogs at the old shelter, took on the task. Talk about bringing great new people to the table. Working with Hugh opened a whole new career path for Sharon. You may know her now as the very able executive director of the Cleveland Animal Protective League.

But I digress. To broaden the message, we had two sets of magnetic campaign signs made and passed them around to staff and volunteers who frequented different parts of the county. Intentionally enigmatic, the signs simply read “Hugh for Mayor” and “Marino for Mayor,” causing people in parking lots to wait by our cars to ask what they meant. Nice opportunities to spread the word and hand out our Rescue Village literature.

The mayoral campaign ran throughout the summer. Here’s how we announced the results in our fall newsletter.

Hugh Rules!
Mayor-Elect Presides at Rescue Village Groundbreaking

The results are in and the dogs are celebrating. By a vote of 790 to 489, Hugh has been elected the first mayor of Rescue Village. In his first public appearance as Mayor-Elect, Hugh joined jubilant shelter animals, staff members, capital campaign committee members and members of the board of trustees on October 12 for the long-awaited Rescue Village groundbreaking. Weather permitting, Hugh will be sworn in at the Grand Opening in May 2001.

Hugh took the electoral victory in stride – but Marino, his feline opponent, was visibly relieved. A reluctant candidate at best, Marino much preferred sleeping on top of the refrigerator to pressing the flesh at GHS events. In a show of reconciliation, Hizzoner appointed Marino Chief Constable of Rescue Village. From his new perch in the cageless cat community, Marino will continue to keep an eye on all the comings and goings, making sure those unruly dogs – and people – don’t get out of hand. Hugh, of course, will be front and center, greeting visitors and collecting treats for his constituents. Marino’s biggest challenge will be making sure the mayor doesn’t eat the treats!

The groundbreaking marked the successful completion of Phase I of the Board’s campaign to build a state-of-the-art shelter and center for humane education…Under the direction of the Capital Campaign Committee, the campaign has generated $1.2 million in major gifts from foundations and individuals. The committee is now reaching out to members, friends, and the public at large to raise the final $300,000 for furnishings and equipment.

The local papers picked up the story of Hugh’s electoral triumph. Once again, he was the darling of the media and Rescue Village was the talk of the town. Shortly after the groundbreaking, we sent out our public appeal. The donors cooperated and, by spring, the final $300,000 was in hand.

Of course, this is northeast Ohio, so the weather did NOT cooperate.  It took a year after the groundbreaking for Hugh to take his place as Mayor of Rescue Village. We dubbed it “The Year of the Move,” a year during which we were able to build excitement for the new facility, raise essential operating funds, develop new programs, and prepare for Hugh’s inauguration.

Next: Hugh’s Inaugural Ball

P.S. Every year may not be an election year at your shelter, but now is a perfect time to pull out the stops in engaging your community; it will be essential to the ASPCA $100K Challenge. We’re hosting a series of upcoming webinars on this topic for sheltering professionals interested in the Challenge.

When I was in my junior year of college, I wanted a dog. I had rented a small cottage and felt it was time to add a pet to my life. My friends and professors at school had told me about the policies regarding adoption at the local shelter – few of which I could meet. Being a “resourceful” student, I carefully dotted my I’s and crossed my T’s and found ways in which to “meet” the adoption criteria.

I went to the shelter and walked through the adoption area. It was there that I met him… He was a big, furry, blue-tongued orange boy with a lower canine protruding from his bottom jaw. In my eyes, he was absolutely gorgeous. I met with the adoption counselor and pulled out my file. I had my landlord approval (not real), pictures of my fence (not mine)… you get the picture. After reams of paperwork and tons of closed-ended questions that I carefully answered, I was on my way home with my recently neutered 3-year-old chow mix, Benny.Benny was the bomb! He was kind, independent and, for the most part, level-headed. Now, he did have his issues: He tried to attack anyone over 5’10” and had extreme thunderstorm phobia – but that did not stop me from thinking he was the best dog ever. We conquered the 5’10” issue fairly quickly (I dated tall guys), but the thunderstorm phobia was another issue. It was so extreme he would literally jump through plate glass windows, tear down doors, and destroy crates in storms. (Benny helped me to decide to become a Ph.D. behaviorist, by the way!)

Benny traveled across the country with me, “redecorated” many a living space, met, loved and said goodbye to many a boyfriend of mine, cost me thousands of dollars in repairs (imagine the bill at that rental that did not allow pets when I was in college!), and thousands in medical bills (did I mention the poor hips?). I loved him so much.

Years buzzed by and I had acquired a position as curator of behavior at a zoo in Kansas, developed SAFER, conducted research on canine assessments, got married, and bought a house with lots of property for horses and dogs. Benny’s hips and heart were failing him, and as much as I did not want to face it, I had to – it was time to euthanize Benny.

My vet kindly came to our home, and I called Benny to me. He settled his head on my lap, my tears plopping onto his faded orange head, and looked at me with those very same brown eyes that he captured me with all those years ago at that shelter. My heart shot to my throat as I thought to myself that if I had not been so resourceful – frankly, if I had not lied when I went to adopt him all of those years ago – Benny would have never been part of my life. Let’s be realistic… he was a 3-year-old chow mix in a NY shelter in the 80’s. He likely would have been euthanized in that shelter instead of in his home after a long and full life.

I think I was a pretty good home for Benny, even though I did not meet the criteria of a “good adopter” by the standards of that facility. I was a college student, in a rental, no fence, no job. There were things I did not do perfectly. It still hits me in the gut to think that when Benny had jumped through the 3rd window during a storm, I had to find a way to keep him from running potentially into the street while I was at school – so I tied him up outside for a few hours in a pinch to take a final. Because the shelter was the place that did not see my adopter potential, I did not see their potential as a resource. They could have helped me find a better solution had we been open to each other.

While I was not the “perfect adopter,” I was the right adopter for Benny. My experience acquiring and bonding with Benny was the inspiration for the Meet Your Match program – which dispatches with hard, fast policies and adoption applications and instead focuses on conversation-based adoptions designed to help anyone walking into your shelter feel respected and anyone walking out more educated.

We were them. I was them. The “them” of the not-perfect adopters… the uneducated, the odd, the not us. They too love animals. They too want (and will get – if not from you, from somewhere else) a pet to care for. Once we open our hearts to the human animal as much as we do the nonhuman animal, we will save more lives and help create a more humane community.

Tea party with Benny

I have told the Benny story in workshops and in consults with shelters around the country – and there are always a couple of folks at every telling who were either denied a pet at a shelter or schemed to get one. What is your story?

I could stare at this photograph all day.

And I did just that earlier this week on my first attempt to write this post. Searching for the right words to explain how profound this image is…. But frankly, does it look like it needs any help from me?

Sure, I could list a bunch of reasons—artistic and thematic—why this image takes my breath away:
1. You can almost see the energy that connects cat and boy…what are they communicating to each other?!
2. Great textures, patterns and shapes going on, from the cattery’s horizontal bars and round peephole to the fuzzy, flowery cat mats and the tread on the boy’s sneakers
3. The “C14” reminds us of the millions of animals in shelters, but this cat is clearly not just a number.
4. I instantly love this little boy, for being so respectful and patient and entranced by this kitty. No glass-tapping going on here!
5. Hello…that cat is walking like an Egyptian!

When I came up with the idea for this post, I’d only seen this photo once—and it had resonated with my coworker, Kathleen McDonald, too, because when I asked her to help me locate “that picture of the cat and the boy,” she found it within 8 minutes. “It is a magnificent photo, truly,” says McDonald. “I hadn’t looked at it recently either, and it draws me in like it was the first time.”

We did some sleuthing and soon uncovered its provenance—Austin Humane Society, one of our ASPCA partners. “I love this photo, too,” says Austin Humane’s public relations manager, Lisa Starr. “It was taken by a photographer named Heather Franklin here at our shelter, a professional photographer who was helping us with our annual report. I unfortunately wasn’t there when she took this, but that little boy and cat in our cattery are having quite some interaction!!”

I bet you have a photo that you could stare at all day, too.

And with that, I’m officially putting out a call to readers of this blog—what’s your favorite photo, and what does it say to you?

You can send your photo to me at puned@aspca.org, along with a sentence or two about why it works for you and what makes it a great photo. Be sure to include the name and location of your shelter or organization (but note, this is certainly not limited to interior shots like my cat and boy—it could be anything—a single animal, a group of animals, an offsite event, a person…you get the picture.) Files should be in JPG format and no larger than 1 MB.

I’ll post them here next Friday, and we’d also like to compile them in a slide show for ASPCApro.org and inspire others. And you must have known this was coming…

FIRE AWAY!

P.S. On a related note: Stay tuned for a future post with juicy tips from photographer Traer Scott on taking great photos of shelter dogs. (She should know, she wrote the book.) “It’s a shame to think that a homeless animal’s fate may rely on his willingness to be photographed—or for that matter, the skill of the person taking the photo,” says Scott. “But in this age, photographs have become a crucial tool in animal rescue.”

“We might be small, but we’re scrappy!”

That’s the kind of determination we heard this week as we connected with the directors of shelters from around the nation who’ve registered for the ASPCA $100K Challenge. And we talked with contestant after contestant who was over-the-top excited about the energy they’re seeing in their staff right now…people are popping with ideas, and one director wrote us to say her staff are already wondering what they’ll do when they run out of animals. All right…that’s the spirit!

We did a bunch of research while designing this Challenge. One great resource we found was a detailed analysis of the components and benefits of well-designed philanthropic prizes. The McKinsey Group cites three important societal benefits of prizes:
1) They catalyze revolutionary solutions (for example, the development of the process for canning food inspired by The Food Preservation prize in 1810);
2) change a group’s behavior (as in the case of TV’s The Biggest Loser, with thousands of viewers joining in the competition to lose one million pounds collectively), and
3) can raise the standards for a field (to wit, the Nobel prizes). Imagine the benefits to our field from innovative solutions, new behaviors and higher standards!

Let’s ponder for a moment on catalyzing revolutionary solutions… Imagine a contestant and their community comes up with the pitch-perfect message that makes everybody want to adopt their next pet. Or how about someone enlists their local tech geeks to figure out a simple way to match lost-and-found reports and get strays returned to owners with record success? A few months ago, PetSmart Charities released survey results that showed the number one reason for not adopting is “the organization/shelter did not have type dog/cat looking for.” So what if somebody figures out an “Amazon.com” kind of solution…“Didn’t find your match here? Let us help you find him at one of over 5,000 shelters in the nation.”

And besides innovation – let’s just think for a minute about the thunder of 50 organizations from every part of the nation getting their communities out in full force behind their missions – all at the same time. By the time we’re all done with this Challenge, there won’t be a person left in the nation who hasn’t heard about shelters saving more lives!

This is the kind of determination we saw this week as we connected with the directors of shelters from around the nation who’ve registered for the ASPCA $100K Challenge.

I wish you could have been on the phone this week to talk to the excited and determined folks that we’ve been talking to. It makes me really proud to be a part of this field. We’re going to save more lives this year, and we’re going to get more of the public involved in saving lives than ever before! Queue the Rocky theme song!!!

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of requests in workshops for advice on how to handle difficult “customers,” i.e. potential adopters. One woman phrased it this way, “I need help figuring out how to please someone who simply doesn’t seem to want to be pleased.” Nope – I’m not going to help with that, and here’s why:

If things are running well in your organization, the attitudes of your visitors/customers most likely span a pretty normal bell curve – with the small ends to the far left and right representing folks who are pretty much easy no matter what and folks who are pretty much difficult no matter what, respectively. In the case of either of these extremes, the person’s attitude likely has a whole lot more to do with who they are than with how you’re behaving – so there’s very little you can do to change the situation. It’s all of the people in the big bump of the bell curve – the mainstream base of your customers – where you want to focus the majority of your energy. (By the way, if you don’t have a normal bell curve and the bulk of your visitors are cranky and ready for a fight, you’ve got bigger, systemic issues that need attention, such as policies that feel unfair to your public. If that’s the case, no amount of “customer service” training will turn the tide; it’s time to seek consultation on policies and practices.)

But assuming that you don’t have big hairy policy issues that need addressing, let’s turn your attention and energy on that large group of people in the middle of the bell curve. How about trying Appreciative Inquiry (AI)? AI is a positive approach to change and system improvement that focuses first and foremost on a system’s strengths and past accomplishments. As the name implies, the two basic tools of AI are appreciation (attention, focus) and inquiry (asking good questions, searching for meaning). Rather than asking “What’s the problem here?,” AI asks “What’s working here?” Fully studying and understanding your conditions for success provides the building blocks and motivation to construct a better future. AI can be a great tool for your organizational strategic planning and for team building, but for today, let’s just look at how to use AI to hone your relationship skills with your customers.

Start with a simple inquiry – your best-ever experience as a customer. It’s most meaningful to take some quiet time to think about these questions and then have a conversation with a colleague or two to delve into the details. After fully exploring your best experiences as customers, you will be able to construct a list of the things that make for these fantastic experiences. And then, of course, you can begin to plan for how to implement this kind of service in your own organization. The beauty of this approach is that since it’s based on your own personal experiences, you and your staff have a felt sense of what you want to achieve – kind of like once you learn to ride a bike, you can get back on and hit that center balance just by feel.

You might be thinking that you really want to know what to do when confronted with those difficult people – and I sympathize – so we will cover that one of these weeks. But in the meantime, consider the words of David Cooperrider, professor at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University: “Human systems grow in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about.” In other words, you and your staff can build your customer rapport around understanding and solving problems, or you can build it around understanding and implementing best-ever customer experiences. Which one sounds more successful for your organization?

You may have heard about some research the ASPCA is tackling regarding feral cats. This week marks the start of phase 3 of this research, dubbed “Is this cat feral?” We are all excited and a bit nervous about what we will find – it is possible that we will finish this phase and find we are unable to easily predict a feral cat from a frightened pet cat, but we are armed for battle!

The “Is it Feral?” team is lead by our Project Manager, Dr. Kat Miller, and includes Dr. Margaret Slater, Dr. Kathy Makolinski and myself. We are pleased that Alex Mirontschuk has joined the team as our on-the-ground research assistant. This is a pretty amazing team to be working with – we have feral experts, statistical experts, veterinarian expertise, and assessment expertise. We make a great team to develop an assessment that is “do-able” in the shelter environment, is humane, and does not risk shelter health. No guarantee that we will find predictive measures, but quite a team to try!

Phase one of this research focused on surveying the industry regarding current practices in determining feral status. The results of this research are slated for publication in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery this year. We found a wide variety of assessment and holding methods, with only 15% of the respondents (555) having written guidelines.This phase reinforced the need for a validated methodology to better assess if a cat is likely feral or simply a frightened pet cat.

In developing our measures we first needed to define what we would call feral. One might define any cat in a feral colony as feral and any cat who has an owner as a pet. Yes, that is broad brush, and leaves a chunk of free roaming cats out, but work with me… okay?

From an animal welfare perspective, I would argue that the best way to define these groups is not by where they live, but where they would likely thrive. While this often lands us in the same place, when we are focusing on a population of cats who come to shelters without a known history, this shift in perspective opens doors to more humane placement.

Step one is acknowledging that most cats entering our sheltering system do not leave alive, and that the risk of death is likely higher in our shelters than where the cat had been thriving. (Deep breath!) There are opportunities for some drastic shifts in thinking that may save more lives and improve welfare.

Step two may be a triage system at intake. Do we have a history of ‘place’ for this cat? Has he/she been living in a community? A colony? On a doorstep? In a home? What is the physical condition of the cat? Does the cat appear healthy? Hopefully our research will give us some other indicators that a cat could ‘thrive as feral or free-roaming’ to use as well.

Phase 2 was conducted in Asheville – Humane Alliance has graciously made room for us for both Phase 2 and Phase 3 of this research. This is a perfect location, as we can capture our subjects as they are slated for S/N surgery, and we can simulate a shelter environment without gumming up the works at a shelter with our research. Thank you, Humane Alliance!

Phase 2 was our pilot phase – to test our long list of assessment items on 2 populations of cats – known ferals (cats who had been thriving in a feral colony for at least 6 months) and known owned cats (cats who had been living with people in home environments and had never been in a feral colony). Dr. Kat Miller flew to Asheville (in one of the worst snow storms in the city’s recent history) to conduct this phase. Caregivers answered a questionnaire about their cats’ behavior in their normal environment. All cats were treated the same way: brought to the test site via humane box traps, vaccinated and housed singly in standard holding cages. They were then assessed and observed for 3 days.

This research found some subtle potential behavior differences in the populations. Take our quiz and see how well you are able to assess the differences.

We now embark on Phase 3. As you are reading this, Dr. Kat Miller and Alex are wrapping up the assessments on the first group of cats – we plan to assess groups of 16 weekly from now until close to the end of the year. Look for updates later this year!

Tell us how you might use an assessment in your facility. And how did you do on that quiz?

Last week I asked you to send me your favorite shelter photo and explain what it means—and says—to you.

My first submission came from Texas—from Michael Kitkoski, media coordinator at Rockwall PAWS—and I was so excited to get a response I immediately forwarded it to my department mates. I knew we’d struck photographic gold when my colleague Valerie Sheppard emailed, “I love that shot! What a nice change from the stereotypical ‘dog catcher’ image the world often sees—you know, a big burly guy standing next to a truck with a net and a tranq gun.”

Kitkoski got this ‘beauty shot’ last December. “I happened to be walking out of the Rockwall Animal Adoption Center,” he says, “when Connie Painter, one of our animal service officers, drove up with Pepe, a dog she had rounded up in the field. Instead of putting the dog in one of the truck’s kennels, she had the dog on her lap, making sure he felt comfortable and loved. I think this photo just about sums up Connie’s feelings about her job.”

The San Francisco SPCA’s community development specialist, Laura Gretch, emailed her current favorite photo. “Buddy was a dog in our adoption center last year, who just couldn’t seem to get adopted. He spent 9 months with us, 5 of those in my office to give him a break from the shelter environment,” says Gretch. “He was a constant in the dog bed next to my desk, with me typing daily Buddy updates to Facebook and the website – his adoption, of course, my ultimate goal.”

“His adopter wandered in one day just to look, and within 5 minutes I knew this was Buddy’s new home. Four days after the adoption, he sent me this photo.”

“I call it ‘Buddy with a View,’’” continues Gretch. “To me, it is everything we are striving for on a daily basis – Buddy is relaxed, he’s got a view of all of San Francisco – a real dog with a real home. I’d like to think he’s talking in his sleep – ‘Laura – it is all good – I’m home, and you can pass that dog bed in your office to someone else now…’”

Someone like Lucy, the pup in this photo from Anne Smith, director of Potsdam Humane Society.

”She came to our shelter as a severely malnourished 3-4 week-old,” says Smith. “This picture was taken a couple days before her adoption. It shows her on top of ‘Snow Mountain’ with our canine rehabilitation specialist, Natty Bumppo. The photo was taken on a cell phone by Keenan Gillard, one of our dedicated student volunteers. To me it evokes hope & optimism.”

Oooohhh, look at this face!

“His name is Yo,” explains Dori Villalon, vice president of the San Francisco SPCA, “and I love this picture because his face tells such a story of survival. When you see a cat this old, you know he must be an awesome dude who has seen it all. Yo is in the SFSPCA’s Fospice Program, and is receiving end-of-life care from one of our dedicated volunteers. I love this picture because his handsome face reflects his jest for life, and because I know when it is time we will provide him with the dignified and loving passing he deserves.”

Susan Ruderman of Animal Rescue League of Boston didn’t send us her favorite photo—but she did send one that deeply resonated with her.

“When I saw the Austin shot, I immediately thought of its opposite, which I had recently selected from our archives while looking for some images evocative of the era. It takes the contemplative feel of the Austin shot and turns it on its head with the rowdy enthusiasm of this seven-year-old boy. It’s the contrast that does it for me. But at the end of the day, both photos are about the power of the relationship between animals and kids.”

Inspiring, huh?! Thank you all so much for taking the time to send these photos—and for helping me answer the question, “What makes a great photo?” I thought I’d tap the collective wisdom of the group in what I guess was actually a teeny experiment in crowdsourcing (Bert Troughton talks about a way bigger example here).

Not only did we answer the question together, but I found out more about you. That relationship-building part is really important, since you guys—animal welfare professionals—are a new audience for me. (Too corny? But I really mean it!)

Same idea applies to organizations who want to get to know and engage their online audience. And this isn’t exactly breaking news, since tons of shelters are doing the very same thing I just did on their websites, Facebook pages, etc.

Thing is, it works. Just yesterday I heard from Maya Erhardt, manager of community development at the Richmond SPCA, who regularly encourages fans to post stories and pictures of adopted pets on Richmond’s Facebook page. “It’s particularly effective in bringing attention to pet adoption,” says Erhardt, “and really seems to tap into the power of social media to create natural peer and interest groups. Facebook has become one of our top-mentioned sources when we quiz adopters about why they came to see us.”

Have you tried anything similar at your organization? Do tell!

(I think we definitely got to the big picture here—thanks again!)

In 1999, Geauga Humane Society was a small, worthy, but underfunded organization working from an uninviting, substandard shelter that made good husbandry almost impossible and attracting adopters a major challenge. Within just two years, the organization raised over $2 million and opened Rescue Village, a new state-of-the-art facility where people of all ages now come together to care for and celebrate animals. This is the story of Hugh, the plain brown street dog who became the centerpiece of the campaign to build Rescue Village.

For six weeks, Hugh was a mayor without a village. But finally, on a windswept December day, this plain brown dog who had opened the hearts (and checkbooks) of so many was able to welcome the public to his domain.

We had quietly moved the cats into their super-ventilated new cat condos and cageless Cat Community Room a few days earlier to let them get acclimated before the crowds descended. The actual grand opening day belonged to Hugh and the dogs.

In the morning, staff, board members, capital campaign committee members and major donors gathered at the old shelter where we held a Blessing of the Animals – those who had made it out alive and those who had not – as well as all the people who had been their champions throughout the history of the organization. A lone bagpiper then led the dogs and their handlers onto a waiting bus to carry them to their new home.

Once we got to Rescue Village, we gathered at the front door for the formal ribbon cutting. Actually, there were two ribbons – one to be cut by major donors and a lower one to be “cut” by Hugh, who had been practicing for weeks.

The dogs were there. The staff was there. The board members and donors were there. But Hugh, who was supposed to have been on the bus with his faithful trainer, was nowhere to be seen. I waited, scissors in hand, as the dignitaries, especially the four-legged ones, became increasingly restless. I paced. I made small talk. And then, just as I was about to give up on the guest of honor, the biggest limo I’d ever seen pulled up to the front of the building. Out stepped the secret service in full regalia followed by the Mayor himself, who trotted straight past me, raised his paw, and broke the ribbon. With that, we invited the human dignitaries to do their thing and opened the doors to a 25-year dream come true.

Hugh was front and center as we blessed our new home. He led the way as the media and honored guests explored our amazing new facility with its clinic, isolation and quarantine rooms, bright kennels, exercise areas, walking trails, and education room – so very different from the dreary little shelter we had left behind and so filled with possibilities. Marino chose to watch the proceedings from his new perch in the Cat Community Room. Then it was time to get down to business – time to get those cats and dogs out of the new digs and into their permanent homes. Adoptions in our first month at Rescue Village hit an all-time high and in our first year at Rescue Village, they were up 24%.

Over the next 3 weekends, we welcomed hundreds of visitors to Rescue Village – almost all bearing gifts of food, bedding and toys for the animals. Hugh greeted them all. Whenever he felt he was being overshadowed by the cats celebrating their new-found freedom in their new room, he’d stand in the middle of the lobby and start cycling through all the behaviors he’d learned, just waiting for someone to notice and give him a treat. It always worked.

Hugh and his cartoonist friend continued to bring in the money as well – and, for the next two years, Hugh presided at every fundraising event.

Next: Hugh gets his Happy Ending

Once upon a time there was a community using the ASPCA Animal Stats Dashboard, our data tracking tool. This community decided to implement a high volume income-based target spay/neuter initiative focused on cats. They funneled significant resources into the program and we tracked effect. We were all quite excited when we observed a significant trend toward decreased kitten intake.

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It appeared as if the targeted focus were having a substantial effect. But we then looked at the trend in cat intake and noticed that there appeared to be a large increase.

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Looking at either of these in isolation might have driven program. For example, the target S/N appeared to be working – the community may have decided to drive more funds and focus toward it or, noting the increase in cat intake, they might have focused program around increasing Live Release for this population and away from S/N for a time. But when we look at these 2 trends side by side, I start feeling a little dirty…

In fact, what had happened was that there was a staff change at the beginning of the year and the intake data was being processed differently than the year before – the staff was no longer filling in the DOB field, which defaulted all animals without a DOB to adult. AHA! Once we are able to clean up the data, we found a different story.

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There are lots of ways for your data to be dirty – which in turn could steer you in the wrong direction regarding program. For example, I am getting really excited about truly focused targets for S/N – using GIS tools (more on this in a future blog). In order to target S/N this way, we need to gather information regarding location of the animal. Data in this realm gets really dirty when the address of the feral cat coordinator gets entered in the S/N clinic’s data instead of the address where the cat was trapped. It gets even murkier when the address of the shelter or finder is entered for strays at animal control as opposed to where the cat was found. How can we target program and effect without the correct data?

Here is something you can do right now to start cleaning up your data: Start daily inventory counts, walking through your facility with your shelter software inventory report and do a physical count. This will do a few things for you:

First, and most important, it will give you the opportunity to get your eyes on each and every animal in your facility – Are they thriving? Is their length of stay getting long? Are they ready to be shifted to surgery-adoption-foster?

Next, it will give you the ability to see if your shelter software count is the same as your physical count. If you have not been doing this daily walk, I can almost guarantee the count will be off. It may be off because fosters are being double counted as intake when they come back to the shelter, maybe DOAs are entered as live shelter intake, there may be duplicate entries for the same animal… There are lots of reasons.

I challenge each of you to start a daily walk-through starting today. Please comment here on what you find – your experience will help inform us and help other shelters experiencing the same sort of issues.

Thanks to the PetPoint Summits many of you will have the opportunity to learn more about Naked Data, and how to use your software more effectively to keep that data clean. And… if you are feeling dirty…tell me all about it!

I’m stalking you.

Seriously, shelters, I spend a lot of time looking at your Facebook pages. I take note of how often and when you post status updates, peruse your photo albums, look at who’s listed on your favorite pages and yes, I even click on the Info & Notes tabs and read all your comments.

I love seeing what you’re working on—but I also love seeing what’s working. It may be a no-brainer that social media is a great way to activate your communities, but you can’t quite yet find proven methods that’ll work for every shelter, every time. And so I watch and listen, and every day I’m amazed with the innovations that shelters are coming up with, using tools that—HELLO! —weren’t initially designed for use by nonprofit organizations.

I even compiled some of my favorites—along with some ideas of my own—in this list of 50 Things To Do on Facebook, given out to attendees of the presentation that my colleague, Elyse Orecchio, and I gave at the New England Federation of Humane Societies’ 65th annual training conference earlier this week.

Some are pretty obvious—post a link to your website, put out a call for volunteers—but as one attendee told me, a list like this could be really helpful when she’s caught up in the day-to-day operations of the shelter and has only so much time to update the Facebook page.

Some ideas, like #50, for example, are something else entirely.

“Last week we were really full, and I wanted to get some people to physically come into the shelter,” explains Jenna Bell, volunteer and foster coordinator at Spokane Humane Society and author of the above status. “I figured once I got people into the building, they would take a look around and possibly find a new family member. Our contest winner was a Domino’s delivery driver who also brought us the news that Domino’s supports us and would love to donate pizza to an event—it turned out to be a win-win situation!”

Sound silly? Sure, it’s silly, but it’s also really smart. Bell just met a main objective behind a good overall social media strategy—to connect the online with the real world.

So there…

Woof! Meow!

P.S. Oh, and the best part is, it’s not just me who’s doing the stalking. You’re watching each other. Just yesterday I noticed in my news feed that Asheville Humane Society had posted on its page an incredible video created by the Nevada Humane Society:

Awesome, right? It’s amazing, the quality and breadth of stuff that’s out there that can help get animals adopted and engage the community. And if we can inspire each other along the way—even better.

Just yesterday, Dr. Emily Weiss challenged you to do a daily walk-through of your facility. Well, I’ll throw out a challenge to whomever’s in charge of communicating your message—how about a daily stalk-through?!

And do tell us what treasures you’ve found—and tried—on your Facebook forays.

If you’ve been a director long enough to get a great team together, you know just how precious and valuable that team is. In a high-performing team communications channels are well-oiled, roles are clearly defined and smoothly executed, people support each other, and most importantly – the proof is in the results of consistent goal achievement. It’s a lot of work to get a team to this point. So the dilemma is always present for me: how to balance the need for high-performing teams with the value of supporting staff members in developing along their career paths.

Honestly, I think I act a little stingy in this regard because I hate losing people. But this week when we got the following note back from a recently departed and much-loved teammate, it dawned on me that cross-pollinating is as important in business as it is in nature:

Hi everyone,

I said the investment the ASPCA made in me would benefit Noah’s Ark and its animals.

Tonight, along with Heather Cammisa, I conducted the first evening off-site adoption as part of PetSmart’s Second Chance adoption weekend. Four cats and one dog (I only took 7 animals) were adopted tonight, in less than four hours, because I learned the following from my experiences at the ASPCA:

-Offer variety but limit the selection.
-You can complete an adoption in a conversational way with little red tape.
-Vet checks and landlord checks are not necessary but follow-up is a great idea.
-Promos and reduced rates do not impact the care an animal will receive.

One adopter said, “I wanted both cats and couldn’t decide which one to take and then you offered the two fur one and my decision was easy.” The two cats she took were 8 and 12 years old.

Via the conversational- and learning-centered approach, I discovered that a couple adopting live in my complex a building away. We are now going to pet-sit for each other and I think Noah’s has another supporter. While Heather completed their cat adoption, I was chatting with the husband who decided he had fallen in love with a one-year old beagle and had to take her home. They left with two cats and a dog. Thinking this was an unusual adoption – three animals at once – I remembered it is not about judging but about trusting the adopter to make sound decisions for themselves and just supporting them along the way.

I’ll sleep well tonight.

Darla, Spaz, Cinderella, Lilly and Eve thank you.

Todd

Todd Cramer was a Community Initiative Director for ASPCA Community Outreach from 2004 to 2010. He is now the Executive Director at Noah’s Ark Animal Welfare Association in Ledgewood, NJ. Since his very first note from his new post is proof positive that cross-pollinating is incredibly valuable to the strength and vitality of our entire field, I now realize their gain is our gain, too. Good luck, Todd. You’ll be great!

In 1999, Geauga Humane Society was a small, worthy, but underfunded organization working from an uninviting, substandard shelter that made good husbandry almost impossible and attracting adopters a major challenge. Within just two years, the organization raised over $2 million and opened Rescue Village, a new state-of-the-art facility where people of all ages now come together to care for and celebrate animals. This is the story of Hugh, the plain brown street dog who became the centerpiece of the campaign to build Rescue Village.

Not long after we opened Rescue Village, Hugh’s personal trainer Sharon Harvey asked if she could adopt him. Although it meant the Mayor wouldn’t always be at the shelter to greet visitors, we felt he had clearly earned his own happy ending – and Sharon was more than willing to let him continue his therapy work, spend time at the shelter on busy weekend days, and make public appearances. The rest of the time, Hugh became a beloved pet, taking vacations at the beach, making angels in the show, and curling up by the fire with his pal Emmett.

But wait. There’s more. As I mentioned earlier, Sharon’s experiences as Hugh’s personal trainer introduced her to the world of animal welfare and soon she was hooked. When I resigned as executive director, Sharon, an experienced and gifted hospital administrator, changed careers and moved into the director’s office at Rescue Village. Hugh’s public life and private life had come together. He was one happy dog.

Sadly, by then, he was also a sick dog. He continued with his official duties right up to the end but spent more and more time curled up under Sharon’s desk receiving only those visitors who had known him from the start. When he died of cancer, the local paper ran the story with this ending:

“Hugh was extraordinary because he was so very ordinary – a plain brown dog of unknown breeding, full of love and eager to please. He wasn’t particularly bright. He certainly wasn’t athletic. He was just a dog – a massive heart surrounded by fur.

We’ll all miss the public Hugh. All that celebrity was great fun. But it’s the private Hugh we should all remember and honor – the homeless dog in need of a helping hand. That’s what he stood for. And, when all is said and done, the best thing that happened in Hugh’s razzle-dazzle life was Sharon’s love. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what it’s always about.”

And one last appeal went out in his name. It read: “Thanks to your support, a battered street dog from Ohio not only became a mayor, but also experienced the joy of paddling in the surf and chasing gulls along the beach. Every day at Rescue Village, dogs just like Hugh are waiting for nothing more than their chance to become remarkable in someone’s life. Please keep his legacy alive by helping us to make sure that they too get to experience the joy of having a home.”

Happily, the legacy of Hugh does indeed live on as Rescue Village continues to welcome humans and animals of all ages and backgrounds and place them into loving relationships that enrich the lives of both for years to come.

Next: Why I think the story of Hugh is important

Two of our SAFER facilitators just returned from the final of a series of 3 special trainings focused on prepping Certified Pet Dog Trainers and AKC Canine Good Citizen assessors for SAFER certification. The training included two add-on assessments that are not part of the traditional SAFER assessment – but can be handy in a new focus for SAFER. The facilitators were raving about the workshop attendees. They challenged the facilitators and had great input, and left ready to submit for certification – and ready to save lives!Why the new focus for SAFER? The story starts in Parris Island, SC – at a United States Marine Corps base of all places! A team of us went down to Parris Island late last year to assess the dogs living on base who were involved in a housing breed ban. The Marine Corps instituted a ban, in base housing, of pit bulls, Rottweilers and wolf hybrids. They allowed a grandfathering process, stating that if dogs in this category already living on base passed a nationally recognized “Temperament Test,” they would be allowed to stay on base.

Parris Island, along with some other bases, chose to use the AKC’s CGC assessment and assessors as their assessment tool. As some of you know, the AKC CGC assessment is a fabulous tool to help assess obedience and training in canines and their pet parents. It can take quite a bit of time and training to prepare a dog for the CGC, and there are plenty of safe dogs who are simply not trained fully to pass.

An AKC CGC assessor from Parris Island decided to start the process of bringing the SAFER assessment in. She had assessed over 15 dogs, and only 1 or 2 had passed. After connecting with Dr. Mary Burch, Director of the AKC’s CGC program, we all concluded that SAFER was the better stop-gap tool for this type of situation, where we are simply assessing the potential for significant overt aggression. I fell in love with the idea of offering CGC training and certification opportunities after dogs had been assessed using SAFER to help assure the elimination of bans on base.

A team of SAFER certified assessors flew to Parris Island and, working closely with the Parris Island vets and housing dept., we assessed 85 dogs. We met some amazing families and some great dogs. I will never forget shaking the hand of a woman who came in with her young daughter and her pit bull. Her hand was clammy, and she was shaking from head to toe. I put my arm around her, sat her down, and told her about the process. She would be staying in the room while we assessed her dog. She would see every assessment – and we simply asked for her to remain quiet and to not look directly at her dog. While we were talking, her daughter was sitting literally underneath her dog, who remained loose, soft and relaxed. The tears rolled down the mother’s cheeks as she kissed her dog. I realized, for about the 10th time that day, that this woman had watched her husband walk off to war, and now she was feeling as if she were about to lose her dog.

This dog, along with 83 others, showed no signs of significant overt aggression. The experience affected all of us deeply, including the housing dept at Parris Island. They wanted the families to be able to keep their pets, and simply wanted to follow the mandate, and keep their families safe. A certificate of appreciation from the Marine Corps stated “Your efforts were mutually beneficial to both the Marine Corps and the Depot and were vital for these animals to remain a part of the Marine Corps family for years to come.”

The attendees of the 3 SAFER certification preparation workshops we just completed learned SAFER along with 2 additional assessments that may be helpful for these breed ban situations. Having CPDTs and AKC assessors in the room was a fabulous experience for all of us – I am hopeful that these professionals will be available for shelters as well as their communities. One of the attendees said,  “I think this is a great program and I was thrilled to see you offering the opportunity for trainers to learn about the program and get involved in combating breed bans. I am just sorry more people did not take advantage of the opportunity! I look forward to submitting my videos and becoming certified! I am working with the supervisor of a shelter to try to get all of the shelters in our county to use SAFER as the core of their assessments.” Attendees who become certified may be able to help assure that dogs in their communities have an option to stay in their homes.

Following on this great SAFER development came this article from a Toledo paper where the Toledo Humane Society, a shelter contending with statewide breed specific legislation, will be using SAFER to promote its efforts to adopt out pit bulls. What a great way to increase live releases and focus our work on saving more lives! We look forward to conducting a SAFER certification prep course in Toledo. Maybe we will see some of you there!

Have you had experience using SAFER to help support certain dogs or populations in your facility or community? Please tell!

P.S. Want to sharpen your skills at reading the canine body postures discussed in a SAFER assessment? Check out our video glossary.

Dog days of summer. The cat’s meow. Been there, done that, right?

Sure, there are times when the creative juices are flowing and the perfect name for that upcoming TNR event just types itself on your keyboard, or in a splash of flash you’ve named a litter of kittens after your favorite Dancing With the Stars contestants (C’mon! Isn’t Evan a good name for a tuxedo cat?).

And then there are those days when all I can come up with are a few hackneyed purrfects and yes, even a furry friend or two.

Luckily, you guys are collectively off the charts in terms of clever cat-isms, and we—the language-loving ladies at ASPCApro.org—are forever emailing each other when we hear about an adoptions event with a catchy name, or a choice pun we’d yet to think of. When I asked my colleagues to share their favorites for this post, they delivered—faster than Domino’s. We got 2 votes for San Francisco SPCA’s blog, Litter Did You Know…, and kudos for Charleston Animal Society’s Wags to Wishes adoption event, Humane Ohio’s Beat the Heat spay/neuter special, and No More Homeless Pets Utah’s Hooters for Neuters promotion.

The mother lode? Town Lake Animal Center’s KittyPalooza. This music-themed adoption event featured solo cat acts (and all-cat bands) with names like Tom Petme and the Heartbreakers, Britney Spays, Hissy Elliot, 9 Inch Tails and the Yowling Stones, “performing” on one of two stages.

Last week was also particularly good for wordsmiths, with Central Oklahoma Humane Society doing us all proud with this one:

For one day, May 5, the adoption fee for OK Humane cats 6 months and older was just 5 bucks. (Cinco de Mayo, get it?!) “This was our first year for the Cinco de Gato special, and it’s looking good so far,” Samantha Burnett, Director of Operations, told me near the end of the day. “Right now we’re at 13 cats, all adults, and 4 of those are 7+ years old. The other very cool part is that all these cats have been with us long-term, and it’s great to see them adopted. Good times!” Final tally? Veinte gatos!

As yet, it’s not been determined if there’s a correlation between depth and length of groan induced by pun and effectiveness of promotion, but in the meantime—please wow us with your most clever-named campaign in the comment box.

P.S. Next time we’ll take an even closer look at the many ways to spin a cat, with tips on marketing cats and an entire PowerPoint of amazing adoptions campaigns from Cleveland Animal Protective League’s Sharon Harvey and Bonney Brown of Nevada Humane Society, respectively. SCORE!

Photo 1: Courtesy of Holly Clark
Photo 3: Courtesy of Central Oklahoma Humane Society

I was reading journalist  David Brooks’ recent Op Ed in the New York Times on “The Limits of Policy” and couldn’t help but make the connection to policy in our field – especially adoption policy. Brooks argues that achieving desired outcomes often has less to do with policy and more to do with the intricate weave of social, cultural and psychological factors in a community. And he goes on to say that this intricate weave explains why quality-of-life factors vary so widely across the country – despite the fact that all of the communities in the country live under one set of national policies. So if we apply these ideas to developing good adoption policy, I think it means we should be more concerned with how we understand and work with our communities. Or as Brooks puts it, “Try to use policy to strengthen relationships.”

If you Google “animal adoption policies,” you can pull up thousands of references. Some are in softer language than others and some include explanations for their restrictions, but for the most part what you’re going to find is a very long list of “thou shalt’s” and “thou shalt not’s.” And before I come off too pompous here, let me come clean by telling you a little of my history. When I started at Monadnock Humane Society there was a big ugly sign in our reception area that said, “We reserve the right to refuse, delay or deny any adoption for any reason.” I was appalled by the aesthetics, so what was my grand improvement? I had a sign-maker do it over into a larger, more professional-looking sign. (Yes, I am embarrassed admitting this.) Eventually when I got tired of responding to angry letters to the editor about how we would rather euthanize animals than adopt them I began to see the light, and ultimately I was privileged to take part in the national Adoption Forums. So I admit it, as an adoption policy reformist, I am kind of like an ex-smoker.

Click image to enlarge and read

Policies that are full of do’s and don’ts will actually keep us at arm’s length from our communities. Or as Leslie Harris, Executive Director of Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society in western Massachusetts, puts it, “You insult far more terrific people while you are trying to ‘catch’ the rare person doing the wrong thing.” Check out DPVHS’s website and the simple way they walk their community through the adoption process. And while you’re at it, check out the thinking behind their open adoptions approach.

Here’s another breath of fresh air in adoption policies: Oregon Humane Society has an Adoption “Mission,” which is “to place 100% of the adoptable animals coming to the shelter into responsible homes utilizing excellent customer service skills.” Sharon Harmon, OHS Executive Director, explains the evolution in their adoption practices this way, “We began to view the public as a solution rather than a problem.” “User-friendly adoptions” – now THAT’s strengthening relationship with your community!The people have our number. I found an online conversation about whether adoption policies are too strict at Animal Debates. If you care to peek, you’ll find hundreds of comments about the absurdity of some of our policies – and you’ll get a rather painful inkling of just how badly we’re offending the public on whom the animals so desperately depend.

Let’s start rethinking our adoption policies. How can we heed Brooks’ advice and “try to use policy to strengthen relationships” …with our communities?

Photos 1 and 3 courtesy of the Oregon Humane Society.

In Bert’s blog post last week, she shared the learning of a colleague. It was powerful to see these ideas move forward and save lives. One of the pieces of information Todd learned was to offer a variety of animals, but limit selection. This can be quite controversial in our field – as most of us think that offering more selection will result in more adoptions. Hearing that it actually results in less can be tough to grasp!

Choosing – making decisions – is a fascinating and complex set of behaviors. Our short-term memory can really only hold 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2) – making the function of deciding among more than that number of items a Herculean feat in the field of cognition. The field of research around decision making is huge – take a peek at the lab at Harvard and read about a variety of research and books focused on the area in a recent Sunday Morning Show on CBS (my favorite TV show, hands-down…).

When there are fewer animals on your adoption floor, your adoptions can increase and your length of stay can decrease. Why? Because when there is too much to choose from, consumers, people, adopters, simply do not choose. I remember telling the board of a shelter this once and getting the response, “That is ridiculous. Look at Wal-Mart, they are huge and they are the top retailer in the country.” My answer – Wal-Mart has tons of inventory, but few choices of each type of product. Want paper towels? You have way fewer choices of different types of paper towels at Wal-Mart than you do at your local supermarket – which makes you more likely to make a decision and actually buy. Imagine the emotional decision making that can happen around bringing a new family member into your home? Now add 100 cats to choose from… yikes.

How do you figure out how many animals to have on your adoption floor? Start by analyzing the number of adoptions you do per day. Next, take a look at your transition rate (a term I learned from the Richmond SPCA). Your transition rate is the rate of people who walk in your doors to look at or potentially adopt a pet who actually end up leaving with a pet. A simple greeter survey matched back to total adoptions per day can provide your transition rate. Now assume you can increase your daily adoptions by 15% (I am being conservative). That is how many animals you should have on the adoption floor. Any time an animal is adopted, his cage should be immediately cleaned and a new animal placed in that spot, so that at all times, there are the same number of animals in view for your adopters.

Washington Animal Rescue League

San Francisco SPCA and Washington Animal Rescue League are just a couple of examples of facilities that gave this a try with good success. How about this – collect your baseline transition rate, length of stay, and adoption numbers, then try decreasing the numbers of animals on your adoption floor and measure the change.

If you have already made a transition, share your thoughts here!

Photo 1: Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/austinevan/ / CC BY 2.0

Photo 2: Renee Tellez photography

In 1999, Geauga Humane Society was a small, worthy, but underfunded organization working from an uninviting, substandard shelter that made good husbandry almost impossible and attracting adopters a major challenge. Within just two years, the organization raised over $2 million and opened Rescue Village, a new state-of-the-art facility where people of all ages now come together to care for and celebrate animals. This is the story of Hugh, the plain brown street dog who became the centerpiece of the campaign to build Rescue Village.

Living Hugh’s Story taught me many valuable lessons. Here’s the one that’s had the biggest impact on my work as a fundraiser:

When you ask people to help you do meaningful work, and you make it a good experience, you’re actually offering them an opportunity to enrich – or maybe even change – their lives.

That was driven home to me again recently when I went to our local funeral home to attend a gathering for Bud Weber. Bud was the owner of a successful local construction company that built many prominent buildings in the area – as well as our own Rescue Village.

Geauga Humane Society's Rescue Village

When I got to the funeral home, the line of well-wishers stretched out the door and into the parking lot. I hadn’t seen Bud since soon after we opened Rescue Village nearly ten years ago and I didn’t have a personal connection to him or his family. But Bud absolutely saved the day for our little organization when he agreed to take over the construction project, taught me how to work with an architect determined to spend money I knew we couldn’t raise, helped us reduce the projected cost by a whopping $500,000, and brought the project in on time and within our modest budget. I wanted to say thank you but I felt a little bit like an intruder as I snaked my way to the door.

Then, as I entered the room where friends and family were gathered, I saw it – front and center on the mantle – the Hugh Award we had given to Bud for “going way beyond his contract to build a wonderful new home for the animals of Geauga County.”  As I worked my way through the receiving line, each member of the family asked me if I’d seen the award. “That meant so much to him,” one son said. “He just loved that job and talked about it all the time,” his sister added. 

Bud completely redesigned the lobby. Thank goodness!

How wonderful to learn that it wasn’t a one-way street. When I called our board president to tell her about the award on the mantle, she wasn’t surprised. “I knew he enjoyed having the opportunity to give back,” she said.

Well, he wasn’t the only one. I’ve told you about how asking Sharon Harvey to give Hugh some training for his mayoral campaign changed her life. The same thing can be said for just about everyone who dove into the campaign to build Rescue Village – including me. When I was asked to help, I “temporarily” closed my business and took a major pay cut, planning to re-open as soon as the building was up and running. Now animal welfare is my life and the people I met through the campaign are my “tribe.” We all worked so hard. We all learned and grew through the experience, and we are bonded for life by a shared pride of accomplishment and determination to keep on fighting the good fight.

So, whether you’re trying to build a building, raise enough money to keep kibble in the bowls, or going for the $100K Challenge, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You might well be giving a lot more than you get.

I don’t know about you, but studying a PowerPoint usually isn’t my idea of a good time.

But earlier this week, when I downloaded the presentations on cat adoptions campaigns that I promised to blog about today, it felt like Christmas.

Or should I say, the Twelfth Day of Cat-Mas:

Page after page, the hits just kept on coming: The A-CAT-emy Awards. Feline Independence Day, with a $17.76 adoption fee for cats and kittens. Fat Cat Adoption Days, with reduced fees for plus-size kitties. Non-Toxic Pest Control: Adopt a Barn Cat.

The above campaign was just one of many featured in Bonney Brown’s presentation at the New England Federation of Humane Societies’ annual conference this past April. “We view ourselves as a retail operation in terms of adoptions promotions,” says Nevada Humane Society’s Executive Director. Not only does that entail aggressively promoting creative, fun ideas designed to get media attention, but viewing your challenges as opportunities.

“When we got 54 mostly-orange cats from a hoarding situation,” Brown tells us, “we dubbed it the Great Orange Cat Rescue, created posters, sent news releases and asked the public to adopt the cats and send donations for the care.” Total number of orange cats adopted? 54.

Brown regularly brainstorms with her staff for ideas for adoptions campaigns, and don’t forget another cheap (and oh-so-endless) source of inspiration—your television. “Tie your campaign to pop culture and current events,” suggests Cleveland APL’s Executive Director, Sharon Harvey, M.A., “and make it catchy and easy to remember when possible.”

Hmmm…sounds a little like one of those commercial jingles that your brain keeps hitting repeat on:

Cleveland APL scored great media coverage with this two-week 2009 promotion, offering a $5 adoption fee for the first cat adopted (5 months or older). Another very cool aspect: because Cleveland APL has worked hard to cultivate good relationships with local media, Harvey tells us they’ve “never had a paid ad” to promote their adoption campaigns.

Adoptions of the Five-Dollar Felines were up 223% from the same two-week time period in the year before. Certainly not too much of a good thing, unlike the footlong that inspired this campaign.

Want more? View Brown’s Increasing Pet Adoptions—Saving Lives here.

Harvey’s complete Putting More “Wow” In Your Cat Adoption Program can be viewed here.

Thank you both for sharing your incredible ideas with ASPCApro.org!

And YOUR favorite/most successful adoptions campaign? Tell us about it in the comments box.

Before I took the job as director of our local humane society, my entire fundraising career had been at a private girls’ school and a rather posh botanical garden. The day I walked into my office for the first time, my assistant – a crusty 74-year-old former humane officer who didn’t have much use for people and was plenty bitter about being off the road – took one look at my preppy self (I may actually have been wearing a circle pin) and made it her mission to educate me about my new line of work.

Her method was to join, on my behalf, every humane group, large or small, that sent out graphic pictures of suffering animals. Morning after morning, I’d come in and find some horrific image of a badly injured dog or cat staring up at me with a story that would tear your heart to shreds.At first, being new to the field and eager to learn, I read everything put in front of me. But soon I began to feel the excitement and determination that had brought me to this new endeavor slipping away. If the situation for animals was this overwhelmingly awful, surely my efforts would do little to change things. I wanted to run back to my clean-cut world of smart girls and beautiful flowers. But, something had brought me to this task and I knew I had to find a way to do it.

So, in one of my very few executive orders, I banished the negative press from my office and started taking a good look at those organizations, in animal welfare and all sorts of other fields, whose mailings compelled me to jump in, or better yet, to reach for my checkbook.

What I discovered was that I didn’t need to be hit over the head with hideous pictures and graphic descriptions to understand when help was needed. In fact, those images and descriptions made me turn away and left me feeling helpless and a little sick to my stomach. It was a feeling I hated so much that I stopped opening those mailings the way I avoid eating oysters.

The mailings I opened with enthusiasm were those that showed me, in upbeat, cleverly written stories and smashing happy-ending photos, the good work the organizations were doing and how I could become a part of it. Those mailings have been the models for my work over the years and those organizations are still the organizations I support.And yet, day after day, I turn on my computer to find email after email with horrific pictures of animals suffering all over the world (today it was waters off the coast of Denmark running red with the blood of slaughtered whales, several abused dogs from across the country, and downed cows at a slaughterhouse). I care desperately about these animals, but I confess that I cannot deal with those emails. Every morning, I run through the list with my finger on the delete key, scrambling to get the negativity off my computer so I can concentrate on the work I am doing to save the animals I feel I can save. I know I miss opportunities to make a difference just because I cannot face the messages.

But for thousands of others, these emails must work or they wouldn’t keep coming – so my question is, what makes you stop and read? What makes you pull out your credit card? What makes you run the other way? I’ll share your responses in a future blog entry.


As some of you know, I am a pretty data-focused person. When someone tells me they are doing X or Y to affect change, I want to know how they know it is working. Successes in spay/ neuter programs are often measured by the number of surgeries – which may not be the right, or only, goal or measure. I have noticed that our field has done an absolutely amazing job at refining procedures to enable us to conduct low-cost high-volume spay/neuter. With models for both mobile units, such as the ASPCA’s mobile spay/neuter clinics, and brick-and-mortar facilities (Humane Alliance model), the field has truly measured and made a science of sustainable low-cost S/N.

Many communities have embraced the high-volume model and are conducting a significant number of spay/neuter surgeries. However, many of these communities are not seeing a decrease of intake into the sheltering system. At the ASPCA, we believe that the animals who enter the sheltering system are most at risk. If we start with this agreement in philosophy, and given that our resources for S/N are not unlimited, we may need to slightly shift our model from high-volume, low-cost S/N to a truly targeted high-volume model.

What do I mean by truly targeted?

I will start with what I do not mean. I do not mean targeting a particular income level, and I do not even mean targeting a particular zip code. What I am suggesting is a deep dig into an organization’s intake to first identify the populations most at risk, and then to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to help us better target those populations.

Dr. Gary Patronek from Animal Rescue League of Boston recently published an article using GIS to track risk for incoming cats. This research piqued our interest in the tool.

To truly target we need to have data from both the intake facilities and the S/N facilities. The ASPCA Partnership in Asheville served as our pilot community for the use of GIS for targeting at this level. How incredibly cool to use the community where Humane Alliance lives!

When Humane Alliance began their work in Asheville, they achieved impressive intake decreases in the community sheltering system. Even here, where a high-volume model has had impact on intake, there are still opportunities for better focusing the resources toward the areas of highest risk – meaning the areas where intake is highest. There is still a significant population at risk in the community. This motivated the partners in the community – and us at the ASPCA – to begin to look toward an additional focus for targeting: using GIS.

Here you can see an example representing the intake of free-roaming cats.

Click image to enlarge

And this represents the spay/neuter of cats in that same area.

Click image to enlarge

This image shows the overlay of intake and S/N:

Click image to enlarge

This is a good way to visualize where intake and S/N overlap – and where they do not – to better focus targets.

Asheville has entered baseline data, studied the GIS maps, made initial location target decisions, and is starting targeted S/N. We will be analyzing the intake numbers monthly and entering their data quarterly into the GIS system to monitor progress at the targeted locations. We are working with Toledo and Erie, along with a few of our ASPCA Partnership communities, to potentially add their data to the system, and will continue to test and grow the program.

We are hopeful that in the future this tool will be able to help cities across the country better target S/N programs toward the areas of high risk. In order to move toward that, we need to continue to message the importance of clean data. Be sure those addresses represent accurately the locations those animals came from. Be sure to enter estimated dates of birth so we can track effect of S/N programs by intake of juveniles and even neonates.

We are so excited about the prospects around this new tool – what are your thoughts?

Isn’t that a great line?

“Lending optimism” is one of the things Jenny Olsen and Joyce Friedman talked about in their Pets For Life New York City (PFLNYC) workshop at HSUS Expo last week. In working to provide people with options so they don’t have to surrender their pets, Jenny explains that PFLNYC counsels their hotline volunteers to listen to the concerns of pet owners and “lend them optimism,” assuring them that what they’re dealing with can be resolved. PFLNYC is essentially a social work program to keep families and pets together, and is aimed directly at families most at-risk – those about to surrender their animals to one of the five NYC Animal Care & Control shelters. In fact, PFLNYC has a “hot phone” in the lobby of two of these shelters, and anyone surrendering a pet is asked if they would like to make a call to the hotline first. In 2009, PFLNYC volunteers assisted 3,451 families with alternatives to surrender. Wow!

Since May 2007, Joyce and Jenny have gradually expanded PFLNYC resources and referral assistance carefully matched to the most common reasons that people can’t keep their animals – especially when the situations are dire but temporary. For example, a pet’s sole caretaker may have to go into the hospital, a family loses their apartment or has to leave for a period of time for lead abatement, or a primary caretaker is suddenly unemployed. PFLYNC can also intervene with information and referral on tenant/landlord issues, house training and behavior issues, allergies, new babies, and general pet care issues. And they’ve recruited an impressive network of volunteers, foster families, veterinarians, lawyers, groomers, trainers, boarding facilities and pet suppliers to help. Richmond SPCA runs a similarly impressive program – Project Safety Net – for their community.

To me, these programs are quintessential “humane community.” It’s people helping people to keep their families together. When PFLNYC trains volunteers, Joyce and Jenny are clear that the program doesn’t and can’t help everyone, but it can help the people who want to keep their animals but think they’ve run out of options.The key question to ask: “If this problem can be solved, would you keep your pet?” 3,451 times last year in New York City the answer was “Yes.”

OK, just kidding about the abs—but an image that successfully “sells” a dog or cat to adopters is, like a six-pack, the result of consistency, precision and…oh yeah, patience.

“It’s a shame to think that a homeless animal’s fate may rely on his willingness to be photographed—or on the skill of the person taking the photo,” says Shelter Dogs photographer Traer Scott, who offers some simple but sage advice to “help anyone, amateur to pro, take a more accurate, expressive photo” of a dog:1. Go Natural
“Natural light is your best friend when photographing animals,” says Scott. “Avoid using a direct flash, which results in no eye detail.” Impossible to take an animal outside? “Find natural light inside—next to a window, etc., but never inside his or her cage, and especially through the cage.”

2. Food, Glorious Food
“Most dogs are highly motivated by food,” says Scott, “and even the most untrained, nervous shelter dog will usually focus temporarily on the food you are holding.” Ask a helper to hold the treat over your head while you shoot to get a straight-on face shot.

3. Whistle While You Work
Scott aims to catch her subjects in a state of simply being themselves. “Whistles, meowing, bird calls or any odd noise that isn’t threatening often immediately grabs their attention and natural curiosity,” says Scott. “But be ready with the camera—these candid moments don’t last long!”4. Take Your Time, Do It Right
Photographing shelter animals isn’t like Minute To Win It—you don’t have just one chance. “Plan to edit through as many as 20-40 images per dog at first. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll find that you fall into a routine and will need to take fewer photos.”

5. Roll Over…If You Have To
Yes, there will be some shy violets who are scared of the camera and will avoid looking at you at any cost. “Try getting someone else to pet or play with the dog, and then photograph them while they are engaged in this enjoyable, disarming activity,” says Scott. “On more than one occasion, I have simply laid down flat on my back. Eventually, the dog comes over to check you out.”

6. Back in Black
Do dark-coated animals seem to be eclipsed by flashier colors in adopters’ eyes? “It definitely doesn’t help that they are also the toughest to get a good photo of,” says Scott, who recommends photographing black dogs outside, ideally in the shade or an overcast day. “Bright sun will have a very similar effect as a flash and wash out all the detail in the animal’s fur and eyes.”

Or you could always just…

7. Accessorize!
Not to get all What Not to Wear, but pair a dark with a bright and you’ve got a look that Clinton and Stacy would be proud of. “Some agencies go out of their way to outfit black (and ordinary brown, too) animals with snappy, bright-colored bedding, collars and coats in winter,” says the ASPCA’s Susan Britt, Director, Shelter Training. “Photograph them with a nice outdoor or indoor background with color, foliage, or clever themes.”

Kinda like this?

Or this?This is one of my favorites from the folks at Asheville Humane Society, who can turn a few props from a party store into an adoptions promotion that kicks butt. Explains Asheville’s Vice President, Katherine McGowan, “We also used toys and noises to distract the kitties, while we snapped photos like crazy.”

(Yes, I am fully aware this blog is specifically about photographing dogs, but…how can you say no to Sugar Daddy?!)

Got any other tips to pass on? Point and shoot!

Photos 1 and 2: Courtesy of Traer Scott

A couple of weeks ago Connie Howard, VP of Operations at Humane Society of Boulder Valley, submitted a comment on my post recommending The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. I admit to finding the title a turn-off since it seems to me we ought to be training our attention toward function rather than dysfunction. But Connie has long been a mentor to me, so I was willing to take her advice and read the book – and am I ever glad I did!The five dysfunctions Lencioni describes are structured in an interactive hierarchy – with each dysfunction being problematic in its own right and also an unfortunate reinforcement to the other dysfunctions. I’m just going to mention the first two dysfunctions here because there’s enough substance in them to keep us all busy for a good long while.

At the base of the dysfunctions pyramid is Absence of Trust – which reveals itself as team members being unable and unwilling to be vulnerable to each other. Just above that is Fear of Conflict, which often shows up as “artificial harmony.”I’m sure you have to read the book to feel the full effect of these two kernels, but I can tell you that when I read the whole story (and Lencioni does use story to illustrate his model), Absence of Trust and Fear of Conflict hit me pretty hard. At first the conflict piece seems a bit counterintuitive – why would you want conflict on your team?

But Lencioni is talking about conflict that fosters rigorous group analysis – thinking together, challenging assumptions, struggling with new ideas to make the pieces of a puzzle come together. The conflict he proposes for healthy teams is a willingness to have deep dialogue about ideas in order to get to solutions that are – to tap an old expression – greater than the sum of the parts. While reading I was thinking about the teams I’m on and have been on in the past. And I realized simultaneously how valuable “unfiltered conflict around ideas” is…and how rare. In my experience, it’s the unusual team where team members invest enough of themselves to create trust that allows for honesty about our strengths and achievements – as well as our weaknesses and mistakes. But learning from our weaknesses and mistakes is pretty important – lest we repeat them. And according to Lencioni, it isn’t until we’ve become comfortable with vulnerability that we set the stage for open, healthy disagreement over ideas (such as policies and practices).

In my own case, I think there are three things interfering with trust and healthy conflict: hierarchy, time, and politeness. In the case of my department team, I’m the boss. Unfortunately, just when a conversation starts to get juicy, if I chime in with my thoughts – my position in the hierarchy seems to shut the conversation down. Sort of, “OK, the boss has spoken, conversation concluded.” Bye-bye trust; so long constructive conflict of ideas.

Then there’s time. Like everybody else, we never have enough time. So it just seems expedient to get to a solution rather than dig into the essence of various ideas on a topic – you know, to save time. “Seems” is the operative word here…because, of course, what’s quicker in the short run can be endlessly long on the other end. I’m cringing to think about instances where we “resolved” a question quickly in a meeting, and then endured an agonizingly slow implementation process. Why? Perhaps because quick decisions may in fact cut off critical conversation to fully assess and understand. If we took a little more time to make decisions, would we save time on the implementation end?

And then there’s politeness. Forgive me Gloria Steinem, but in my experience of all or mostly female teams, I see a tendency to avoid open disagreement. Were we taught it wasn’t polite to argue about ideas? Were we reinforced for keeping the peace in a group (and taking issues “off line” or to sideways conversations)? I won’t speak for you, but in my case – yes and yes.

So, great! I’ve now read this excellent book on teambuilding, and I’m excited to put it into practice. All I have to do is get less bossy, allow more time for my team to think through decisions, and – dog help me – learn how to disagree openly and constructively. If you’ve found a resource to help with any of these three things – especially that last one (and ideally quicker than getting a law degree)…please share!

Earlier this week, I wrote a check to a group I’ve never given to before. I’ve admired their work for years and this isn’t the first time they’ve asked for my support. But you know how it is: there are those organizations you automatically support no matter what they send. There are those organizations whose appeals go straight into the round file. And then there’s that stack of mailings on your desk from charities you really want to support – just not right now.

If you’re like me, that stack haunts you. You go through it every month after you pay your bills, but chances are you don’t pull anything out. Eventually, one by one, you throw the appeals away feeling sad that you can’t give to all the causes you believe in.

Cleveland School of the Arts, a magnet school in the impoverished Cleveland Municipal School District, supported by a very active Friends organization, has been in that stack many, many times. So why, this time, did I write a check?

The answer surprised me and made me rethink my event invitations. Yup, this wasn’t even an appeal. It was an invitation to a benefit with a $125 ticket price. I normally don’t look twice at those. This is a town with multiple benefits every single weekend and I seem to be on everybody’s list.But I looked twice at this one – not because of the exciting pictures of students, not because of the evening’s program (I still couldn’t tell you what that was) or because of the impressive committee list. There wasn’t even that personal note saying how much I’d be missed if I didn’t attend.

What got my attention was a prominently placed chart – the 2008-2009 Comparative Regional Report Card showing how Cleveland School of the Arts Students measured up to students in a number of area school districts.

Click image to enlarge

Take a look for yourself and I’m sure you’ll agree that, in a city with a graduation rate of 53.7%, an inner city school where 98.8% of students graduate is doing work worth supporting. I instantly wanted to be part of that success and, although I didn’t attend the event, I was honored to send a check. Those of us who live in Cleveland’s suburbs spend a lot of time wringing our hands about Cleveland schools and feeling completely helpless to do anything about their slow and steady decline. This invitation offered me a chance to do something – a chance to make a difference.

Isn’t that what we all want? A chance to make a difference – especially, in those areas we care deeply about but in which we are not personally engaged. And if that’s the case, isn’t it up to those of us doing the actual work to make our donors feel a part of the action by sharing our successes with them in the most engaging ways possible?

I have to admit I never considered putting a statistical chart in a benefit invitation, but if that’s what it takes to motivate donors by showing them what their support can make possible, that’s exactly what I intend to do.

So I ask again, what makes you give – especially to organizations outside of animal welfare? The answers might surprise us.

This past weekend PBS Nature replayed an episode titled “Why We Love Cats and Dogs” (watch it here), originally aired in 2009. The episode features Meet Your Match, shot at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, one of the organizations that participated in the beta testing of Feline-ality.It reminded me of just how powerful the Meet Your Match (MYM) program is. When we tally up the increases in adoptions, decreases in returns, decreases in euthanasia and decreases in length of stay from shelters who have implemented the program, we are looking at literally tens of thousands of lives saved!

How? Well – there are several aspects of MYM that, when combined, result in a life-saving formula. First, there is a set clockwork protocol for moving animals through the assessment process so that dogs and cats are moving through the system quickly and efficiently.

We assess the dogs (Canine-ality) and cats (Feline-ality) using a set of assessment items that have data to support their predictive value. We can identify cats who are likely to be tolerant of a child’s interaction, dogs who are likely to counter surf, the toys that a dog will likely play with, cats who will run to the door when the doorbell rings, and those who will run away, and much more!Dogs and cats are color-coded based on their responses in their respective assessments, which serves to help narrow the number of choices for adopters – which I discussed in an earlier blog.

While the assessments are a powerful component, just as important is the process the potential adopter goes through. Meet Your Match helps your adopters focus not just on breed or coat color, but on their lifestyle and expectations. Unrealistic expectations are one of the largest threats to the bond between an adopter and their pet; MYM helps to eliminate that risk.

Adopters may first interact with the MYM program online – see Richmond SPCA for a great presentation of the “alities.” Whether they learn about the program online or in person, adopters coming to an MYM shelter do not fill out an application – they simply fill out a survey (check out this great interactive version from Richmond) to find out what “ality” would best match their lifestyle and expectations.The adoption counselor now has a great set of tools to help the adopter find the match of a lifetime – as well as the tools to help educate the adopter who falls in love with a pet who may not be the best match! The survey focuses on what is important to the adopter, while the assessment identifies how the pet matches those items important to the adopter. The survey process, along with the assessment, immediately sets the adoption counselor and adopter up for a respectful, focused conversation around what is important to this individual person and individual animal.

One of my favorite quotes from an MYM adopter is not one of the hundreds who talk about the great match they made… but of a love at first sight. “He is not the perfect cat for our family,” says the adopter. “We should have chosen a cat in our orange category, but the kids fell in love with a purple cat. He is shy and kind of standoffish, but we love him– and will make it work.”

Why is that one of my favorites? Because of the power and respect in the process – while most folks will choose dogs or cats who are in the same color category as they are, sometimes they will not… and with Meet Your Match, that is okay – as we are sending them home with the tools to make the less-than-perfect match work.

Many of you have found MYM a powerful media tool as well – from the Nature show and an upcoming Animal Planet Cats 101 episode filmed at Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation, to hundreds and hundreds of local newspaper and TV news stories from shelters across North America and beyond (we just received some great MYM promo material from a New Zealand facility).

What is your experience with the ASPCA’s Meet Your Match program? Do you have some great promotion ideas? Great matches? Do tell!

The video you are about to watch racked up more than 80,000 views in just a few weeks. Animal lovers forwarded it to their animal-loving friends like e-wildfire, and many folks even forwarded it on to us at the ASPCA. Going viral is a beautiful thing for a video, a true measure of success.

What especially fascinated me, however, was the range and depth of the reactions I received when I showed my colleagues—both those who work with the general public, and those who work with animal welfare professionals. Everyone had something different to say. Before I give too much away…

…time for a little end-of-semester pop quiz!

You won’t need a Number 2 pencil for this one, but take a look for yourself and consider:

-How effective is this video in telling a story about the animal sheltering world?
-What did you think about the use of text/images in the video?
-If you were to make a similar video for your agency, what would you the same/differently?

Oh yeah, free thinking is totally encouraged here, so good old general observations are warmly welcomed, too. You can send your thoughts to me at puned@aspca.org or leave a comment here. I’ll compile the comments and post them in a future blog.

Now, get cracking…and have a great holiday!

Last week, I told you what prompted me to become a first-time donor to a local organization. But, as we all know, keeping donors is even more important than getting new ones. Sadly, we often take this part for granted – so this week, I’m going to tell you why I asked to have my name taken off the mailing list of an organization I’ve supported for years.

What made me think twice about this long-term relationship was a case of personalization gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I should explain that this relatively small group historically sent out their own mailings using their own stories and artwork. They had a very distinctive style that I really admired. The mailings weren’t personalized but they were clever, upbeat, succinct, and to the point. They routinely made me smile and reach for my checkbook.

Then, in an effort to expand the donor base, the leadership decided to hire a mail house. Shortly thereafter, I received a nondescript envelope that I was about to toss when I noticed the tiny organizational logo in the corner. Inside was an appeal with a picture of several animals and a paragraph of type addressed to me personally. In it, I was asked to increase my last generous donation of $32.58 to help feed and care for the animals in the pictures. Here’s what was wrong with that:

·    My last gift had been considerably more than $32.58. I had recently purchased a halter for my dog in the shelter store. I’m guessing that’s where that figure came from.
·    One of the animals pictured was a horse who had been living as a foster in my barn, at my expense, for several months.

Now I understand the desire to personalize, but, let’s face it, personalization is tricky business. A letter to Richard signed by a director who plays golf with his good friend Dick isn’t going to make that donor feel appreciated. Nor is an incorrect gift amount – to say nothing of the fact that I’m sure this group really didn’t want me to increase my gift to $40. These are all things that can easily happen when names and figures are picked up from a database that is not very carefully monitored or analyzed.

And asking someone to give specifically to support an animal they are already feeding and housing – well, that’s just plain careless (and could have been so easily avoided by eliminating the personalization all together or adding a real personal note saying something like, “Well, in your case, maybe not Bronc, but he’s so handsome we just had to use his picture.” Now that would have made me smile and feel good about helping).

But my point is this – using a mail house can be a terrific way to solicit new donors, but I think we have to be very careful about letting strangers solicit our major supporters, especially with so-called “personal” mailings. I can only speak for myself, but I have no problem getting completely impersonal but compelling mailings from organizations that are clearly too big to know me – even ones I’ve been giving to for years. I have no expectation that these organizations know me, and frankly I find it a little irritating when they pretend. I just want to be assured that they’re using my money well.

I don’t even expect groups with whom I do have a close relationship to send me personalized solicitations. That’s not what makes me give. But if they do send a “personal” request for funds, I think it’s important that they get it right – and that might just be too much to ask for a small organization with limited staff to maintain and merge the database.

Truth be told, I would never actually stop giving to this organization because of a mistake like this – but I’m thinking others less committed to the cause might pull away, especially if it happened repeatedly.

What I did was return the mailing with a note explaining my concerns and promise to keep giving while asking to be removed from the mailing list – at least for now.

I guess the bottom line is – just because we have the technology to personalize doesn’t mean we should use it.

Photo 2: Courtesy of Sheila Steele

In the last week three different people asked me for some tips on brainstorming – it must be the season. So I thought I’d post them here for everybody who wants to use them.

Step One: Post these guidelines in big letters for the group to see:

1)    Our Goal =
2)    Our Time =
3)    Evaluate Later
4)    Think OUT of the box
5)    Idea Build
6)    Be Brief

Step Two: Check with the group to make sure all members understand and agree to the guidelines

Step Three: Conduct the brainstorm, holding everyone to these guidelines

Step Four: Celebrate!

Guidelines Defined:

1) Goal – Write the goal of the session clearly to help keep the group focused. For example: “Everything we can think of to increase adoptions.” If you prefer, you can state the goal as a question, such as “How can we reduce cat length of stay?”

2) Time – Clarify the amount of time for the brainstorm session. Time is a powerful container – harness the power! If participants know there will only be 10 minutes, they will kick into rapid-fire idea generation. If the brainstorm is to be 30 or 60 minutes, participants will expect to be able to build on each other’s ideas and expand possibilities in more detail. The time you set is up to you, and depends on your goal for the session. Whatever time you set, make sure the group knows it – and you stick to it.

3) Evaluate Later – This is the hardest guideline for people to follow, but it’s essential for a brainstorm that produces new ideas. More typically you’ll see this guideline stated as “no editing” or “anything goes,” but in my experience people with analytical minds have great difficulty setting their filters aside. For this reason, I find it useful to write the guideline as it is here – to clarify that there WILL be a time to evaluate these ideas, but that comes AFTER we generate as many ideas as possible. As facilitator, you’ll want to clarify this when you post the guidelines and cut off any evaluation the minute it begins to crop up during the brainstorm, reminding the person that evaluation will take place at another time. Stay on top of this, because once evaluation begins, it has a snowball effect. Not only will other people start evaluating verbally, but still others will filter their own ideas in their heads before they offer them up to the group.

4) Think OUT of the box – Encourage the group to imagine there’s no limit to time, money, space or other resources…no idea is too crazy or outlandish.

5) Idea Build – Urge participants to jump off of or add to other people’s ideas.

6) Be Brief – Remind the group that the objective is to generate as many ideas as possible in a short timeframe, therefore brevity is critical. If you find a number of people are struggling to be brief, consider a few minutes of quiet time for people to organize their thoughts.

Facilitating and Managing Participation

Be sure to inform the group that once they accept the above guidelines, your job will be to hold them to it – that way you have their permission to cut them off if they start evaluating ideas, etc.

At the beginning of the session, give everyone two minutes of quiet time to jot some ideas down before launching into the storm. This helps folks to organize some thoughts and to gear up for an active session, and assists them in being able to articulate ideas briefly.If your group is typically unbalanced in terms of participation (i.e.: the same people always talk first or longest), you can start the brainstorm with a quick round robin – getting one idea from each person (pass is ok) and then open the floor to anyone in any order.

When you experience a lull, try another return to two minutes of quiet thinking time before one more lightning round to finish the storm.

Enjoy! Brainstorms should be fun as fun feeds creativity – use color (markers and paper), food, music, a new or creative space and laughter to help your group get into the groove.

Done well, brainstorming is a great team building activity; it builds participation and strengthens buy-in as people who get to participate in the development phase of projects are more willing and more prepared to participate in the implementation phase. Next week I’ll post some cool variations on brainstorming. I’d love to hear your additional tips and ideas.

Photo 2: Courtesy of stepthegeek on Flickr Creative Commons
Photo 3: Courtesy of ThelmageGroup on Flickr Creative Commons

I am prefacing this blog with a salute and a bow to this amazing group of animal welfare professionals who are working to help assure that dogs and cats in shelters get a home (or are never born). I know we are all working for the same thing – and that is what keeps me in this work. Even though we may use different language, and have different ideas of how to get there, we all want to get to the same place. We want to save lives.

I have always been puzzled by the goal of “no euthanasia for space” – as I am honestly confused by what that phrase means exactly. And as I meet with shelters across the country, I have observed a few different interpretations and I have questions around them:

Does no euthanasia for space mean that no animals should be euthanized if there is an open cage to hold them? If we are talking about literal space, what disservice are we doing the animals when we may have the space, but not the staff or resources? Assume the National Animal Control Association low staff-resource number of 15 minutes of staff time per animal per day (this is just barely enough time to clean and feed in a 24-hour period, never mind any enrichment, walks, time to monitor potential stress or disease). Does your staff adequately serve your current population?

Does no euthanasia for space mean that animals will be euthanized when they are sick or have a behavior issue, but not if they appear healthy? If this is the focus, is there a danger of overcrowding – thus increasing the likelihood of behavior and health issues and causing more euthanasia for health or behavior?

Does no euthanasia for space mean that so long as there is a space, all animals, regardless of health, behavior or resources, are held? If so, what resources are in place to improve the health and behavior of those animals while being held? What about other animals in the community – is this a community-wide focus or organization-focused?

My head starts to spin when I think – If space is defined as both physical space and resource space, wouldn’t almost all euthanasia be for space? If we had the resources to rehabilitate a severely ill dog or cat, while saving all the other lives in need, we likely could.

My head spins more when I think about the variety of health and behavior challenges that shelters face. When the focus is on no euthanasia for space, are patterns of risk categories followed and addressed? I have found that a focus on live release allows us to better study the at-risk populations and then develop solutions to save those lives within the resource parameters available to us.What have your experiences been around the phrase “euthanasia for space?” What successes have you found? Struggles? Comment here or email me at emilyw@aspca.org and I can compile thoughts and share in a future blog.

When I first started writing for the ASPCA back in 1994, my editor informed me of a word I was not to use, a word weighted with so much meaning that it was banned from our magazine, never to see the light of the printed page…

Mutt.

Typically paired with the likes of “mangy,” “stupid” or “dirty,” mutt was indeed a derogatory term. But it’s not like you need me to tell you that—Merriam Webster defines “mutt” as a mongrel or inferior dog. The word was “born” in 1901, initially a name for a “stupid or foolish person,” probably a shortening of “muttonhead.” By 1904, mutt had come to mean a dog of mixed ancestry, originally simply a term of contempt.

Thus, ASPCA Animal Watch magazine was a mutt-free zone. We were, after all, in the business of celebrating shelter dogs in general, and of “mixed breeds,” our preferred descriptor, in particular. I remember writing about their uniqueness—you’ll never see another dog like this one!—and reviewing a sweet children’s book called Zak: The One-of-A-Kind Dog, celebrating a canine of unknown lineage who sets out to answer the question, “What kind of dog are you?”

For a time in the mid-1990s, we were even pushing “random breed.” Roger Caras, then president of the ASPCA, introduced the term to our readers in his regular column. We gave it a gallant effort, but it never quite caught on. All but industry and science-y folks probably tripped over it, and it also necessitated at least a two-line explanation—and space was always at a premium in the magazine (yup, this was before we had a website!).

Over time, however, I’ve noticed something curious happening. The term seems to have wagged its way into use again, at least for some agencies. There are “Mutt Strut” dog-walk events at shelters all across the country, for example, and animal welfare professionals like Michael Kitkoski, media coordinator at Rockwall PAWS, see the term as a badge of honor, in a fun, furry outlaw sort of way. “I’ve never had a problem with ‘mutt,’” says Kitkoski. “In fact, ‘mixed breed’ sounds much too tony for our current dog, Guinness. Just like Jimi Hendrix was going to fly his freak flag high, Guinness is going to wave his mutt tail high!”

“Since our dog is very handsome, we’re usually stopped during our daily walks and asked, ‘What sort of dog is that?’” says Michael Kitkoski of his 14-year-old heeler/Chow/Lab/Golden, Guinness. “Our usual reply is, ‘Oh, he’s just a hairy mutt!’”

Still others are building on the “one-of-a-kind” aspect of the word and adding their own creative twist. “‘Mutt’ would definitely not pass muster here,” explains Susan Ruderman of Animal Rescue League of Boston, “but our preferred term is ‘American Shelter Dog.’” (Good one!)

It seems to me to have a lot to do with context. In a press release detailing your humane law enforcement team’s most recent animal cruelty arrest, for example, you’d probably not want to write about a suspect “allegedly beating a 2-year-old mutt,” but pairing a “mutt” with a “lovable” or “floppy eared” might be just the word du jour for some light-hearted editorial or ad copy.

So, how about it? Is “mutt” a term of endearment or a dirty word to you and your adopters? Or maybe sometimes you feel like a “mutt,” sometimes you don’t….

Please share your thoughts here… or I’ll write some more corny puns (Trust me, you ain’t seen muttin’ yet…)

This morning, as I continued my exploration of what makes me give, I came across this wonderful statement in EFoley’s Transformational Giving blog:

…I find that the most successful campaigns I have been involved in so far have done more than transfer money into a nonprofit’s bank account.

They ennobled people. For a brief moment, people truly became heroes.

Talk about a Eureka moment. That’s it in a nutshell – making donors feel like heroes – and no one makes their donors feel like heroes better than Best Friends Animal Society. I’ve been a member of Best Friends for over 15 years. During that time, they’ve grown from a financially strapped sanctuary in the middle of the Utah desert to one of the largest and most influential animal welfare organizations in the world. Over the years, I’ve probably received hundreds of appeals from them – and every one has convinced me that they couldn’t do their life-saving work without me. WOW!In fact, those appeals make me feel so good that I always save them until the end of the day when I can sit down with a cup of tea and relish every single word. And, no matter how frustrating my day, I always finish the read feeling better about myself. Yes, even ennobled. How many of us can say that about the material we send out?

So how do they do it? Well, it’s actually amazingly simple. For one thing, they’re consistent. In the 15 years I’ve been hearing from them, despite enormous growth, they really haven’t changed the format of their mailings. No matter how big the stack of mail in my box, the Best Friends envelope always catches my eye with a great photo and a really catchy tagline. The only difference is, the photos are now in breathtaking color.

This week, it was a bunch of squirming puppies with the bold headline “Puppy Fever, Read About It Inside.” Now who can resist that?

When I open the envelope, I know I’ll always find more amazing photos and short, cleverly written stories with happy endings. Each tale illustrates a very real problem – a horse taken to a dump to be shot, a pair of abandoned cats with chronic URI, a puppy mill puppy, a crippled lovebird. But the point is always that my donation made it possible for the horse to end up running free in a verdant pasture, the cats to find a happy home together, the puppy to be transported to safety, and the bird to be on his way to a full recovery.Over and over again, I am reminded of my essential role with statements like this:

When you come to the Sanctuary, expect a furry hero’s welcome! Sometimes it seems like the animals already know you, or maybe even sense that you’re one of the caring people who helped them turn their lives around….

Or this, next to the photo of the two cats with URI:

Buck and Buzzy know who their hero is…

This consistent message has made me feel so much a part of Best Friends, I talk about it as if I were one of the founders – or at least a long-time employee. Even though I live all the way across the country and am one of thousands and thousands of donors, I really do feel a part of the work. And the amazing thing is, no matter where I go, if I’m wearing a Best Friends shirt, people will come up to me and we’ll share an immediate kinship based on the wonderful things “we’ve” been able to accomplish.

No doubt about it, we all want to feel like heroes – and believing that our gifts really do make the work of our chosen organizations possible goes a long way to giving us that satisfaction. If a huge international organization like Best Friends can make that happen, we certainly should be able to do it as well.

Building on last week’s post on guidelines for brainstorming, here are three cool variations on the typical brainstorm, plus some additional resources.

Brainwriting

This technique comes from a classic and indispensible book on group decision making, The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making by Sam Kaner. In brainwriting, you begin with two to four minutes of quiet while everyone writes down four ideas in answer to the stated goal or question of the brainstorm. (Instruct team members to leave space on the page between their four ideas.) At the end of this first round, each team member exchanges pages with another person, reads the ideas on the new page they’ve been given, and adds to them. Adding can mean building on an idea already on the page, or adding a couple of new ideas at the end of the page. After two minutes or so, participants switch pages again with someone new. Repeat for about 15 minutes or until the group seems to have run out of ideas, at which point you are ready to open up the brainstorm for group discussion. Use this technique when it’s important to balance input from group members and when you want to foster safe interaction between members.

Two-by-two Discussions

This technique comes from Global Learning Partners’ dynamic two-day course, SURE-Fire Meetings. As the name implies, begin the brainstorm in discussion pairs. This gets everybody talking right off the bat and stimulates connections — between ideas and between people. After five or ten minutes, combine pairs into foursomes for another 10- to 15-minute conversation. Often at this stage the groups begin to identify themes in the original ideas and to develop some refinements, such that reports from the foursomes have already been through a first pass at clarification and improvement. Use this technique to increase the demand on all group members to participate actively and/or when you want to develop ideas more fully than just listing them.

Similes

This technique comes from The Writing Center at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. (Writers often use brainstorming to avoid or break writer’s block.) To use the similes technique, write this incomplete sentence on a flip chart or white board: [your brainstorm topic or goal] is/was/are/were like_____________. The group then brainstorms as many ideas as possible to complete the simile while someone posts all of these on the board. Once you have a number of completed similes, ask the group to sit back and consider these alternate but similar items. What associations or new ideas crop up? For example, if your topic is “adoption promotions,” you might start your list with “adoption promotions are like…sales, marketing, really compelling ads, ads for dating services, ads for better quality of life, (and so on).” Now your group members can begin to think about specific examples of the kinds of ads they’re beginning to list — and with concrete examples in mind, you’re off and running with some new fodder to liven up your adoption promotions.

Use the simile technique when you want to expand thinking into a new realm, such as how a different field or industry handles a similar goal or problem.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, the possibilities for brainstorming are many, and the more you try the more likely you are to tap the creativity and participation of all of your team members. Of course, getting ideas is only part way to getting to solutions, and I’ll address next steps in a future post. But if you just can’t wait, here’s a nice animated diagram and explanation of Kaner’s group decision making model.

Sea captures the heart of
the ASPCA facilitators at ARF

Sea is our new family member. I met her at Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF) in Walnut Creek, California, while I was there teaching a workshop in March. I had just lost my love, Rocco, and I was ripped apart with grief. There was Sea (her name was Orchid at the time), in a kennel run with 2 other dogs. I just wanted someone to hug…bing bang boom, she was flying home with me.

As I watch Sea in her bed by my desk, she makes me think about what the definition of saved would be for her and for me. She was a valley girl — walking the streets in the Northern California valley, when she was picked up by animal control. Was that saved? I would think it was safer — but was it saved? For a dog in the valley area of California where there are simply too many animals entering the sheltering system compared to those adopted or returned to owner, the Live Release Rate points to the fact that Sea was not yet saved.

She was transferred from the valley to ARF a few weeks later. ARF limits intake so that they can support the dogs and cats in their care. They provide exceptional care — with walks for all dogs, tactile and social enrichment for all, and a medical staff to care for medical issues. Would you say Sea was saved now? I suppose that depends upon your philosophy around sheltering, what it means to be saved, and even euthanasia.

What does saved mean to you? To me, saved does not mean simply that the risk of euthanasia is diminished… Goodness — earlier that March I called my friend, a vet, to come to my house at 3 a.m. to euthanize my Rocco because he was in pain that I could not stop for him. As I held him in my arms, tight to my chest, my tears soaking his coat, the relief of his body softening — relieved of that pain, when the drugs took effect — gave me a moment to reflect that I had just saved him.

Saved to me ultimately means out of the shelter — because saved is not just the saved of dogs like Sea, picked up by animal control — but the saved of the next animal who can have the opportunity to go home. This also means to me that there is a risk, depending upon the number of animals entering the community system and the support in that community, that saved means that an animal who requires a very long shelter stay and high support may be euthanized so that many others can be saved. Dogs like Sea are not the only responsibility of the shelter — the shelter is responsible for all of the homeless pets in the community. In my reality, we can only truly save them if we empty them from the shelters and get them home.

How do you know if you are making progress toward this definition of saved? Your length of stay should be decreasing, your live releases should be increasing, and your intake ideally should be decreasing — as saving can mean they never have to come to you…

What is saved to you?

Did you know that the average score for an online product review is 4.3 out of 5 stars? Though there are various theories why folks go all nicey-nice when rating everything from vacuum cleaners to videos of people they don’t know doing karaoke, I’d have to say the readers of this blog never got the memo about that trend.

And that’s a good thing! A couple weeks ago, I asked for your thoughts (well, actually, I asked for a full-fledged essay) on an animal-related video that went viral in a big way.

It’s a real tear jerker, and yes, you liked it, BUT — this a big BUT — there was an overall agreement that it strongly reinforced certain negative perceptions about shelters. The ones that get in the way of potential adopters finding their way to your agencies? The ones that shut down dialogue about tough animal issues in your community? Per your responses:

How effective is this video in telling a story about the animal sheltering world?

“It’s very effective in telling a story about animal rescue, not so much animal sheltering,” wrote Champaign County Humane Society ED Mary Tiefenbrunn. “As a director of an open-admission shelter, I find the use of the term ‘high-kill’ a little disturbing — especially when within a few sentences, the video refers to a cocker who has been there about a month. Shelters that work hard to find rescues for special-needs animals don’t deserve that slam of being defined as ‘high-kill’ — and spreading that kind of terminology to the masses — many of whom don’t understand the complexities of the problems that shelters face — is unfair and not helpful.”

Capital Area Humane Society’s Jodi Lytle Buckman saw a reinforcement of a similarly negative perception — that shelters are “sad, terrible places dogs need to be rescued from.” Although it’s true that stories like these can be powerful and effective at raising money, says Buckman, “I think what we gain in the short term with such campaigns and messages we lose in the long term , given we’re reinforcing that sad and tragic message. I’d rather inspire people with positive messaging, like our current campaign — ‘Because every pet deserves the life your pet has’ — or humor.”

Readers like Nicki Lucas, however, found the seriousness of the piece to be just what the public needs to see. “This video should be shown on TV and at movie theaters,” she says. “People watch the big screens for entertainment, but they must also realize in a poignant but kind way that their help and hearts are needed.”

If you were to make a similar video for your agency, what would you do the same/differently?

What works so well in this video, agree our reviewers, is the focus on one animal’s story — and the message that one person can make a difference. “I really like that the video emphasizes what each person can do, and expresses gratitude to the audience for what they have done,” says Tiefenbrunn. “My video would not paint the shelters in such a bad light, but I would still strive to make a compelling video about the contributions that donors, supporters and volunteers make and how they impact the life of one animal.”

Or, as Buckman puts it, “I am happy for the dog — sad for the shelter.”

What intrigues me is the use of language and its effect on different audiences — in this video and, for that matter, in all the content produced about animals in shelters. An article in a newspaper, commentary from a newscaster, an advertising flyer for an adoptions event hung up in a community center… Words (and images) can either add to or unravel the perceptions that the public holds. Would the reviews and comments about this video have been different if I’d been writing for a blog for pet lovers? Or for those involved strictly in rescue? Or for those who don’t fall into any of those groups?

Please feel free to weigh in on this video if you haven’t already — or add to any of the points brought up here.

Last week we talked about donors as heroes. Since then, I’ve been thinking about the implications of that concept for helping board members become more effective fundraisers.

How often do we hear the lament, “Ask me to do anything but don’t expect me to ask for money. I hate asking for money.” Sometimes we have to respect that. Obviously there are many ways board members can help our organizations without ever directly asking for a dime. But wouldn’t it be great if we could turn our most enthusiastic cheerleaders into equally enthusiastic fundraisers?

I love this statement from a recent Future Fundraising Now post entitled “What fundraising does for donors:”

“…if you get it, if you understand what giving does for givers — if you see it and work with it…You’ll do much better work. And you’ll have more connected, passionate donors who will return the favor by giving more, staying with you longer, and being on your side in all kinds of ways.

Another Eureka moment. I get this and you probably do, too, but have we passed this wisdom on to our board members?

Shouldn’t the idea of donors as heroes be front and center in our board orientation? Instead of drumming into new directors that it’s their obligation to raise money (and making it seem like a necessary evil), shouldn’t we be sharing with them the joy that comes from engaging donors in the mission to the point that they feel integral to our success — that they are ennobled by their gifts?

I have always tried to make the donors I approach feel like heroes, and I’ve experienced over and over again that magical kinship that comes when those doing the work and those who support it with their donations join together for a common cause. But, strangely, I have never thought to help my board members understand the concept.

Oh sure, I’ve spent countless hours telling board members that we need them to get out there and ask for donations and giving them the tools to explain what those donations will mean for the organization. Not once have I talked about what the gift will mean for the donor — beyond a listing in the newsletter or a plaque on the wall.

Have you? And if so, have you found that helping board members understand “what giving does for givers” has made reluctant fundraisers feel good (not just comfortable — really good) about asking for money? Let’s face it, if our donors can feel ennobled by their gifts, and we can feel ennobled by our professional commitment to raising funds for the work we believe in (and I sure hope we do), shouldn’t our board members feel equally ennobled by their successful efforts to reach out for donations? Let me know what you think.

So, you’ve heard about the Save More Lives: ASPCA $100K Challenge? The ASPCA is offering $125,000 in prize money to challenge shelters across the country to save a minimum of 300 more cats and dogs from August 1 through October 31, 2010, than they did during the same months in 2009. Over the next 7 weeks, we’ll be interviewing our contestants as they gear up for the start of the race.

Queue up the Rocky theme song, and live release, be prepared to increase—it’s game on.

Arizona Animal Welfare League & HALO Helping Animals Live On, Phoenix, AZ
Q: Describe your team in 3 words.
A: Life Saving Leaders

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: As a team we are able to combine forces, including ideas, strategies, opportunities and resources.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: They are not broken, undesirable animals—they are victims of irresponsibility and circumstances beyond their control.

Humane Society of North Texas, Fort Worth, TX
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Compassionate, creative, resilient

Q: Of the 3 ways to win the Challenge—RTO, TNR, adoptions—which one will give you the edge?
A: We already have some cool and unique adoption events planned that no other agency in the area is doing. We anticipate great numbers.

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: Improvements to our existing building, which was built in the 1950s.

City of San Jose Animal Care Center, San Jose, CA
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Big, Busy and—Humane

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: The implementation of our Feral Freedom Program, which is saving more cats than ever in our city.

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: We are still a relatively new organization, so we will focus on more marketing and outreach and more low-cost spay/neuter services for our community.

South Suburban Humane Society, Chicago Heights, IL
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Pet Resource Center

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We’re in it to win it! SSHS has a small but dedicated volunteer group and a compassionate staff.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: As the only open-door shelter for tens of miles, intake is staggering; spaying and neutering is the only way to reduce this intake in the long run, and we offer low-cost spaying and neutering.

The SPCA of Wake County, Raleigh, NC
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Innovative, Progressive, Determined

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: Our pets may or may not be purebred—but they are pure fun.

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: The SPCA of Wake County is taking on the Challenge with a “no holds barred” mentality on reaching out to adopters.

Tacoma-Pierce County Humane Society & SPCA, Tacoma, WA
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Creative, Optimistic, Tenacious

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We always assume that we CAN find a home for every pet if we try hard enough.

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: Badly needed kennel improvements to increase the health and comfort of pets—which makes them more attractive and more likely to be adopted.

Come back next week to meet more contestants—and check out the Save More Lives Community for additional information about the contest.

Wisconsin Humane Society

Several years ago I was conducting a consult for Wisconsin Humane Society (WHS). Some of you had the gift of meeting the visionary of WHS – Victoria Wellens. Victoria passed away in 2009 – leaving us way too soon. Victoria had a way of seeing both the eyes of the animals in her shelter and the eyes of those animals at risk in the community at large. While I was there on a dog-focused consult, I noticed that the adult cats were being adopted at an incredibly fast rate. In fact, WHS’ average total length of stay for adult cats was around 5 days!

There were several reasons for their success – including great staff and volunteer training, a focused and mean machine of a vet department, and a lovely facility. But the adoption rate was not always so high at WHS. Victoria had noticed that cats in her facility were competing for homes with cats who were listed in the local newspaper, offered in boxes in parking lots, etc. – and all of those cats were free. Not only were those cats ‘competition,’ but they were largely unaltered, unvaccinated cats – which only added to the problem.

So WHS removed the adoption fees for adult cats. All adult cats, at all times, were free. I thought this was absolute genius – WHS was driving folks to their doors to adopt altered, vaccinated adult cats! They were saving so many lives and impacting more folks with their humane message. I began talking about this at workshops and events – and let me tell you it was not well-received!

“FREE CATS?!!” folks exclaimed. Then they followed with one of two concerns (if not both): “Adopters will not value them if they are given to them for free” and “How can we possibly afford to give them away after all we invest in them?” I even heard some folks worry that the public was going to come to adopt a cat to feed to some other animal in their household.

There was a very easy answer to the financial concern. First, each day those cats are in your care, it is costing you money – estimates range, but even assuming a low estimate of $8 per day, we can find significant savings by decreasing the length of stay! There are a couple of methods to offset the perceived loss of revenue. If you have a retail store, drive traffic there – send them home with the right litter and food! Also, there is likely opportunity to raise adoption fees on puppies, small dogs and maybe even kittens.

As for the concern about feeding the cats to other pets in their house… All potential adopters went through the very same adoption process. At WHS, that is the Meet Your Match process. With a combination of open questions and respect for the potential adopter, this allows for a dialogue to help assure the safe match of pet to new pet parent. Adopters still fill out a survey, meet with a counselor, etc. The only difference is the fee is waived. Also, and I know someone will disagree with me – but there are not many folks feeding cats to other pets period, and even if they did exist, it is not likely they are coming to the shelter to find their cats… The question I could not answer with good data was the value and attachment piece – did folks who adopted a cat for free perceive their cat differently than folks who paid a fee?

Shannon Gramann (then an ASPCA shelter intern, now manager of Shelter R&D) and I conducted a study at Animal Refuge League (ARL) in Westbrook, ME, to find out the answer. ARL agreed to conduct a couple of fee-waived adoption promotions. This gave us a great laboratory – adopters all had the same experience, the only difference being that during the fee-waived promotions, adopters did not pay a fee. We used a standardized tool to measure pet attachment called the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (LAPS) and collected data on the two groups – those that paid the adoption fee and those that did not.

We found that there was no difference in attachment levels between the two groups. We also found that length of stay decreased during the fee-waived promotions, adoptions increased, and total revenue did not decrease. This research was published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, Volume 4, 2009. You can read more about other shelters’ experiences on ASPCApro.org.

Has your shelter implemented a fee-waived promotion? Does the idea still give you a bit of the willies? Tawk to me!

How do you know your social media plan is kicking major butt?

A) You get your online supporters to market your services for you,
B) link to news articles about you online, and
C) tell your organization’s story using the oldest trick in the book (i.e. photos of cute baby animals)…
D) …without even asking.

Case in point: MSPCA-Angell and Postina the Mailbox Kitten.I was doing one of my daily Facebook “stalk-throughs,” on the lookout for innovative uses of social media, and there she was—listed right on MSPCA-Angell’s Favorite Pages. Intrigued, I clicked on Postina’s avatar and found myself on her fanpage. Perusing the Info tab and reading a news article in the Notes section, I learned that Postina had been found dumped in a mailbox and rescued by the MSPCA. When the story hit the press last June, explained the article, the organization was flooded with inquiries from folks wanting to adopt the 8-week-old kitten. The lucky family? Freelance television director Dani-Jean Stuart and her husband, George Knapp, a supervisor for the—yes—United States Postal Service. The couple had adopted their Dobie mix, Caesar, from the MSPCA, too.

“This story defines the phrase ‘going viral,’” says Stuart. “The MSPCA had people calling from as far away as Italy, and a friend of mine whose National Guard unit was sent to Iraq saw it in Stars and Stripes. Two couples from the Midwest, people we DON’T know, sent us cards and congratulatory notes and wishes for good luck. I decided that since so many people were touched by her tale of woe (and happy ending!) that I would set up a Facebook fanpage for her so that people could follow her through her life with us.”

Postina's fans saw photos of her first Christmas on Facebook

As I mentioned, MSPCA-Angell wasn’t involved in setting up Postina’s page—but they were thrilled to give it their stamp (sorry, I had to) of approval. “So many people were interested in her story and she basically grew a fanbase,” explains Rachael Kaplan, Web Content Manager, MSPCA-Angell. “Therefore, a Facebook page makes sense, and we were more than happy to keep our friends in the loop by linking to her page.”

There are just so many kernels of Facebookian wisdom to chew on here…
1. Who’s listed in Your Favorite Pages? Yes, folks will click on them if they’re juicy enough. Any local businesses you have a partnership with, or other agencies and rescue groups you work with?
2. Don’t forget your Info tab. It’s a great place to list your hours/location/latest news.
3. Press releases and news articles can be great sources of information about your programs and services, if you frame them right.
4. What the title of this post is all about: You tell the story of ALL your animals by focusing on just one. Postina’s story resonated with people all over the world…and her story is also the MSPCA’s story.
5. What about asking an adopter to set up a page for their pet on your behalf? As in Postina’s case, it’s especially effective if you’ve got videos and articles to link to.
6. DIY! Consider creating your own page for an organizational “spokespet.” That might work especially well if you’re creating a page for a specific event or campaign and the animal could act as a mascot.

Who’s already doing this? Post a link to your individual animal’s fanpage as a comment, or feel free to expand on anything discussed here today.

And as for you, Postina…you send me!

So, you’ve heard about the Save More Lives: ASPCA $100K Challenge? The ASPCA is offering $125,000 in prize money to challenge shelters across the country to save more cats and dogs from August 1 through October 31, 2010, than they did during the same months in 2009. We introduced you to 6 of our contestants last week; this week, 6 more strut their stuff.

Western Pennsylvania Humane Society, Pittsburgh, PA

Q: What makes you a tough competitor in the ASPCA $100K Challenge?
A: More than 13,000 animals come through our doors every year, and there are so many possibilities to change their fate. Our employees go above and beyond their assigned duties to make sure every one of them has a second chance.

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Compassionate, proactive and respectful.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like to get out to your community?
A: It’s impossible to predict how many animals will be homeless, but it’s possible to adopt—so do your part.

Dubuque Humane Society, Dubuque, IA

Q: Of the 3 ways to win the Challenge—RTO, TNR, adoptions—which one will give you the edge?
A: Adoptions! We are trying to increase our adoptions by 3 each day over what we did last year. That doesn’t seem so overwhelming if you break it down on a daily basis.

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you would do?
A: Build a new animal resource center—we already have the plans!

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: AWESOME TEAM MOJO!

Animal Rescue League of Boston, Boston, MA

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: On programs that impact the community at large—things like subsidized spay/neuter, community wellness clinics and mobile adoptions.

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Rescue, Shelter, Protect

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like to get out to your community?
A: The only thing these animals are lacking is you—and your home.

Capital Area Humane Society, Columbus, OH

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you’d do?
A: Launch a high-volume spay/neuter campaign targeting at-risk animals, including pet cats, feral cats and pit bulls, while simultaneously launching a high-end retail cat adoption boutique!

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like to get out to your community?
A: Because every pet should have the life your pet has, join the Capital Area Humane Society in strengthening our humane community.

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Adopt. Adore. Advocate.

Louisiana SPCA, New Orleans, LA

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Service. Commitment. Compassion.

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We embrace any challenge with passion and determination, with our fantastic volunteer force and dedicated employees that fight for our animals daily.

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you would do?
A: We would have an adoption center and free spay/neuter on every corner of every street in South Louisiana.

Jacksonville Humane Society, Jacksonville, FL

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Life-changing resource.

Q: How do you engage with your community?
A: Both traditional and nontraditional methods—including 3 standing weekly television appearances, social media, website forum and blog, free behavior modification and training helpline, the ASPCA Meet Your Match program, school visits, and a young professionals group for animal lovers.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like to get out to your community?
A: Just as a person can have a life-changing effect on an animal, an animal can have a life-changing effect on a person by showing them a love they never knew existed.

Check out the Save More Lives Community for additional information about the contest.

Step by Step Fundraising blogger Joe Garecht admonishes us to improve our fundraising by thinking big.

I completely agree, but I would add that, if you’re going to think big, it’s equally important to think smart – and to me, that means having a clear understanding of your mission and an equally clear understanding of the community you serve.

A few years back, I was indirectly involved in a massive multi-million dollar capital campaign for a small but venerable cultural institution in Cleveland. The board was convinced (probably correctly) that they either had to think big or die and they were determined to survive. Based on recommendations primarily from a highly respected consulting firm that had been involved in successful reinventions on the east and west coasts, the board made the decision to build a dramatic, and very costly, new facility with wondrous exhibits designed to become a major tourist attraction. The thinking was that the funds generated by visitor traffic would support the development of exciting and relevant new programming.

It all sounded great, and thanks to a charismatic director and skillful development director, it almost worked. The really magnificent facility was constructed, the exciting new exhibits were created, and top-notch people were recruited from across the globe to develop and run the new programs. Only one problem. This is not the east coast or the west coast. This is Cleveland. The Cleveland audience was underwhelmed by the new exhibits and visitor traffic turned out to be a fraction of what the consultants had projected. The result was a serious financial crisis that the organization is still trying to dig out of.

Now about the same time this project was moving forward, a nearby small but venerable humane society was also trying to survive. Specifically, the board was trying to raise the money to build a much-needed new shelter – and it wasn’t going very well. Realizing that being well-intentioned might not be enough to get the job done, they decided to hire an executive director with fundraising experience. And, instead of continuing to talk Eeyore-like about how bad the shelter was and how the animals needed a better place, they changed their tune and started talking about creating a “Mecca for animals and the people who love them.” Within a couple of years, they had their new shelter and it did immediately become a Mecca for animal lovers. It opened without debt and continues to thrive financially.

Why did one project succeed while the other faltered? For the little humane society, hiring an ED and broadening the scope of the project beyond new cages and kennels was definitely thinking big, but the level of bigness was proportionately much smaller than it was for the other organization – and every decision made was based on an intimate knowledge of the community the humane society serves. There was a clear link between what the organization had been and what it was trying to be.

We do need to think big and there are so many ways to do that without going off the deep end. A well-researched new program to tackle a problem that seemed too big to solve (feral cats come to mind); a totally new event that reaches out to new audiences; maybe even just talking about what we’re already doing in a new way. Bottom line, I guess I’d say let’s definitely think big but never, ever lose sight of who we are and the community, both two-legged and four-legged, we serve.

I recently wrote a blog post focusing on the paradigm of choice in regards to cat adoptions. There is lots of data in the field of decision making – and the idea of limiting choice to a manageable number to increase the likelihood of a decision is well accepted in many fields, with great results.

The team at the UC Davis-Koret Shelter Medicine program – Dr. Kate Hurley and Dr. Sandra Newbury – as well as the ASPCA Shelter R&D team, have found good results in saving lives when decreasing the number of cats available for adoption. While we have data to support the success of this program, we do not have a controlled study… And that is what I am writing to you about today. Dr. Hurley and I, along with our teams, will be working together to research this for peer review.

In order to have data to fully support the effectiveness of limited choice for increasing adoptions and decreasing length of stay, we need a couple of shelters that are excited to try limited choice – while leaving ALL other variables the same. For example – no new caging, no implementation of new programs, etc. Ideally the shelters will be ASPCA Meet Your Match facilities, which would ensure the same adoption process at all test sites.

We also need for the shelter to have been collecting nice clean data for the past 12 months, broken out for cats vs. kittens. How do you know if your data is “clean?” Well, the first check would be to balance your shelter software inventory with your actual shelter inventory; next would be double checking that your definitions match the ASPCA’s definitions. We will need to pull adoptions, euthanasia, length of stay total, length of stay on the adoption floor, returns and maybe more. These variables are data points all shelters and rescue organizations should be collecting and analyzing, as each is a good indicator of program effectiveness.

Think you may be up for the task? Contact me at emilyw@aspca.org. Have you tried decreasing the number of cats available on your adoption floor? Please share your experience!

Photo 1 courtesy of Celeste Lindell

Surprise, surprise…there’s no one right way to do it. Just think context, consistency and case-by-case. Here’s what some social media pros—and our own Facebook fans—have to say about responding to negative comments on blogs, forums and Facebook.

Open the Playground, Post the Rules
It’s up to you to maintain an environment that facilitates conversation. “Create a set of guidelines for posting on your page, and provide links to these guidelines,” says Jeff Patrick, president and founder of Common Knowledge. These should include simple/standard rules such as no personal attacks, no obscenities, etc.

Just the Facts
If a comment contains information about you that is inaccurate or incorrect, play an active role in correcting it. Frame it as: “Thank you, but the more accurate information is…”

Keep a Clean House
If something’s flat out nasty/obscene and negative, and there’s no chance to educate, most folks opt to delete. “You can also utilize private messaging,” suggests one of our Facebook fans. Let the person know that you/why you deleted the comment and link to your guidelines.

D’You Know What I Mean?
“Tone is often hard to distinguish on the Internet,” a Facebook fans explains. “It might actually be someone looking for a reasonable answer.” If there are no other indications you’ve got a flamer on your hands—i.e. repeat offender, bucketloads of obscenities—give them the benefit of the doubt.

Everything’s Coming Up Roses?
Say the issue of dangerous dogs is heating up in your community. Folks post angry rants on your Facebook page, demanding to know why you don’t support breed bans—but you dispose of ‘em posthaste. And though you’ve blogged about it, you delete everything that isn’t pro-you. “It can seem fishy if you remove all negative comments,” says social media strategist Farra Trompeter of Big Duck. Instead…

Go Head to Head…
Someone’s trashed you—and backed it up with (gasp!) a coherent argument. Why not take an opportunity to reiterate your position? “People will believe what they want to anyway—but at least you have a chance to say what YOU believe,” says Trompeter. And since you’re saying it publicly, it’s a smart way to get your message out there.

…Or Not
Sometimes engaging someone who’s left a negative comment can actually escalate a situation even further. You could always turn the other virtual cheek and do…nothing.

Don’t Fight Your Own Battles
Another option when the flames get hot? “Engage your ambassadors to respond for you,” suggests Jo Sullivan, Managing Director of Creative Direct Response Fundraising Group. “You may even find that your loyal supporters automatically will come to your defense.”

Start with the Man in the Mirror
We all make mistakes—and if someone calls you on yours, you may want to just own up to it. ”If the comment is true or if the person is on to something, it may be worth keeping and responding to,” advises Trompeter. By being truthful and honest, you build up integrity and trust in your organization. Really.

Don’t Take it Personally
…just take it professionally. There will always be some Cranky McCrankersons who have nothing better to do than start—and fan—the flames. Develop a thick skin, don’t stoop to their level, stick to the facts and conduct your social media conversations in a professional, respectful tone. (Besides, it’ll make them look bad!)

If the Puzzler can take a summer vacation from Car Talk, we figured our staff could take a week away to meet, plan and recharge. So, we’re headed out on retreat, but we’ll return on July 5.

Burning question is whether we’ll manage to stay away from the local shelter. Honestly, folks, how many of you manage a vacation that doesn’t include a trip to the local shelter? Is that possible?

And hey, while we’re on vaca, you can always check out our blogroll for other great reads.

For the past 2 weeks, you’ve met some tough competitors—the contestants in the Save More Lives: ASPCA $100K Challenge. Here’s a close-up and personal look at a few more of the agencies around the country gearing up for the start of the race next month.

P.S. Rooting for any of the shelters here? Please share this page on your Facebook profile (just hit the Facebook icon below this post) to spread the word and help show ‘em off!

Kansas Humane Society, Wichita, KS
Q: Describe your team in 3 words.
A: Fun, Progressive, Creative

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We have a great team, a supportive community and a new facility. It’s the trifecta of success!

Q: If you had unlimited resources, what’s the first thing you’d do?
A: It’s a tie between hiring more staff and offering free spay/neuter for anything with four legs.

Calcasieu Parish Animal Services & Adoption Center, Lake Charles, LA
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Progressive, Dedicated, Underfunded

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We are determined to break the stigma of “Southern Ignorance” and the old “dog pound” mentality.

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: We’d put half into our spay/neuter fund, and use the rest to renovate our adoption wing, adding brighter lighting and color to the wall and floors.

SPCA Serving Erie County, Tonawanda, NY
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Making Miracles Happen.

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: The people of our community. They LOVE their animals…they don’t just talk about proper animal care, they LIVE it and SHOW it.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: We all have a responsibility to protect and love the animals who share our world…we’re in this together!

Greater Birmingham Humane Society, Birmingham, AL
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Education, Advocacy, Services

Q: Of the 3 ways to win the Challenge—RTO, TNR, adoptions—which one will give you the edge?
A: Adoptions—because Birmingham will not let their pets leave sheltered lives!

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: Our utility costs are our biggest expenses. We will use the $100K to reduce our carbon footprint in pursuit of becoming LEED certified, which will allow us to use donors’ funds as they intended—to care for animals.

McKamey Animal Care & Adoption Center, Chattanooga, TN
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Progressive, Advocates, Protects

Q: Of the 3 ways to win the Challenge—RTO, TNR, adoptions—which one will give you the edge?
A: Return to owner. No one in our community has ever pushed identification, so we are planning a huge ID push.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: Open-admission shelters exist to solve a community problem; a state-of-the-art shelter is not the final solution. Changing the level of human respect for animals is the key.

Southern Pines Animal Shelter, Hattiesburg, MS

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Spirited, Resilient, Devoted

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: Our staff and volunteer corps may be small, but we BELIEVE in our mission and our community…and BELIEVING you can do something is half the battle.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: Southern Pines Animal Shelter is THE resource to help you find a pet that’s perfect for your family or to help you reunite with a lost family pet.

Come back next week to meet more contestants—and check out the Save More Lives Community for additional information about the contest.

I had a conversation this week that reminded me again how important it is to recognize and honor the unique role each individual plays in our efforts to save more animals.I had gone to visit Bebe Ober, a woman who started out as a union organizer but, faced with the prospect of raising twin daughters on her own, went into real estate and dominated the profession in this area for over 40 years. When anyone around these parts mentions Bebe’s name, the sentence is almost sure to contain the words “one tough cookie,” and we all stand up a little straighter.

Bebe is now in her mid-eighties and lives in a local Alzheimer’s facility. At times she drifts, but when she talks about the animals, she’s as sharp as ever. That’s because, throughout her long and successful career selling houses, a significant percentage of the money Bebe earned – and she earned a lot – went to the local humane society. I can honestly say the remarkable progress we’ve made in caring for the area’s animals would not have come about without Bebe’s consistent and generous financial support.

Nonetheless, for as long as I’ve known her, Bebe has bemoaned the fact that she didn’t have time to “get involved” – and the other day, she told me her one regret is that she didn’t go full-time into animal welfare. That brought me up short.

Now of course, we’ll never know what Bebe would have accomplished if she’d switched careers, but I’m willing to bet that her influence would not have been as profound had she become a worker in the field. Not only did she make amazing things possible through her substantial gifts, she also watched out for all of the animals in the Chagrin Valley as she went about her work. Many are the tales of her lecturing potential sellers and buyers about the care of their pets, and her calls to the humane society or dog warden whenever she observed an animal in distress were legendary.

Bebe did go full-time into animal welfare just as much as any of us with titles and salaries. Those of us doing the hands-on work know we couldn’t do it without the Bebes of the world. Somehow, we have to make our donors feel responsible for any successes we achieve – because they are.

Photo courtesy of Amy Sancetta

Recently, the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science (JAAWS) published a research report focused on factors relevant to adoption of cats in an animal shelter. The research was conducted by Jackie Fantuzzi, now at Animal Rescue League of Boston, and it served as her Master’s thesis. Both the ASPCA’s Dr. Kat Miller and I were honored to serve on her committee.

The research was conducted at the ASPCA Adoption Center in New York City. Fantuzzi focused her work around adult cats on the adoption floor. Cats were singly housed in glass fronted cages – the cages were in 2 tiers – so cats were either in cages at eye level or below eye level. Cats were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups – a toy group (there were toys in the cage) or a control group (no toys in the cage).

Observations occurred over 16 weekends, with some interesting trends:

• Cats at eye level were viewed by adopters longer than cats not at eye level.
• Cats with toys were viewed longer. While the cats with toys did not interact with the toys in any significant way, the presence of toys in their cages increased the amount of time adopters viewed the cats.
• Cats who were active were viewed longer than cats who were not active.

I suspect you are already thinking of some ways to use this data. Here are some ideas I have considered – with an aim toward increasing transition rate (number of potential adopters walking in your doors that actually adopt):

• Place toys in with your cats – ideally, these would be toys that your cats interact with – maybe a food-filled ball. As the data showed that adopters viewed active cats and cats with toys longer, it is likely that a cat who is active with his toy will be viewed longer.
• Place kittens low (as they are likely to be viewed no matter what) and adults at eye level. Even better, simply get rid of those very low or very high cages.
• Try to time feeding or other enrichment around your busy adoption hours to increase the likelihood your cats are active when your adopters are there to view…

MOST IMPORTANT – be sure you have adoption counselors in the cat areas so that when a potential adopter lingers in front of a cage, there is a counselor there to capture that interest and turn it into an adoption!

Have you already tried any of these strategies? Have others relevant to the data? I would love to hear how it worked for you.

In order to fully appreciate today’s post, please cue up the tune of ZZ Top’s “Legs.”

All set? Now swap out those profound lyrics for “They’ve got cats…and know how to sell them!”

Still with me? Then please allow me to introduce some of the coolest cat promotions held this past June, known in these parts as Adopt-A-Shelter Cat Month:

San Francisco SPCA
Cat-A-Palooza
The deal: Adoption fee cuts (including “Name your fee” for adult cats) and special deals on pairs and seniors
Way better than 3 boxes of Jello for a buck: Cat-A-Palooza’s promotional materials featured supercute graphics that look like little coupons. Some adopters even clipped ‘em out and brought them with them to the shelter.
Pun we wish we thought of: Thursday is Purrsday…SFSPCA’s teaser for their weekly two-for-one deal on kittens
We’ve got their numbers: 261 cats were adopted from the SFSPCA in June—66 adults, 10 seniors and 185 kittens. Compared to the previous month, reports SFSPCA, that’s an increase of 60% more seniors and 60% more kittens.
Added bonus: Many people gave more in the form of a donation than the adoption fee would have been—including the client who “named his fee” at $500! SFSPCA’s average over-the-counter monthly donation total is about $2,500—June’s donations through the adoptions desk were over $8,000, thanks to funds generated with the “Name your fee” promotion.

Animal Rescue League of Boston
Adopt-A-Cat Month
The deal: Discounted adoption price of $50 for all adult cats
Start spreading the news: The promotion was featured on Facebook, and flyers positioning the price as a special coupon discount were handed out at a neighborhood parade.
Location, location, location: “We had a great banner across our front fence, located on our South End headquarters at one of the busiest intersections in Boston,” says ARLB’s Susan Ruderman. “It was seen by thousands of pedestrians and motorists each day.”
Endless summer: 30 days hath Adopt-A-Shelter Cat Month? Not in Boston, where ARLB extended the celebration to July and August.

Nevada Humane Society
Kitten Shower
The deal: An awareness-raising, supply-collecting event aimed at engaging the community’s help during kitten season
It’s a wrap: Shower-goers were asked to bring an item from the kitten wish list, which included nursing kits, paper towels, kitten formula and Snuggle safe warming discs.
Just add whiskers: Kittens…no kitten shower is complete without ‘em! NHS decked some little ones out in pink and blue for a cameo (err…cameow?) appearance.
Not just fun and games: The timing of the event was no mistake—when better to recruit volunteer foster families and offer foster parent training?

Cleveland Animal Protective League
Five. Five Dollar. Five Dollar Felines.
The deal: From June 1-June 6, adult cats ages 5 months and up were $5, while kittens under 5 months had an adoption fee of $25.
Outta site!: For folks who couldn’t make it to the shelter, Cleveland APL brought cats and kittens for immediate adoption to 4 offsite locations during the week.
Check out these digits: 161 cats and kittens were adopted during the promotion week. “The same week the year before it was 63, so there was a 156% increase,” reports Cleveland APL ED Sharon Harvey. “And the week before and after this promotion there were 43 and 62 adoptions respectively, so the promo definitely drove adoptions. Although adoptions revenue was down 5%, that was an investment we were more than willing to make to save nearly 100 more lives!”

Petfinder.com
The 2010 Whiskers Awards

The deal: An online photo contest—a fun take on the Oscars—open to cats available for adoption from Petfinder shelters.
Everyone’s a winner: The public (hello! Can you say potential adopters?!) got to determine the top cats during the online voting period from June 1-21, but Petfinder also posted a link on the site to all of the nominees.
It takes two: We’re loving the Best On-Screen Duo category for helping to promote bonded pairs.
Must-see: The Best Comedic Performance category. Somebody cast Buck in the cat version of The Nutty (Furry?) Professor…

Did your agency do a special cat promotion last month? Leave a comment and tell us all about it.

So, you’ve heard about the Save More Lives: ASPCA $100K Challenge? The ASPCA is offering $125,000 to challenge shelters across the country to save more cats and dogs than they did last year. Meet 6 more agencies that’ve got their eyes on the prize.

P.S. Rooting for any of the agencies featured here? Share this page on your Facebook profile or hit the Retweet button above to spread the word and help show ‘em off.

SPCA, Inc., Lakeland, FL
Q: What makes you a tough competitor in the ASPCA $100K Challenge?
A: We absolutely love what we do and eat, sleep and drink thinking about how we can do what we do a whole lot better—it’s about saving more lives!

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Rescue, Recuperate and Rehome

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like to get out to your community?
A: Many people think shelter animals are rejects or second-class pets, but we know our pets are diamonds, not even in the rough, just waiting to be treasured.

Atlanta Humane Society, Atlanta, GA
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: The Best Ever.

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: A new mobile spay/neuter vehicle.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like to get out to your community?
A: Spay or neuter!

Humane Society at Lollypop Farm, Rochester, NY
Q: Of the 3 ways to win the Challenge—RTO, TNR, adoptions—which will give your organization the edge?
A: TNR. Our feral cat program is currently in its infancy, and we have the potential to make a big impact on the feral cat population in Greater Rochester.

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Compassionate, Dedicated, Innovative

Q: What makes you a tough competitor?
A: We have a highly motivated staff and a corps of over 800 volunteers who are committed to saving the lives of the pets in our community. In return, the community is tremendously supportive of and responsive to our needs.

Humane Society of Boulder Valley, Boulder, CO
Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you’d do?
A: We would expand our scope of services so we could say YES to every pet and person in need!

Q: What makes you a tough competitor?
A: We are risk takers who love a challenge.

Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Innovative, Passionate, Trusted

Maui Humane Society, Maui, HI
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Dedicated, Compassionate, Driven.

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: There is a saying here, “Maui No Ka Oi,” that means Maui is the best! We have a very supportive community and an incredible team of staff and volunteers who are enthusiastic, innovative and highly competitive.

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you would do?
A: Build a brand-new state-of-the-art facility that provides for the animals, our programs that support them, and also a destination for residents and visitors of Maui.

Tallahassee Leon Community Animal Services Center, Tallahassee, FL
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Educate, protect, responsible.

Q: Of the 3 ways to win the Challenge—RTO, TNR, adoptions—which will give your organization the edge?
A: RTO. It has been a huge focus of ours over the last year, and we have just concluded a survey to help us understand the public’s perception of lost and found pets.

Q:  What’s the most important message that you’d like to get out to your community?
A: Animals are a part of our community, too; teach respect for life, responsible pet ownership and help end pet overpopulation.

Check out the Save More Lives Community for additional information about the contest.

If you feel like you’re sucking every ounce of nectar from your existing donor base, why not try a little cross-pollination?

Let’s face it. There’s only so much juice you can get out of the traditional animal-loving population. If you want to have a serious impact on your community, you’ll have to attract some new bees. But how?

It’s pretty simple, really. Just look around to see which organizations or causes those little pollinators are buzzing around and then ask yourself how you might link up for mutual benefit. (OK, enough with the metaphor).

The good news is, just as you’re looking to expand your donor base, other groups probably are as well, so joining forces just might be a win/win. Geauga Humane Society’s Empty Bowls Soup Supper is a perfect example.The idea for this classic cross-pollinating fundraising event was brought to the humane society by a volunteer soon after a successful capital campaign had pretty much tapped out the organization’s supporters. The first year, clever as it was, Empty Bowls was just marginally successful. It was the second year, when event organizers went way beyond asking artists for auction prizes and involved them in a new and different way, that the event really took off.

What the committee did was reach out to school arts programs, community art centers, and even those design-your-own pottery stores to create and decorate the hundreds of soup bowls given out at the event. Voila. Instant audience. Parents whose kids made bowls wanted to come. Artists who made bowls wanted to come. Just plain folks who attended bowl parties at the do-it-yourself pottery studios wanted to come. And of course, the traditional animal-loving audience wanted to come, too.Not only did Empty Bowls attract over 300 people and raise some $50,000 for operations year after year, it established a lasting bond between two of the area’s strongest interest groups – the animal welfare community and the visual arts community. That partnership introduced a whole new group of people to the work of the humane society and brought local artists a whole new group of patrons as well. Win/win.So who’s getting pollinated in your community? The orchestra, theater, local schools, hospitals? Are there programs or fundraising events that could bring your missions – and your supporters – together? Hey, it might even be the botanical garden, making this metaphor actually make some sense.

One of my most powerful experiences in my professional career as an applied animal behaviorist involves tortoises. I know what some of you are thinking – I have worked with some amazing creatures from orangutans, lions, bears, elephants and more – so why tortoises?  Because the tortoises taught me what “sentient being” really means, which has weaved into the work I do every day with shelters.Aldabra tortoises are very large tortoises similar to Galapagos tortoises.  The zoo I worked for had 4 of these tortoises. The tortoises had access to an outside area where they could graze and wallow, as tortoises will do.  In summers they had continuous outside access, but in the fall, they needed to come in at night, as the temperatures would drop to levels that were dangerous to tropical tortoises.  The keepers would put a call out each evening to have folks come help lift the tortoises and bring them in – if a 500-lb. tortoise does not want to come in, he will put his body inside his shell and hunker down… 4 keepers were needed to pick up a tortoise!

Having observed the success of the positive reinforcement training I had been doing with some of the other species at the zoo, the tortoise keeper suggested that we target train the tortoises so that they could bring them in and out on cue.  So, armed with cantaloupe slices (a favorite of the tortoises), a bright red ball on a stick and lots of patience, I began to train them.  We started by simply pairing a cue with the delivery of food. The tortoises learned this quickly and we moved to teaching them to touch their noses to the target (the bright red ball).  About 3 weeks into the training, the tortoises changed my world…

I walked up to their exhibit – which was surrounded by families watching the tortoises.   Just out of habit of talking, I called out to the tortoises, “Hey, guys!” … and they stood and turned and looked directly at me!  Remember their exhibit was surrounded by people, but they recognized my voice and oriented directly toward me!  A tortoise?!

We trained the tortoises to allow us to pull blood samples from a web of vessels under their front legs – this required them to stand and stretch very tall so we could access that webbing.  We published a manuscript in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science on this technique – lots of zoos are no longer wrestling tortoises, instead using targets and touch. The tortoises were so motivated by touch that I could often train them without any food reward – using scratching and stroking of their necks as a reinforcer instead.  I would come to the tortoises to just say hello, and they would lay their heads and necks on my lap.

So… how does this relate to saving lives in a shelter? A couple ways. I had assumed that a tortoise would behave much differently than they actually did, so I learned to never assume – assuming can put lives at risk.

Also, the interaction between the human and nonhuman animal can be powerful, and depending upon the species, our presence may be a powerful training tool in and of itself. I have found this to be a great tool for working with shelter dogs and cats in such simple acts such as cleaning and feeding.

My experience with the tortoises served as an epiphany for me… what experiences have helped to shape your world view?

Photo courtesy of Rennett Stowe

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing tips on making effective, fun—and heck, even easy and hopefully viral—videos for your agency. Today’s post does include some shameless promotion of my own cat, but I’d really like to show off YOU—so if your shelter’s got a great video, email the link to me at puned@aspca.org and tell me what you did that was especially effective that I can pass on to others. Just think, you can be featured in a future installment of Slammin’ Shelter Videos!

Today we’ll be discussing the sacred art form known as the song parody. Visions of Weird Al Yankovic aside, this can be a fun, creative exercise involving your whole community and a great way to get your message out there.

Exhibit A: San Francisco SPCA’s “Cat Romance,” produced by volunteer Cristian Gonzales as part of the social media team lead by Laura Gretch, Community Development Specialist

Ready to make one, too? Here are some tips to get you started:

Choose a song that’s really well known. “All That Jazz” from the musical Chicago was a perfect fit for the video we created in honor of the Feline Forum conference that took place in, ah, Chicago. And SFSPCA’s choice of Lady Gaga? Oh, well, she’s only got about 12,521,658 Facebook fans. It’ll be easier to write lyrics if you know the tune well. P.S. The cat in the hat in our vid? That’s Bing, my 14 ½-years-young ASPCA shelter alum.Make a list of phrases that you want to incorporate in your lyrics, suggests the ASPCA’s Elyse Orecchio, Associate Editor, Internet Communications & Social Media and star of “All Those Cats.” This is helpful if you have a specific message or detailed info to include. “For example,” explains Elyse, “we knew we wanted to find a place to rhyme ‘sterile’ and ‘feral.’” Take time to find good places to plug these phrases in.

Get a backing track. If you don’t know a piano accompanist or guitarist, purchase a karaoke track online for a couple of bucks.

Can’t carry a tune and have two left feet? “Put out a call for singers and dancers in your community who will strut their stuff for a good cause,” says Elyse.

Don’t make it too complicated. “Some of the best ideas come from the simplest of concepts,” say Laura and Cristian. “However, we can’t stress this enough: FILM, FILM, FILM. You never know which shots and scenes are going to be the ones you end up using. It’s better to have too much than too little.” P.S. A word on equipment—don’t stress if you don’t have a fancy camera. Most digital cameras have a video camera, and can work just fine.

Have a decent program to work on. Although “Cat Romance” was done with Final Cut, which helped Laura and Cristian incorporate some fun, silly Photoshop work and vector lines for the shots and movements, they assure us it doesn’t need to be that complicated. “Windows MovieMaker and iMovie are two free editing programs that allow you to add subtitles and special effects to your movie,” adds Elyse.

Don’t know how to use that decent program? “Hop on YouTube,” advise Laura and Cristian. “Type in keywords like ‘iMovie tutorial’ and ‘Windows MovieMaker tutorial’ and you will have plenty of tutorials come up that can show you how to edit and create movies in those programs.”

Have fun. Per Laura and Cristian: “If you’re off-key while filming, if your camera work is a little shaky, if your lyrics are kinda goofy, if your Lady—err—Kitty Gaga looks weird, if things don’t go exactly as planned once you start filming…it’s OK.” If you’re having fun making it, people will have fun watching it.

Got any tips—or links to videos you’ve created—to add? Leave ‘em in the comment box.

In 11 days, the contestants in the Save More Lives: ASPCA $100K Challenge will officially begin their quest to save more cats and dogs than they did last year. Meet 5 more agencies that’ve got their eyes on the prize.

P.S. Rooting for any of the shelters featured here? Show your support by sharing this page on your Facebook profile (click the Facebook icon at the bottom of this post) or hitting the Retweet button above. Just a click can get the word out quick!

Joplin Humane Society, Joplin, MO
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Inspired, Focused, Lifesaving

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: Combine our new building with our focus on saving lives, vision and follow-through—we’ll be tough to beat!

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: More than 12,000 animals enter the doors of the Joplin Humane Society—if you lost one, look for ‘em; if you have pets, get them fixed.

Team: Geauga Humane Sociey, Russell Twp., OH, and Lake Humane Society, Mentor, OH
Q: Describe your team in 3 words.
A: Committed to life-saving!

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: As a two-shelter team, the sum is larger and stronger than the parts. We have tons of heart and, as underdogs, we will capture people’s imagination. We work our tails off!

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: Lake Humane will buy new banks of cages for their cat room; Geauga Humane will put the winnings toward building sufficient isolation and quarantine space.

Larimer Humane Society, Fort Collins, CO
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Provider. Rehabilitator. Facilitator.

Q: What’s the best way your community can support you in the ASPCA $100K Challenge?
A: Gorillas may not reside in Larimer County, but guerilla marketing lives strong, and we are hoping to harness its potential.

Q: If your resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you would do?
A: Immediately begin construction on a new state-of-the-art facility.

Prattville/Autauga Humane Society, Prattville, AL
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Small, Caring, Struggling.

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: Updating the plumbing, computer network and other things we have ignored in order to put our money into the animals.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like people to get about the animals in your community?
A: We can’t adopt our way out of pet overpopulation—there are simply too many. Please spay and neuter your own animals, and bring in those who need shelter.

St. Tammany Parish Department of Animal Services, Lacombe, LA
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Passionate, Energetic, Teamwork

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: Build a new cat adoption wing that will allow the cats to have time outside of the cages with a screened-in area for them to get some fresh air.

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We are determined, motivated, skilled and committed.

Come back next week to meet more contestants—and check out the Save More Lives Community for additional information about the contest.

As a data geek, July 16 was a pretty extraordinary day for me. Last Friday was the deadline for the ASPCA $100K Challenge Contestants to get their baseline data entered into the ASPCA Animal Stats system.  For those of you who are not familiar, the ASPCA Animal Stats Dashboard started when we began our ASPCA Partnership program. We needed a set of data definitions that we could use in each shelter and spay/neuter clinic we partnered with – so that we could easily compare apples to apples both within one community as well as across communities.

What separates the Animal Stats Dashboard from other data reporting formats is its use of what we call “naked data” – that is, raw numbers without qualifiers. By not incorporating qualifiers such as “adoptable,” “treatable,” or “owner requested” (as in the case of euthanasia), the dashboard provides a non-subjective snapshot of an agency’s or community’s animal data. This becomes especially meaningful in understanding shelter overpopulation at a state, regional and national level – as it offers a pure apples-to-apples approach to understanding the current level of risk for shelter animals. Interested in our definitions? Click here to learn more.

At midnight on July 16th we had 46 agencies with the required 3 months of baseline data entered in the ASPCA Animal Stats database. That means that 46 out of the 47 agencies originally entered in the Challenge are moving forward to compete! I have chills that only just one agency did not get their data in by the deadline. With all of the different shelter software options, and the different definitions used in the field, 46 contestants were able to enter their data using the ASPCA Animal Stats definitions in a timely fashion.

The 46 shelters combined saved 45,603 lives from August through October. Just imagine how many lives they will save this year!

Save on, friends!

Last week we talked about creating a song parody video for your agency. This week: putting together a killer slideshow for your shelter.  Wanna share your editing and directing skills for a future installment of our videomaking series? Send your clips and tips to me at puned@aspca.org.

Wait, wait…please don’t stop reading if the term “slideshow” conjures up blurry images you watched in third grade during “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” Day. Thanks to digital cameras and myriad online resources, you can create polished, professional pieces that’ll showcase your programs and your animals.

And if you’re short on time and funds? This blog’s for you.

Get With The Program
Do you plan to download a program to create your slideshow or use an online service? There are a couple of important differences, says Cory Cooper, president of TampaPets.org, a coalition of animal welfare groups and individuals working to fight pet overpopulation in Tampa. “When you use free versions,” says Cooper, “your finished product will often reside on the host server. Some sites let you download the slideshow to your own computer, so you can post it directly on your website or send via email; others only provide a link.” And if you want to post your video on Facebook or YouTube, it’s important to make sure the service you select provides that option.

Some sample programs you can use to make slideshows:
Microsoft Photo Story
Google Picasa
Kizoa
Irfanview
Slide

Think Short Clip, Not Sprawling Epic
Size matters, particularly if you promote your slideshow on social networking sites. “Make sure you check the site’s size and length restrictions for videos,” cautions Cooper. ”For example, YouTube is 100MB and under 10 minutes. The rule of thumb is 3 minutes maximum.”

The Cat Network, Inc., put together this short piece to encourage viewers to vote on Chase Community Giving.

Makin’ a List, Checkin’ it Twice
Planning to create a slideshow of a big adoptions event or your next spay/neuter and wellness clinic? Be sure to make a list of the shots you want. “This is particularly important if someone is helping to take pictures for you,” says Cooper. “Think about the story you are going to tell so you make sure you get the right pictures.”

Rockwall Pets created this sensational video to celebrate 100 adoptions in a month.

Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing
You’ll want to keep the original versions of your photos. “The slideshow programs will all optimize your pictures for viewing on the Internet, which keeps file size smaller for shorter download times,” explains Cooper. “”These small versions will no longer be of sufficient quality for printing or use in print materials.”Don’t Play Around
Most programs do offer the option of attaching an .mp3 file to your slideshow. “Generally, if you’re not using music for commercial purposes or direct solicitation, especially in the case of a charity, no one will bug you about using copyrighted music,” says Cooper. “However, you should be aware that using copyrighted music without permission is illegal. If you’re planning to post on Facebook, YouTube or other social media sites, it’s best to use open source music.”

Stay tuned for more of Cooper’s tips on creating a video slideshow in an upcoming article on ASPCApro.org. We’ll post a link on our Facebook page, so be sure to become a fan if you aren’t already.  And if you’ve made a slideshow for your agency, please share the link in the comment box.

In less than a week, the Save More Lives: ASPCA $100K Challenge contestants will begin their quest to save more cats and dogs than they did last year. Meet 3 agencies that’ve got their eyes on the prize.

P.S. Rooting for any of the agencies featured here? Share this page on your Facebook profile or hit the Retweet button above to spread the word and help show ‘em off.

Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society, Menands, NY
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Animals, Advocacy, Adoption.

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you’d do?
A: Take it to the streets! We’d open satellite adoption centers in each of our 4 local retail centers, taking animals to the people.

Q: What makes you a tough contender in the ASPCA $100K Challenge?
A: Our community. The people of New York’s Capital Region love animals and always step up and respond when animals are in need.

Puerto Rico Animal Welfare Society, Isabela, PR
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Spay, Adopt, Educate.

Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We are small but determined.

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you would do?
A: We would spay or neuter, vaccinate, deworm and bathe every homeless animal in Puerto Rico. Then we would house and feed them until we could find loving, lifelong homes for all.

Animal Friends Humane Society, Hamilton, OH
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Animal Welfare Advocate.

Q: What makes you a tough competitor in the ASPCA $100K Challenge?
A: We are driven—driven to change, to grow in knowledge and awareness, to educate, to nurture and to grow.

Q: How will you spend the $100K?
A: We would love to build a training/humane education facility, and we’d like to have a barn to house farm animals who are the victims of cruelty and neglect.

Check out the Save More Lives Community for additional information about the contest.

What is the most common question that an animal behaviorist gets? The action at the end of the sentence often changes, but the question always starts with, “Why does my pet do….X?” X can be anything from barking at cars and urinating out of the litter box to aggression, and more.

So, I am about to give away the big behaviorist secret… the answer to all of those “whys” – are you ready? Because it feels good… or, to put it another way, it feels “less bad” than the alternative. Period. Really.

Whether you are a dog, cat, Komodo dragon, man, woman, tapeworm, or lion, all of us behave in order to feel good or less bad. Now, figuring out the motivator that feels good might be a challenge – but it all really does drill down to this simple answer.

Let’s use a shelter example here. Many shelters across the country struggle with dogs barking in their kennel runs. They bark and bark and bark – often without any apparent reason… But if you break the behavior down to some micro levels you can find the ‘feels good.’ Volunteer walks down the kennel floor, dog barks, volunteer turns toward the dog… BINGO! Many dogs, especially those in kennels with limited social interactions, are socially motivated. A simple turn of the head and soft eye contact is enough to reinforce that barking behavior…

Sometimes a motivator can be less obvious. While social interaction and food are often good motivators, there are many individuals who are motivated by less obvious stimuli, and – even over time, the stimuli can change. I trained a fearful leopard to approach a target that would result in my leaving. Over time, her fear diminished and my leaving was no longer motivating enough – so we changed our motivator.

The expertise of a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist – or psychologist for our human friends – is sometimes needed to help puzzle through the motivators and, if one wants to change the behavior, figure out what might be more motivating to modify the behavior. But coming to each animal interaction – be it with a dog, cat, human or other – with this zeitgeist can be powerful. Once we can pinpoint what the motivator is, we can affect positive change, and save more lives.

This is a powerful piece to consider when we are interacting with our dogs, cats, adopters, volunteers and donors. What can we do to increase the likelihood that the behaviors that will likely increase lives saved occur – and occur again…

So, remember… if it feels good – do it again.Photo 1 courtesy of Dan Nicholas
Photo 2 courtesy of Eric Pleitez
Photo 3 courtesy of W J Bill Harrison

Last week I shared tips on creating a video slideshow for your agency. We’re up to “P” in this latest installment of the ABCs of videomaking. Plot…gotta have a good one.It’s as basic as it gets today, folks. Behind every great video stands a great storyline. You know, a plot with a conflict, resolution and compelling characters. And what I like so much about the examples cued up for today? They’re both promoting shelter adoptions, but they don’t hit the viewer over the head with it. Whoa, no. We’re in Lifetime movie/”Livin’ On a Prayer”/heartstring-pulling territory here.

At least with this going-viral-as-we-speak video from Nevada Humane Society:

Released last Friday, this spoof of last summer’s 53-million-served JK Wedding Entrance Dance video has, at last count, already been viewed 45,260 times and received 237 comments (e.g. “Freaking love it!!! I totally pray there are many more adoption dances to come!”). That’s in six days alone. A girl-meets-dog take on boy-meets-girl, you just have to watch until the end to see what happens, even if you haven’t seen the original wedding video and don’t quite get why the folks at Nevada Humane Society dance AND wear sunglasses on the job. That’s a good story for you.

As is this video version of Michael Kitkoski’s “Tails of the City” column in the Rockwall edition of the Dallas Morning News:

The first in what will be a regular “pets and their people” profile, the story here is so rich in detail. We learn Maggie Mae was likely caught in a trap and see her paw being bandaged. The sports car that Mark chauffered her home in, the yard she zooms around in… It takes care and thought to find out those kinds of details, but they make the story real. Way better than an ad that reads “Adopt A Shelter Dog,” huh?

A couple things to keep in mind when you create your next slammin’ shelter video:

- Meet the press! Even if you’ve got the greatest story ever told, your video can’t have an impact if no one sees it. Post it on your Facebook profile, give it prominent placement on your website, include a link in your newsletter or, as in the case of Nevada Humane Society, send out a press release encouraging everyone to share your video. The ultimate—you get juicy press coverage, like this piece on USAToday.com.

- Fudge it if you have to. The dog in Nevada Humane’s video isn’t named Cooper and isn’t really about to be adopted—they didn’t want to stress a shelter dog with the excitement/busy-ness of filming. Does the video suffer for that? Nope. And some of the dancers aren’t staffers, but friends of the volunteer who dreamed up the idea…does the video suffer? No, ma’am. That’s where you get to improvise and get creative.

- Ain’t got that bling? Not a problem—you don’t need sophisticated software to make a good video. “I continually see awesome videos on YouTube produced with nothing more than a Canon PowerShot camera and iMovie,” says Kitkoski. “I’ve been saying for years—it’s not the hardware or software you use, it’s what comes out of your imagination that counts. If you really love shelter pets, you shouldn’t have any problem sharing that love.”

Got anything to add? There’s an empty comment box waiting just for you.

And P.S., do try to check out the Social Animal’s free Webinar next Tuesday, August 3, on “Crafting a Social Media Policy for Your Animal Welfare Organization.” Get all the deets and registration info here.

A letter from Ed Sayres, ASPCA President and CEO

On Sunday, August 1, 46 ASPCA $100K Challenge contestants kicked off their no-holds-barred efforts to win a $100,000 grant for saving the most lives and a $25,000 grant for getting the most people engaged in saving lives.

I ask you to please join me in wishing these contestants the best of luck — because as we all know, what’s really at stake is far more important than money.

Challenge contestants in every region have been reaching out to involve community members in saving lives and raising the profile of shelters and homeless animals across the nation. Contestants have been strategizing innovative solutions for increasing adoptions and TNR and improving return-to-owner rates. Everything they learn about saving more lives will help inform and build all of our life-saving efforts in the future.

Last year, these 46 contestant agencies collectively saved 45,603 lives during August, September and October.

This year, if these agencies all hit their target increase, that number will soar to 58,803! The ASPCA salutes their significant efforts.

Sincerely,

Ed Sayres, ASPCA® President and CEO

You can meet the contestants and follow their advances at our website.

The contestants in the Save More Lives: ASPCA $100K Challenge are off and running. We caught up with 5 more agencies that’ll be kicking butt over the next three months in order to save more cats and dogs than they did last year.

P.S. Rooting for any of the agencies featured here? Share this page on your Facebook profile or hit the Retweet button above to spread the word and help show ‘em off.

Salt Lake County Animal Services, Salt Lake City, UT
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Dedicated, Proactive, Determined

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you’d do?
A: Build a new shelter with space for training, education, volunteers and plenty for the animals.

Q: What’s the most important message that you’d like your get out to your community?
A: Until there are none, ADOPT one!

Richmond Animal Care & Control, Richmond, VA
Q: What makes you a tough contender?
A: We are experts in getting the word out in a grassroots manner.

Q: What’s the best way your community can support you in the ASPCA $100K Challenge?
A: Adopt—and if it isn’t the right time to adopt, we would love both monetary donations and donations of items from our “wish list.”

Q: When you win the $100K, how will you spend it?
A: We will use it to improve conditions for animals in the Richmond community and to help increase adoptions.

Wisconsin Humane Society, Milwaukee, WI
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Progressive, Compassionate, Dedicated

Q: What makes you a tough competitor in the ASPCA $100K Challenge?
A: We have an incredibly passionate base of staff, volunteers, adopters and donors—plus 130 years of experience in saving lives.

Q: What’s the best way your community can support you in the Challenge?
A: For those interested in adopting, there will be no better time than this year to add a new family member. For those unable to adopt, spread the word to your friends and family by joining us on the Save More Lives Community.

City of Irvine Animal Care Center, Irvine, CA
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Innovative, Compassionate, Committed

Q: If resources were unlimited, what’s the first thing you’d do?
A: We would rescue as many animals as possible through our Third Chance for Pets program, and increase our community outreach efforts with low-cost spay/neuter and education programs.

Q: What makes you a tough competitor?
A: Our commitment to finding homes for the shelter’s more than 4,500 animals annually goes above and beyond the normal scope of a municipal shelter.

N.O.A.H. Animal Adoption & Spay/Neuter Center, Stanwood, WA
Q: Describe your organization in 3 words.
A: Helping Pets Succeed

Q: When you win the $100K, how will you spend it?
A: We will buy a mobile adoption van so that we can have further reach with our adoptions.

Q: Of the 3 ways to win the Challenge—RTO, TNR, adoptions—which one will give you the edge?
A: As a transfer-in only facility, adoptions is our only way to win. As such, we will be focusing all of our efforts on increasing adoptions.

Check out the Save More Lives Community for additional information about the contest.

I am so excited about the plans being developed by the ASPCA $100K Challenge contestants! From changes in customer service and social networking to new RTO programs and much more… the wheels are turning and more lives are going to be saved!The energy is rippling, and many non-Challenge contestants have been reaching out to me regarding changes in program – many focused on increasing adoptions. Measuring adoption increases can be fairly straightforward – but how do you know if you are increasing foot traffic or increasing the number of folks who walk in and end up leaving with a pet – or both?  I feel pretty strongly that if someone has made the decision to walk through our doors, we should be working our tails off to make sure they leave with one of our shelter animals! We call the rate of those entering your facility vs. those that leave with a pet the transition rate. I have mentioned transition rates before in my blog – and since some of you have asked how to best measure it, I thought I would share some tools that both Challenge contestants and others implementing change can use to help measure this rate.

To measure this rate we first need to get a picture of who is walking in your door. This handy greeter survey works wonders for this task. Ideally, the greeter survey is conducted during all open hours for at least 1 full week, ideally two weeks. Avoid conducting this survey during holidays, as this may skew your sample. In shelters where I have helped implement this survey, volunteer greeters signed up to fill the hours needed. Be sure your greeter is courteous and to the point. We do not want to hold your clients up at the door, we just need to welcome them and find out what brought them to you today. You will be tallying daily those who came to either look at or potentially adopt a pet. The other services (to buy a license, to find a lost pet, etc.) may or may not be relevant in your facility.

Next you will need a daily adoption log. At the end of each day, a staff member should complete this log that tallies adoptions by both species and age group. Now you have all the information you need to figure out your transition rate. Count the number of folks in the greeter survey that reported they came to your facility to look or with the intent to adopt a pet available for adoption, and count the adoptions conducted that day. You then divide adoptions by the number that walked in the door. You can break this down further with this survey to look at:

• Potential adopters walking in your door interested in dogs vs. cats
• Potential adopters walking in your door interested in puppies or kittens vs. adults
• Foot traffic on certain days, and certain times of day (a city facility recently used this information to support the need for more staff at certain hours, as the foot traffic vs. the staff number indicated they were woefully understaffed in the mornings)
• Transition rate by species
• Transition rate by juvenile vs. adult

I am looking forward to hearing your feedback on these tools – and how you may use them to increase the number of lives saved. Please let me know.

Depending on one’s level of Facebook addiction—and yes, they have the data to prove that many of us are jonesing for it in a big way—you’re asked the above question once, twice, maybe even ten times a day, depending on how many times you log on.

When you type in your response to that question on your agency’s fan page and click “share,” that’s known as updating your status. And once that status is shot out into cyberspace (the upper statusphere?!), it appears on your homepage and your fans’ News Feed, where your fans can read it, comment on it, click your links, look at any images you’ve attached. If you get a nice amount of fans taking any of those actions, the likelihood is increased that your post will wind up under “Top News” in all your fans’ News Feeds, way more prominent than just under the “Most Recent” tab, and thereby increasing the chances that more eyeballs will see it.

So sorry if I’ve lost you with that wacky Facebookian jargon—the main point is, the content that you post on your organization’s Facebook fan page via your status update is wicked important. It’s up to you, as I heard in Kivi Leroux Miller’s recent webinar for nonprofit organizations, “10 Ways to Engage Your Fans on Facebook,” to regularly practice #3 on her list: Work Your Status.

Miller’s main points on writing a good Facebook status:
1. “Go for interesting content and conversation, not just press releases.”
2. “Go for videos, photos, links!”
3. “Mix up what you post! Don’t do the exact same thing at the exact same time every day.”
4. “Don’t just yack yack yack about your programs. Tell a story about one volunteer, one donor…” How about one animal?

Here are some cool examples of excellent Facebook posts from our colleagues in the field:This one is just brilliant. Link to fun video, check. National and local news, check. Adoption success story, check. Shout-out to the doggie’s humans, check. Fans get to see a “day in the life” of Charleston Animal Society, check.

And this one from The Cat Network, Inc. may seem simple, but packs a lot of punch. They’ve posted a pic so cute it practically begs a response on its own, and asked a question to go along with it.Kudos to Spokane Humane Society for promoting a special adoptions deal in such a fun, informal, engaging way, rather than using more press-releasey language:Lovin’ how Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society celebrates success…Don’t know what to post? Why not ask your fans what they want to see? A flash of social networking brilliance from Dumb Friends League…and 33 comments, too!

What’s one of your agency’s most effective Facebook status updates?

I’d love to compile them all into an article to share with others. You can email me at puned@aspca.org or tell us about it in the comment box. And thanks in advance for taking the extra time to reply—you never know, your suggestion might spark an idea for another shelter that results in an animal being adopted, additional volunteers, more donations…it’s all gotta start somewhere, and what better place to try than a website with 500 million (!!) users?

August 1 marked the official start of the ASPCA $100K Challenge, and our contestants are already blowing the roof off! We love reading the national and local press coverage of their activities, but what gets us most excited (and, yes, more than a little teary-eyed) is reading the first-hand accounts in their blogs. Check them out anytime, and we’ll also be compiling weekly highlights here.

National Night Out

McKamey Animal Care & Adoption Center celebrated National Night Out—and the start of the ASPCA $100K—with two local neighborhood associations. Volunteers brought dogs for adoption and promoted the Chattanooga, TN-based center’s Collar On! program, which stresses the importance of proper ID. “During this challenge, we are working to increase our return to owner rates,” reports McKamey. “So often we receive loving, trusting animals that we know are owned, but we cannot reunite them with their owners because they do not have identification.” Volunteers spoke with approximately 100 people, handing out 11 free collars and ID tags to pet parents.

Camden, DE’s Kent County SPCA returned 43 dogs and 3 cats to their owners during the first week of the Challenge, and even their transfer program is kicking it into overdrive. “As we type this, our Alternative Care Coordinator is driving 2 1/2 hours away to save the life of one of our dogs,” they blogged.

And the SPCA of Wake County in Raleigh, NC, got out some baseball caps, leather aviator vests and—we think that was a tutu—and held a photo shoot:

You just watched the Pit Crew in action—trained volunteers working to improve the chances that the agency’s pit bulls will be adopted. The dogs attend specialized obedience classes, play dates and, yes, monthly glamour photo shoots.

Boulder Valley

Check out animal welfare associate Scott Olsen finishing up some adoptions paperwork in front of Colorado’s Humane Society of Boulder Valley’s ASPCA Lives Saved tally board!

As of last Friday morning, the agency had adopted 118 cats and 65 dogs since August 1—”an increase of 49 since the same time last year,” they report.

And talk about happy, if exhausting, endings! “Even though we were closed to the public today,” reported Alabama’s Greater Birmingham Humane Society one day last week, “we still have some phenomenal numbers to report. The Lone Ranger, as we call our only veterinarian here, has completed 26 spay/neuter surgeries and 8 dentals!”

“Thanks, Dr. Jodi, for all your hard work,” they blogged, “Sorry your back hurts and only feels better when you’re on the ground!”

That’s dedication and determination, people. The ASPCA $100K Challenge contestants have it, bigtime.

Read about what all our contestants are doing on the Save More Lives website.

Kitten Mountain

It’s August, so it’s redundant to say it’s HOT. Shelters everywhere are brimming at the seams, HVAC systems are pushed to the max, and intake graphs show “Kitten Mountain” in full swing, just as volunteer resources are starting to dwindle with students and teachers returning to school and families escaping for their last summer getaways.  But this is nothing new – it happens every year.  So why on earth did 50 shelters sign up for a contest to adopt, RTO, and TNR at least 300 more animals this August through October over last year?  And how on earth have they managed to add more promotions and events and services on top of their already insanely busy late summer operations?  Are they crazy or just smart employers?

According to Daniel Pink, who’s integrating years of research on motivation from various disciplines ranging from education to economics, except in instances of basic mechanical tasks, external rewards not only don’t improve performance but in many cases they actually have the opposite effect.  In her recent post, “If It Feels Good…”, Dr. Emily Weiss reveals the fundamental behavioral motivator for dogs and cats and other animals – like us: things that feel good.  So, what feels good for employees?  Pink says it’s three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Bingo! Challenge contestants aren’t crazy after all (or if they are, it’s a savant kind of crazy), because they’ve given their staff and volunteers two essential intrinsic motivators at this difficult time of the shelter year:  the opportunity to build and improve skills (mastery) and the chance to deliver on mission and save more lives (purpose).

So you’re not in the Challenge this year.  No worries.  It’s August:  “Kitten Mountain” is everybody’s challenge. Which means you can give your staff opportunity for mastery and purpose.  Borrow an idea from one of the contestants, check out these programs from around the country, or add in the third biggest motivator – autonomy – and challenge your staff and volunteers to innovate their own way to save more lives at your shelter. When you do, share the ideas back here – because crazy loves company, and we all love delivering on the purpose of saving more lives!

I have always said I am not a “breedist.” By this I mean that I do not make assumptions about an individual dog based on breed tendencies. While I recognize that breed tendencies absolutely exist, when working on adoption and matching in shelters, we need to use that information to help inform how we will best learn about this individual dog as opposed to lumping him or her into a particular category.

Yes – it is easier to teach an English pointer how to point than it is to teach a Jack Russell to do so – they are simply built to have more sensitive pathways for visual and olfactory stimuli. Does that mean that every pointer will point? Certainly not – but they are more likely to. Given the right experiences, those behaviors are quickly learned and reinforced. This holds true for a spectrum of behaviors – from predatory behavior, social interactions, and more.

Recently published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, an article by Duffy, Hsu and Serpell titled “Breed Differences in Canine Aggression” is of great interest to behaviorists, vets and others in the field. The researchers used a tool called C-BARQ for the research. C-BARQ, developed by Dr. James Serpell at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society, is a validated and reliable survey instrument for assessing dogs’ typical and recent responses to a variety of common stimuli and situations.

The authors surveyed owners of more than 30 breeds of dogs and found that certain breeds had a higher percentage of reports of certain types of aggression – specifically aggression toward strangers, aggression toward owners, or aggression toward other dogs. They found that breeds with the greatest percentage of dogs exhibiting serious aggression (bites or bite attempts) toward humans included dachshunds, Chihuahuas and Jack Russell terriers (toward strangers and owners); Australian cattle dogs (toward strangers); and American cocker spaniels and beagles (toward owners). Author’s note: I should point out that 2 of the Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists at the ASPCA have great affinity for a couple of these breeds – Dr. Stephen Zawistowski is a beagle fan, I a Jack Russell freak…). Regarding aggression toward other dogs, the breeds with the highest percentage of reported serious aggression were akitas and pit bull terriers.

So what do we do with this information? First, see the authors’ caution regarding interpretation of the results: “The present findings should be interpreted with caution. The substantial within-breed variation [meaning that not all individuals of a particular breed behave the same] in C-BARQ scores observed in this study suggests that it is inappropriate to make predictions about a given dog’s propensity for aggressive behavior based solely on its breed.”  Certainly this information should be used to help inform us in developing an individual behavioral profile. By noting the potential for breed differences, we can use individual behavioral assessments to assess the likelihood for an individual of a particular breed to behave in a particular way.

Unrealistic expectations about a pet are a big risk to the bond between animal and human. If we can better set up our adopters for success by acknowledging breed tendencies and also assessing the behavior of the individual dog they are choosing to bring into their lives, we can better set them up for success.

Have you had experience with dogs not behaving within their breed description? How have you handled the expectations of your adopters who are interested in adopting Sassy – the Labrador retriever who has no interest in retrieving? Please share your experiences.

When I read Bert Troughton’s blog this week, I remembered the first time I heard the term “kitten mountain season.” Or, rather, misheard it as “kitten mounting season.”

I was in a meeting last year with the ASPCA ProLearning department, where I’d recently transferred. I’d been writing about animals for the public since 1994, and was excited to learn about my new audience, the animal sheltering world. We were discussing the influx of kittens in some shelters during the summer months, and I imagined “kitten mounting season” as all these pregnant young cats (5, 6 months old, still technically covered by the term) giving birth to more tiny, screaming, hungry kitties, who turned into pregnant young kittens with more tiny, screaming, hungry kitties and…

Eventually, and thankfully, I saw the term typed out. But it got me thinking about jargon—specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group—and how important it is for communicators in any field to be clear and concise, and to never assume that your audience knows the meaning of “insider” terms.

So I randomly asked a friend if he knew what a puppy mill was.

He thought for awhile, answered with “a bad place where they sell dogs,” and asked me if that was right. It took me several tries to find words to elaborate, but he was definitely on the right track. I started out with “commercial breeding facility,” but just think about it—what kind of a mouthful is that? Now, this friend may not know in-depth details of animal welfare issues, but he does completely dote on his two cats. Maybe just like many potential adopters and supporters of shelters all across the country?

And consider these from the general public’s perspective:

Feral: Some friends asked me to spell/explain this word when it came up in recent conversation. Not that surprising, when I began to consider the many ways the term might be defined in the public’s mind… a stray? A threat to public safety? A former pet living on his own outside? A cat in a managed TNR colony? A Felis catus who’s lived his whole life in the wild?

Canine/Feline: Just “dog” and “cat” with some science-y street cred? I use these terms because they give you options for alliteration (i.e. feline frenzy!). But I know that folks don’t read, but scan text on websites…maybe “dog” and “cat” go down a lot smoother than I thought…no translation, albeit a quick one, needed? (You know what? The first, most common dictionary definition for “canine” is “a conical pointed tooth.”)

Companion animal: Per our circa-1994 style guide: We did not use the term “pet” as, for one, it was considered belittling. I love the idea of an animal being a companion. But it does take up a lot of space (especially online) and I worry that sometimes people trip over its meaning when reading. Is pet a “bad word” at your agency?

Veterinary medical terms: Sometimes there is no easy or accurate way to “dumb down” certain veterinary terms for lay people like myself. But there must have been something we could have done with this first (!) paragraph from a 1995 article on heartworm: Immature worm larvae, called microfilaria, are transmitted from one dog to another by mosquitoes. When a mosquito bite injects microfilaria into a dog’s body, these larvae migrate to the heart, lungs and adjacent blood vessels… I still have trouble assembling the cast of characters in those two sentences alone. Did people even read on to get to the part about why and how to protect your dog against heartworm?

Have you ever taken for granted that everyone knew the meaning of a word or phrase commonly used in our field? Are there some terms that we still can’t seem to agree on a definition of?

Please share—or I’ll feel really embarrassed all day about “kitten mounting season.”

Photo for lolcat courtesy of Sue Rabeaux

With the ASPCA $100K Challenge wrapping up its second week, we’re starting to see some strategizing going on. Programs rolled out, volunteers deployed, alliances made…lives saved! You can find out what our competitors are up to on the Save More Lives Community and check here each week for the post-game wrap-up.

When we said it was game on, we meant it…literally. Last week Maui Humane Society assembled a team of 10 dogs available for adoption and hightailed it over to Wailuku for Pet Night at the Na Koa Ikaika Maui baseball game. “The pups received cheers, kisses and lots of belly rubs from all in attendance,” reported the Puunene, HI, agency, “and 50 percent of the ticket sales that night were donated by the team to MHS!” We’ve got the play-by-play:

 

And over at the SPCA Serving Erie County, six of the Tonawanda, NY, shelter’s finest community ambassadors spent their afternoon at the Buffalo Bisons game talking up the kittens for adoption, answering questions, collecting donations and helping people take their spins on the Wheel of FURtune: Talk about putting on your game face! “We want our animals to look their best, and pet photography is tricky,” blogged Louisiana SPCA, “so for this Challenge, we brought in the big guns.” Three local professional photographers have donated their services to the New Orleans agency, and have been busy clicking away to capture the animals outside, inside, running, playing and just being themselves. Proof of their awwww-inspiring work:We’re also totally inspired by Stanwood, WA-based N.O.A.H. Animal Adoption & Spay/Neuter Center, who reports that their foster program, officially kicked off on May 1, is kicking major butt. “We had set a goal for ourselves of saving 900 animals in 1 year,” reported one of the program’s coordinators, “and I remember hearing that number and thinking, ‘That’s a lot of animals! I don’t know if we can do it.’ Here it is, only 3 ½ months later, and we are—at more than 430—almost halfway to that goal.” Score! And extra points go to the several foster families who take in 2-3 litters of kittens at a time!We wanna end this one with some more photos, courtesy of Richmond Animal Care & Control.

“Just check out the happy faces of recently adopted RACC cats and dogs,” they blogged. “We know…made you smile, too!”

You know this answer, right? Doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.

So it’s happened again. Another request on the Society for Animal Welfare Administrators (SAWA) listserv to the effect of “please help me avoid a(nother) board nightmare.” Sigh.

Time and again I’ve witnessed board shenanigans bring down animal welfare organizations – or keep them from progressing in the first place. Truthfully, I’m not an unbiased observer here. I’m jaded by having endured all manner of board challenges as an executive director – from my first board made up of rabid pet activists who thought nothing of keeping board meetings going until 11 P.M., to board members who clearly thought they knew more about the business and could do a better job of running the organization than I was doing. In fairness, I also had several board members over the years that I would gladly nominate for sainthood because of their diligence and extraordinary service. But honestly, the majority of board members I’ve experienced in my various roles in nonprofits over the last 30 years fall into the category of the silent majority. This works out okay when the “right” people are leading the board, and it’s disastrous when the “wrong” people take charge.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think board members are bad people – in fact, for the most part, I think they’re great people for dedicating their precious time and talent for seemingly little in return. I think it’s the construct that’s wrong. When you put people into flawed situations, you’re likely to end up with bad outcomes. (And based on the current economic crisis and deluge of stories about corporate irresponsibility, it seems it may not be just the nonprofit board model that’s flawed.)

So who thought this nonprofit board thing was a good idea in the first place? Peter Dobkin Hall has written a History of Nonprofit Boards, which you can download for free from Boardsource. Here’s a down-and-dirty nutshell: The U.S. nonprofit board model has its roots in the country’s very first corporation – the Massachusetts Bay Company (1628). The model was adjusted and expanded as our forefathers negotiated issues of governance of churches and educational institutions, beginning with Harvard. Then, after a century-plus of nonprofit board tumult that reads a little drier – but is no less rife with conflict and control issues – than Mutiny on the Bounty, Sir Francis Bacon wrote a seminal work on governance, accountability and “moral agency” that is still highly apparent in today’s nonprofit board structure.

Forgive me, but is it possible that in today’s post-industrial, multicultural, 40+ hour workweek, global economy, blended family, Web 2.0 nation – we might be in need of a model for nonprofits that’s a little more reflective of today’s realities than what a group of affluent white Christian men came up with hundreds of years ago? (And yes, I know a similar group of men dreamed up a pretty fine Constitution – but we did, at least, see fit to update that guiding structure with some major changes like emancipation and voting rights for women and people of color.)

I’ve been squawking about the nonprofit board being a flawed model for years. I searched the Internet again today for alternative ideas, but all I found was reference after reference of problems with boards and board members – and ways to try to avoid and/or fix these problems. Clearly there’s both acknowledgement and evidence that things can and often do go wrong in this model, but we keep trying to work within the model instead of coming up with something better. Sigh, again.

I don’t have any brilliant answers on this one (but if you do, please submit them!). All I have is three resources I really like that might help you (and your board) achieve some semblance of sanity in an insane situation:

Failing to Govern?: The Disconnect Between Theory and Reality in Nonprofit Boards, and How to Fix It – an interesting article that gets to some of the genesis of the problems we encounter with boards;

our own section on Board Development at ASPCApro.org, with detailed profiles of three high functioning animal welfare boards and how they do it; and

the aforementioned SAWA listserv: information, advice and support from your colleagues that’s well worth the price of admission!

Image 1 courtesy of Naamsvermelding Vereist
Image 2 by Robert Dodd: The mutineers turn Lt. Bligh and some of the officers and crew adrift from HMAV Bounty, April 28, 1789.

Did you know that the ASPCA Shelter R&D program has grant opportunities for innovative programs that have the potential to save animals’ lives? Watching the ASPCA $100K Challenge, it is easy to see that there is an incredible amount of talent and ingenuity out there – and we would like to conduct research around these programs, and support and promote those that we prove can save lives.

You may have read about some of the research we have conducted on programming – be it ID tagging, feral cats, or targeted S/N, as well as upcoming research. These projects all have one thing in common – each one is designed to save lives – and we are collecting the data to assure that they do what they were designed to do.

Are you getting ready to implement a change in your facility? Maybe you are looking to implement a new program around RTO, or have piloted a program around adoptions. Have you collected detailed baseline data around the area of risk? For example, if you are getting ready to implement a new RTO program, have you collected good data on stray intake? That should include age and breed, address where found, days in shelter before being found, as well as the obvious percentage of animals returned to owner. If so, you just may be the perfect fit for working with the Shelter R&D team.

ASPCA $100K Challenge contestants – we especially want to hear from you. What programming are you implementing to win the Challenge? If it works for you, we will be interested in testing the effectiveness in other facilities. Blog it, share it here – let us know!  

Think your shelter might be a fit for a grant? Email emilyw@aspca.org and let me know!