Given the current coronavirus pandemic and many shelters needing to resort to foster care to keep pets safe and healthy, we'll be sharing exclusive stories from the Foster Express Challenge on the Maddie's Fund Chew On This Blog and right here on Maddie's Pet Forum with several of the winning shelters in hopes to inspire your own foster program -- whether there are tactics you can try now or keep in your back pocket until after the shelter in place restrictions have been lifted.
Sand Springs Animal Welfare in Oklahoma won a $2,000 grant in the Maddie’s Foster Express Challenge in the “Number of Animals in Challenge” category for small shelters (1,500 or less in annual intake). They had 126 animals participate in our holiday fostering challenge.
Be sure to check out the Chew On This Blog post about their story and read on below to learn more about the tactics used and the animals that found homes as a result of the challenge!
Promoting the Challenge
Although Sand Springs Animal Welfare didn't offer short term fostering before the challenge, they used their existing social media channels to promote the challenge in hopes of finding fosters to spend quality time with the pets.
They also used their Sand Springs Animal Welfare Support Group on Facebook to coordinate available pets to foster with their existing volunteers and encouraged all of their fosters to take pictures and videos of the pets while they were out to help market the animals to potential adopters.
By encouraging their fosters to take pictures and videos, they ended up with some helpful marketing materials that show adoptable animals enjoying playtime and sunshine outside of the shelter cages.
Surprising Results
The initial hesitations the team had around not finding enough fosters or sending un-altered animals out didn't end up being a problem. Tracy Arvidson of Sand Springs Animal Welfare said, "Everything went pretty smooth. We had 2 seasoned volunteers help field questions/issues with the new fosters. We had more interest than we thought and did not have any escapes, so no issues with the non-sterilized. A few didn’t work with the home situations, but that is to be expected. We had the fosters send pics and videos to show potential adopters."
New Home for Mocha
Mocha is a sweet black cat that came to the shelter with 7 newborn kittens. She was very unhealthy and the kittens did not survive. Mocha sat in a cage for 3 months. She was selected for the short term foster challenge and flourished in foster care. Her foster mom fell in love with her and adopted Mocha!!
Advice on Short-Term Fostering
"It’s a GREAT program and should be implemented by everyone that can. The animals did SO much better out of the shelter and we got to learn a lot about them from their foster parents."
Have questions or comments for Sand Springs Animal Welfare? Leave a reply below!
Like Sand Springs Animal Welfare's Page on Facebook
Visit the Sand Springs Animal Shelter Support Group on Facebook
Sand Springs Animal Welfare Webpage
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