Animal Welfare Professionals

Hello everyone, Our volunteer coordinator is trying to find ideas to keep our volunteers engaged while they are "staying at home" due to the COVID-19 crisis. Is anyone working with their volunteers or communicating with them while we are in this pandemic? Thank you, Josie from City of San Antonio Animal Care Services
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Definitely following this.

I have been trying to keep our vols engaged through our volunteer closed facebook page by keeping them updated with adoption updates, photos and asking everyone to post pics of what they and their pets are doing during SIP order, funny memes, ect... Little things like that. It helps a little, I think. 

Our newest group of volunteers who started in January are still very engaged, and admittedly, they had been rocking it at the shelter prior to the pandemic. I don't hear as much from the long terms, but I have had a handful reach out periodically with suggestions on future fundraisers, which is great since we had to cancel one of our biggest events due to Covid-19. A few due comment on the closed group.

Not sure what else to do. Anyone else have additional ideas?

 

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We created a Zoom account and are able to continue volunteer meetings via Zoom. 

We 'hosted' a stay-at-home gala via Zoom a couple weeks ago that our volunteers ran (with me and our ED 'moderating' the audience). Volunteers ran different segments for the entertainment - we had a dance lesson segment, in-home scavenger hunt, kitten camera, tour of a volunteer's home brewery, and several more. We raffled off the naming rights for the kittens on the kitten camera; so the prizes for the games we did were an entry into that raffle. It was over 2 hours long and we wrapped up with drawing the names of the winners for the kitten raffle. 

We've been encouraging volunteers to submit fun social media post ideas - with bonus points if the idea includes a cute photo or something of their foster cat - and then participate in our social media posts to help up our engagement and grow our following during this weird time. 

We also have a blog so asking for blog ideas or even if anyone wants to write a blog post.

And a couple of our foster homes are elderly and less comfortable with email/Facebook/etc, so we have a couple volunteers who (enjoy phone calls haha) that will reach out to them via phone to check in (which they really appreciate as well). 

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Don't forget about ResQwalk! Your volunteers can earn miles on their own...walking, running, cycling...anything under 14 mph counts as do partial miles. Donations to your org based on total miles & funding available. (make sure your org is registered with the app first)

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We've been posting in our closed Facebook group as well! We've been doing a weekly LIVE segment from our cat area and from our dog area -- a puppy playgroup every Sunday at noon and filming a cat room or kitten room every Saturday at 12noon. Lots of our volunteers who don't feel comfortable coming in to the shelter have been tuning in; they love seeing the current animal population and also chatting with other volunteers in the comments. 

We've also moved some of our workshops remotely via Zoom -- teaching volunteers how to clicker train their resident cats and dogs and encouraging them to post videos on the volunteer Facebook page. 

We've also created a system where we send personal emails to volunteers who used to come in at least twice per month to check-in and see how they're doing. 

And, remote volunteer teams! Training volunteers to answer emails from home, to upload photos and alumni stories to the website, etc. 

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