Animal Welfare Professionals

Good day all!

We are participating in Clear the Shelter Day for the first time this year. From my understanding it can be a big event-with lots of logistcal planning. Can anyone share any advice or logistic plans for this day. We want to make sure we have a solid plan to make sure all things run smoothly. Thank you!

Our organization tried to make it an all day event at our both locations for our shelter.  We provided games for kids, a face painter, a Kiss A Bull booth, drinks, snacks, door prizes and of course adoptions.  We opened extended hours, 10am-6pm, and had volunteers that could help our regular counselors with adoptions.  We made 'I've been adopted' signs so we could take pictures of adopters when they adopted for social media purposes and had several staff on hand to process adoptions. We had volunteers as greeters and in charge of the games as well.  Then, as the Event Coordinator, I would make sure the entire operation was running smoothly.  We also had 2 local businesses at each location sponsor all the adoption fees for our animals so they had good PR recognition and we didn't have to forfeit the adoption profits. We created a Facebook event, did local free advertising with our papers and radio sites and had a local radio station broadcast. Both of our shelters are not in great shape and not very large, but we were able to get 30 animals adopted between our 2 locations and raise donations at the same time.  My recommendation is to have a plan of what you want to accomplish and make sure you have enough staff & volunteers on hand and you should be able to have a successful day!

Tiffany pretty much covered what my local shelter does with this event -- her advice is excellent. We had to open up parts of the shelter that aren't generally used for meet and greets. We had a special adoption counseling training session for volunteers. Parking was an issue for us and staff had to park elsewhere. Staff came in 3 hours early to clean for our extended hours, and as animals were adopted they brought others forward from the back all day long. We worked out a system so that front desk people could tell immediately who was doing a meet and greet and who was free. The logistics part of it required thinking through exactly how it was going to work having hundreds of people coming through the shelter and dozens of adoptions happening in a short period of time. It all went really well and was exhausting but fun, and it's a great feeling to see those pets going out the door with their new families.

Thank you both for your comments! What system did you use to communicate with the front desk and the animal care team? 

We just used a paper system at the front desk, which worked because the hallway to our meet and greet areas was near the front desk. A phone app might work well for other layouts.

It's only one day, however, I ask for volunteer help with deep cleaning kennels once cats are adopted, so more can move to the adoption floor.  We usually have a good response for volunteer help.  I also recruit 1-2 volunteers to help my staff take care of the cats before we open for the event, to make sure everything is done on time. 

Meredith,

We've been doing CTS for the last 3 years or so and have extensive notes on the special procedures we employ for the day.  Writing them down makes it *so* much easier for the following years!  We also do a post mortem and add notes on what can be done better for the next year.  Specific day-of instructions are emailed ahead of time to the volunteers, as well as printed out and handed out at the event.  Since so many of the procedures are just done that one day, giving the volunteers the printed instructions reduces confusion and those "how do we do this" questions during the event.

Last year 578 people came through the doors on that day and we adopted out 42 animals.  We're a small shelter (~1,600 cats and dogs per year) with a very small parking lot, and limited showing areas.  We get creative about repurposing offices and other places into showing areas, have an offsite parking protocol, use walkie talkies to coordinate when showing areas are available, and a whole bunch of other stuff.   I'd be more than happy to share the files with you.  Not all of them will directly translate, but they'll get you thinking about all the operational details.  Send me an email at chris@thevbas.org and I'll get them to you.

Hey Meredith! I'll send you a message, but I wanted to post so others would know that I have several "prep guides" that I can share for anyone that needs a little guidance. I help NBC coordinate the event here in DFW and nationally when they need anything.

Awesome! Thank you. Feel free to email your documents at events@hsnaples.org I would love to look over them

I sent them through Maddie's to your inbox, and I'll send them to the email you gave. Let me know if I can be of any further help. It's an AWESOME event!