Animal Welfare Professionals

Thank you to Maddie's Fund for the platform and the thoughtful framing of this conversation. Sheila and Alison have made every step of the lead-up easy.

A note for anyone thinking about whether to register: this will not be a polished keynote about prevention as a concept. It will be a working conversation with real cases on the table. A woman hospitalized after hip surgery whose dog was about to be given away. A family who needed pet food at 3 a.m. and got it delivered by 10. A seventeen-dog managed rehoming operation that ran through the partner network instead of overwhelming a single rescue. The math behind each of those interventions. What worked. What did not. What is replicable.

If you have ever wondered what prevention actually looks like at the operational level, this hour is for you. Bring your questions. The Q&A is where the conversation gets most useful.

Register: https://maddies.fund/CommunityConversationsRegistration2025

Thank you for such an informative webinar BJ! We got lots of applause and hearts about your amazing work! 

Thank you to Maddie's Fund for the platform and the thoughtful framing of this conversation. Sheila and Alison have made every step of the lead-up easy.

A note for anyone thinking about whether to register: this will not be a polished keynote about prevention as a concept. It will be a working conversation with real cases on the table. A woman hospitalized after hip surgery whose dog was about to be given away. A family who needed pet food at 3 a.m. and got it delivered by 10. A seventeen-dog managed rehoming operation that ran through the partner network instead of overwhelming a single rescue. The math behind each of those interventions. What worked. What did not. What is replicable.

If you have ever wondered what prevention actually looks like at the operational level, this hour is for you. Bring your questions. The Q&A is where the conversation gets most useful.

Register: https://maddies.fund/CommunityConversationsRegistration2025

Thank you Sara and Maddie's for allowing me to share The Shift to Prevention and I look forward to hearing about everyone's programs they are running and to possibly sharing notes to add to the effectiveness of those programs. 

Thank you for such an informative webinar BJ! We got lots of applause and hearts about your amazing work! 

Thank you to Maddie's Fund for the platform and the thoughtful framing of this conversation. Sheila and Alison have made every step of the lead-up easy.

A note for anyone thinking about whether to register: this will not be a polished keynote about prevention as a concept. It will be a working conversation with real cases on the table. A woman hospitalized after hip surgery whose dog was about to be given away. A family who needed pet food at 3 a.m. and got it delivered by 10. A seventeen-dog managed rehoming operation that ran through the partner network instead of overwhelming a single rescue. The math behind each of those interventions. What worked. What did not. What is replicable.

If you have ever wondered what prevention actually looks like at the operational level, this hour is for you. Bring your questions. The Q&A is where the conversation gets most useful.

Register: https://maddies.fund/CommunityConversationsRegistration2025

Thanks to the 134+ people who attended today's meeting!  Dr. Pizano and BJ Adkins are working on the unanswered questions from the meeting and will post their thoughts as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, if you missed it or want to watch it again, here's the recording:

I really appreciated the point that most surrenders begin long before a family contacts a shelter or rescue. So many people are not giving up their pets because they do not care, but because they feel like they have run out of options or support. I also thought the discussion around fragmented systems was important. In rescue work, it can sometimes feel like organizations are all trying to solve the same problems separately rather than working together in a coordinated way.

One point that especially stood out to me was the importance of evaluating intake data to better understand the "why" behind owner surrenders and shelter admissions. Looking at patterns in the data can help organizations build programs around actual community needs rather than assumptions. It also creates opportunities to partner with other organizations already addressing similar challenges, allowing resources and services to be shared more effectively instead of duplicated.

The idea of creating a shared support network between rescues, shelters, veterinarians, landlords, and community organizations really reinforced how prevention work can become more proactive, measurable, and sustainable when groups collaborate toward a common goal.

Thanks to the 134+ people who attended today's meeting!  Dr. Pizano and BJ Adkins are working on the unanswered questions from the meeting and will post their thoughts as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, if you missed it or want to watch it again, here's the recording:

Here's mine and Sara's answers to some of the Maddie's Fund community conversations. The Q&A from the Shift to Prevention community conversation on June 1st. 

Maddie's Fund Community Conversations - Q&A

Unanswered audience questions from the June 1, 2026 webinar. Drafted by BJ Adkins, reviewed by Sara Pizano, no additions.

Q1. How do you track Pet Help Desk requests and follow up?

Every inbound call hits our toll-free or local line and is triaged by an AI assistant that captures the caller's name, county, reason for the call, and phone number. The system writes a structured summary that lands in front of a human before the call ends. We log every call as a CallIntake record in the AWRN and route to the right AAF program or partner. Calls resolved at triage close immediately. Unresolved calls get follow-ups scheduled and stay on the docket until the family confirms the resource landed or the case otherwise closes. Adoption Boost specifically runs the full 7, 30, 60, and 90 day follow-up cascade, because post-placement retention is where that timing pays off. All other follow-ups are calibrated to the case.

Q2. Is it possible to do a demonstration?

Yes. We run public AWRN demonstrations and can schedule one-on-one walkthroughs anytime. Book at calendly.com/animal-angels. The platform is operating today with real cases across Central Alabama and our first out-of-state partner in Colorado. Demo includes the call intake flow, partner routing, and follow-up cascade.

Q3. Connections to Hawaii, Big Island, NPO cat sanctuaries?

No direct connections in Hawaii yet, but the AWRN is built to add partners from any state. If you are working with a cat sanctuary on the Big Island, we can set up a partner conversation through Calendly. We also work closely with Stacy LeBaron at Community Cats Central, whose network spans the country. Happy to make a warm introduction if helpful.

Q4. How do we include a resource map from Michigan?

The AWRN supports multi-state resources. Partners can import their existing resource maps via CSV upload or API connection. Once your organization is in the network, your Michigan resources become searchable alongside ours, your callers stay in your routing, and we are not replacing what you already built. We are connecting it to a shared system. Reach out and we will walk through the integration.

Q5. How do we include orgs from other states?

The AWRN is national infrastructure. Our direct service area is seven counties in Central Alabama, but the platform is open to partners from any state. Peaceful Coexistence in Sterling, Colorado was our first out-of-state partner and is actively using the AWRN today. Onboarding path: NDA, MOU, kickoff Zoom walkthrough. Free for in-kind service partners. Calendly at calendly.com/animal-angels.

Q6. Does the county say "we can cut animal control budget" when prevention works?

That risk is real if the framing is wrong. Prevention reduces preventable intake. It does not eliminate the need for animal control. Bite cases, dangerous animals, hoarding, abuse, and cruelty investigations still need municipal response. What prevention does is reduce the share of intake that should never have been intake. The pitch to commissioners has to be specific: "Your animal control budget redirects from absorbing preventable cases to handling the cases that actually require enforcement." That framing protects the agency while making prevention possible.

Q7. Tech background and what about people without it?

My background is operations and technology, which is how AAF was able to build the AWRN from the ground up. The whole point of the platform is that smaller organizations do not have to build their own. Partner organizations get the tech without the development cost. We carry the infrastructure load so you can focus on the work you actually do. That is the network model. We do not compete. We connect.

Q8. Impact calculator addressing prevention invisibility?

This is the right question. Traditional impact metrics count intake. Successful prevention shows up as lower intake, which looks like nothing happened. The AAF Impact Calculator inverts that. It counts prevented intakes based on program activity, assigns a dollar value to each prevented intake using the $400 to $1,000 range your county actually spends per shelter intake, and surfaces the taxpayer savings alongside the family retention rates. We make the invisible visible by measuring what did not happen, with the cost framework to back it up. Calculator available at calc.animal-angelsfoundation.org.

Here's mine and Sara's answers to some of the Maddie's Fund community conversations. The Q&A from the Shift to Prevention community conversation on June 1st. 

Maddie's Fund Community Conversations - Q&A

Unanswered audience questions from the June 1, 2026 webinar. Drafted by BJ Adkins, reviewed by Sara Pizano, no additions.

Q1. How do you track Pet Help Desk requests and follow up?

Every inbound call hits our toll-free or local line and is triaged by an AI assistant that captures the caller's name, county, reason for the call, and phone number. The system writes a structured summary that lands in front of a human before the call ends. We log every call as a CallIntake record in the AWRN and route to the right AAF program or partner. Calls resolved at triage close immediately. Unresolved calls get follow-ups scheduled and stay on the docket until the family confirms the resource landed or the case otherwise closes. Adoption Boost specifically runs the full 7, 30, 60, and 90 day follow-up cascade, because post-placement retention is where that timing pays off. All other follow-ups are calibrated to the case.

Q2. Is it possible to do a demonstration?

Yes. We run public AWRN demonstrations and can schedule one-on-one walkthroughs anytime. Book at calendly.com/animal-angels. The platform is operating today with real cases across Central Alabama and our first out-of-state partner in Colorado. Demo includes the call intake flow, partner routing, and follow-up cascade.

Q3. Connections to Hawaii, Big Island, NPO cat sanctuaries?

No direct connections in Hawaii yet, but the AWRN is built to add partners from any state. If you are working with a cat sanctuary on the Big Island, we can set up a partner conversation through Calendly. We also work closely with Stacy LeBaron at Community Cats Central, whose network spans the country. Happy to make a warm introduction if helpful.

Q4. How do we include a resource map from Michigan?

The AWRN supports multi-state resources. Partners can import their existing resource maps via CSV upload or API connection. Once your organization is in the network, your Michigan resources become searchable alongside ours, your callers stay in your routing, and we are not replacing what you already built. We are connecting it to a shared system. Reach out and we will walk through the integration.

Q5. How do we include orgs from other states?

The AWRN is national infrastructure. Our direct service area is seven counties in Central Alabama, but the platform is open to partners from any state. Peaceful Coexistence in Sterling, Colorado was our first out-of-state partner and is actively using the AWRN today. Onboarding path: NDA, MOU, kickoff Zoom walkthrough. Free for in-kind service partners. Calendly at calendly.com/animal-angels.

Q6. Does the county say "we can cut animal control budget" when prevention works?

That risk is real if the framing is wrong. Prevention reduces preventable intake. It does not eliminate the need for animal control. Bite cases, dangerous animals, hoarding, abuse, and cruelty investigations still need municipal response. What prevention does is reduce the share of intake that should never have been intake. The pitch to commissioners has to be specific: "Your animal control budget redirects from absorbing preventable cases to handling the cases that actually require enforcement." That framing protects the agency while making prevention possible.

Q7. Tech background and what about people without it?

My background is operations and technology, which is how AAF was able to build the AWRN from the ground up. The whole point of the platform is that smaller organizations do not have to build their own. Partner organizations get the tech without the development cost. We carry the infrastructure load so you can focus on the work you actually do. That is the network model. We do not compete. We connect.

Q8. Impact calculator addressing prevention invisibility?

This is the right question. Traditional impact metrics count intake. Successful prevention shows up as lower intake, which looks like nothing happened. The AAF Impact Calculator inverts that. It counts prevented intakes based on program activity, assigns a dollar value to each prevented intake using the $400 to $1,000 range your county actually spends per shelter intake, and surfaces the taxpayer savings alongside the family retention rates. We make the invisible visible by measuring what did not happen, with the cost framework to back it up. Calculator available at calc.animal-angelsfoundation.org.