Animal Welfare Professionals

We are just expanding to 2 foster coordinators with the goal of having 400 foster families and the facts that we are overcapacity at the shelter and trying to buy our time until our new building is built.  They are definitely NOT expected to foster animals that don't find placement as that would be ridiculous and way too much pressure - they have enough in this role already from the demands of the fosters themselves.  We have had the same foster coordinator for over 13 years now.  Our foster coordinator has a cell phone but is not expected to answer calls after hours.  If a foster has a true emergency call after hours, they contact our dispatch line and our ACOs triage with help from our on-call veterinarian.  The foster coordinator handles all species since it ebbs and flows as to what animals are in need of foster placement.  Our foster coordinator promotes animals for foster thru our closed Facebook Foster Group as well as by email / phone to specific fosters for specific animals (i.e. Foster X does post-op recovery only).  Hope this helps! 

Thank you for your response! When you say 400 foster families, are those all active with animals in the home or just trained fosters waiting on standby? We handle less than 600 animals in foster each year, we're trying to gauge the capacity of the single foster coordinator. 

We are just expanding to 2 foster coordinators with the goal of having 400 foster families and the facts that we are overcapacity at the shelter and trying to buy our time until our new building is built.  They are definitely NOT expected to foster animals that don't find placement as that would be ridiculous and way too much pressure - they have enough in this role already from the demands of the fosters themselves.  We have had the same foster coordinator for over 13 years now.  Our foster coordinator has a cell phone but is not expected to answer calls after hours.  If a foster has a true emergency call after hours, they contact our dispatch line and our ACOs triage with help from our on-call veterinarian.  The foster coordinator handles all species since it ebbs and flows as to what animals are in need of foster placement.  Our foster coordinator promotes animals for foster thru our closed Facebook Foster Group as well as by email / phone to specific fosters for specific animals (i.e. Foster X does post-op recovery only).  Hope this helps! 

Our goal is to 400 active homes and grow the number of animals we have in foster.  For reference, with the one Foster Coordinator, we have on average 1500 animals a year that go through our foster program and about 220 foster homes.  

Thank you for your response! When you say 400 foster families, are those all active with animals in the home or just trained fosters waiting on standby? We handle less than 600 animals in foster each year, we're trying to gauge the capacity of the single foster coordinator. 

We are just expanding to 2 foster coordinators with the goal of having 400 foster families and the facts that we are overcapacity at the shelter and trying to buy our time until our new building is built.  They are definitely NOT expected to foster animals that don't find placement as that would be ridiculous and way too much pressure - they have enough in this role already from the demands of the fosters themselves.  We have had the same foster coordinator for over 13 years now.  Our foster coordinator has a cell phone but is not expected to answer calls after hours.  If a foster has a true emergency call after hours, they contact our dispatch line and our ACOs triage with help from our on-call veterinarian.  The foster coordinator handles all species since it ebbs and flows as to what animals are in need of foster placement.  Our foster coordinator promotes animals for foster thru our closed Facebook Foster Group as well as by email / phone to specific fosters for specific animals (i.e. Foster X does post-op recovery only).  Hope this helps!