Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi all! I hope everyone is thriving this "kitten season"! I am the foster assistant with Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood, Oregon. We are researching how other rescues and shelters let people know what foster animals need placement. We are currently using a google sheet that we add the information to for each cat and while it works it can be confusing to some fosters. Does anyone have a program or way they place fosters that you really like? It would also be helpful if you know if you pay for it or if it is a free service!

Thanks so much!

#FosterPrograms

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Samantha Flint
Foster Assistant/Admissions Associate
Cat Adoption Team
OR
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Hi! I think it really depends on the size of your organization, the number of animals you're trying to send out to foster, and how frequently the list of animals needing fosters updates.

A couple of things I've seen organizations do include sending out (almost daily) mass emails with specific animals in the most urgent need of foster parents. Another popular method among rescues is using private Facebook or WhatsApp groups, where they create individual posts for animals that need fosters.

I think the biggest struggle with Google Sheets is that if it's constantly being updated, fosters have to go out of their way to check it rather than receiving a direct notification.

Overall, it really depends on the size of the organization, but I personally really like the email method! Hope this helps.

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Abigail Batic
Vice President
The Milk Drunk Foundation
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Hi Samantha!

I'm sooo excited to see this question come up because this is exactly why i built Pawsitive Foster, so you'll have to pardon my over-excitement here. 😅

The short version- I built a foster coordination platform after shadowing a coordinator at a high-intake shelter. Communication and coordination was so painful! What you're describing, Google Sheets that fosters have to hunt through, manual email notifications, literally no automations bc these systems don't talk to each other is the problem I set out to solve. Plus I incorporated all of the fragmented tools that belong in one place, including booking appointments, care updates, weight tracking, and program impact reporting. 

Foster volunteers get instant push notifications for urgent pleas, they see animals needing placement w/care needs, and they submit interest. Coordinators see responses in one place instead of scattered emails/texts, approve the best fit, and get ready for the pickup. Here's what it looks like: https://www.pawsitivefoster.com/demo. (That is a video from last year when we launched, meaning there's a whole bunch of new features we've added since, incl. 24/7 foster support).

Feel free to reach out anytime. This space is incredibly dear to me so I hope to always be a resource for the community. 🫶

Lissette
Founder, Pawsitive Foster
pawsitivefoster.com

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Lissette Arias
Founder & Foster
Pawsitive Foster
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We are a small cat rescue and take advantage of the Google Workspace for Non-Profits.  We created chats, and will put our request in there. The chat is foster parent specific, so it doesn't interfere with the other volunteers who don't foster (and aren't interested in fostering.)

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Candy Sullivan
Founder/Executive Director
Candy's Cats, Inc.
Orange County, Florida
www.candyscats.org
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Hi Samantha,

We use Trello Boards, with one for dogs/puppies and one for cats/kittens. For a frame of reference, our annual intake is approximately 1,700. Each animal has a photo/photos and as much information as possible. The link can be shared via an email, and I have the app on my phone for quick reference. This has worked better for us than anything else we've tried. There is no fee for our level of us. We have two Boards and can have up to ten before there would be a fee.

It's great that you are looking for options to streamline your foster communications!

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Tasha Haug
Homeward Animal Shelter
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