Animal Welfare Professionals

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

Do you have documentation on foster's responsibilities? If not, that's the first order of business, plus how you'll hold them accountable. If you do already, and fosters are not meeting the obligations they agreed to, I think you have every right to reach out with an ultimatum and offer them some options. Indicate where they are falling short and what they can do by what date to stay a foster. If they still fail to follow through with no good reason communicated, it might be time to terminate their status. Offer them the option to adopt the pet or surrender it back to you for another foster placement. Even though this is hard, remember to come at it from the lens of what is best for the animals. You can fall back on your organization's strategic plan and goals, and especially your point about not becoming a sanctuary. 

You might also want to examine if there are any barriers in your system for them to follow through on these responsibilities. If they do not own a camera or cellphone or aren't comfortable writing, do you offer assistance? Can you provide a Zoom webinar, training or even tip sheet on how to take good photos with do's and don'ts, and what you're looking for in bios? Would you be able to send a staff member to their home with their permission to do this for them? 

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

Do you have documentation on foster's responsibilities? If not, that's the first order of business, plus how you'll hold them accountable. If you do already, and fosters are not meeting the obligations they agreed to, I think you have every right to reach out with an ultimatum and offer them some options. Indicate where they are falling short and what they can do by what date to stay a foster. If they still fail to follow through with no good reason communicated, it might be time to terminate their status. Offer them the option to adopt the pet or surrender it back to you for another foster placement. Even though this is hard, remember to come at it from the lens of what is best for the animals. You can fall back on your organization's strategic plan and goals, and especially your point about not becoming a sanctuary. 

You might also want to examine if there are any barriers in your system for them to follow through on these responsibilities. If they do not own a camera or cellphone or aren't comfortable writing, do you offer assistance? Can you provide a Zoom webinar, training or even tip sheet on how to take good photos with do's and don'ts, and what you're looking for in bios? Would you be able to send a staff member to their home with their permission to do this for them? 

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

We have had to change our Foster contract. Unless they are designated "long term" fosters, generally for health reasons, they can only foster for 3 months. We were having issues with puppies growing up in foster care and being harder to adopt as everyone wants to foster a puppy (why I have no earthly idea!) but they never bring them out (after they've been vaccinated and can come out to events).  We've had be get pretty strict about it.

------------------------------
Casey Parker
Board Member
Humane Society of Southern Illinois

Original Message:
Sent: 08-26-2023 02:21 PM
From: Carol Brendler
Subject: Fosters Who Fail to Market Pets-What are the consequences?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

Thanks-.that sounds like a nice, firm policy that plainly sets up the expectations. When the three months is up, where do those puppies go? If you have a physical building, it's obvious, but we're home-based so what happens then?

We have had to change our Foster contract. Unless they are designated "long term" fosters, generally for health reasons, they can only foster for 3 months. We were having issues with puppies growing up in foster care and being harder to adopt as everyone wants to foster a puppy (why I have no earthly idea!) but they never bring them out (after they've been vaccinated and can come out to events).  We've had be get pretty strict about it.

------------------------------
Casey Parker
Board Member
Humane Society of Southern Illinois

Original Message:
Sent: 08-26-2023 02:21 PM
From: Carol Brendler
Subject: Fosters Who Fail to Market Pets-What are the consequences?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

My background is foster based, all volunteer animal rescue. Some fosters are willing/able to do more than others. It's tricky since they are volunteers. Kind of hate to fire one for inadequate marketing efforts. I was generally desperate for fosters and willing to tolerate individual idiosyncrasies. If one foster was good at photography, they helped by taking photos for others. If a foster didn't want to attend adoption events, another foster would transport that animal to/from the event. If someone kept a foster pet too long, pet was moved. Naturally, if someone had ringworm or other medical issues in their home, we followed them vets guidelines for fostering. I think we built a good community of fosters who stayed with us.

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

#FosterPrograms
#MarketingandSocialMedia
#PeopleManagement(includingVolunteerIntegration)

------------------------------
Carol B.
Foster Volunteer/Grants Coordinator
Michigan
------------------------------

I would actually suggest re-thinking it.  Your risk is that you will "rule enforce" your fosters out of your program and then find yourself without fosters.

Most fosters take crappy photos anyway.  Many of them can't write good bios either.  So stop expecting them to do everything.

We're foster-based too, with just a small core of long-term folks who keep things running.  I write the bios.  Our director of ops used to be a professional photographer, so she gets the photos (and cringes at some of the photos fosters send us).    I send the draft bio to the foster and text them to get them to look at it.  I say something like "I'm posting this tomorrow -- anything need to be changed or have anything to add?"    We also sometimes post "coming soon" with a photo if I'm behind on writing the bio.

I have a format that I like that makes it very efficient: first paragraph is M/F, age, and ONE main personality trait.  Second paragraph is more positive personality traits and cute quirks.  Third paragraph is any negatives to the animal (challenges to overcome).   Easy, peasy.

You just need ONE really good volunteer who can't foster but who wants to help who can be the bio-writer -- if you can find someone who writes with flare, then you'll have a distinctive voice for "your" rescue.  You'll get WAY better bios this way than pawning it off on fosters who have no idea what to say. 

The same goes for pictures.  If you have a photo volunteer who can visit the foster home on a weekend, or get some candid shots at an adoption event, with a high-quality camera and who can go home and edit the photos to make them pop, then you'll have fantastic pics to go with your snappy bios.

I stopped letting fosters write bios years ago.  I ask them to text me some bullet points.  They can text me fave pics too, but they're often dark, far away and with bad angles.  When we have great bios and great photos, we get tons of applications so....it's too important to trust to people who don't know how to do them well. 

If you happen to have a foster home that's great at making videos for social media for their foster animals, encourage it!  But don't expect everyone to do it.  Play to people's strengths -- if it's rehabilitating difficult animals, providing really great care, etc. that's enough.  Someone else who can't do that can be strong with the other stuff.

------------------------------
Maggie Thomas
President
Red Stick German Shepherd Rescue

Original Message:
Sent: 08-26-2023 02:21 PM
From: Carol Brendler
Subject: Fosters Who Fail to Market Pets-What are the consequences?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

#FosterPrograms
#MarketingandSocialMedia
#PeopleManagement(includingVolunteerIntegration)

------------------------------
Carol B.
Foster Volunteer/Grants Coordinator
Michigan
------------------------------

I would actually suggest re-thinking it.  Your risk is that you will "rule enforce" your fosters out of your program and then find yourself without fosters.

Most fosters take crappy photos anyway.  Many of them can't write good bios either.  So stop expecting them to do everything.

We're foster-based too, with just a small core of long-term folks who keep things running.  I write the bios.  Our director of ops used to be a professional photographer, so she gets the photos (and cringes at some of the photos fosters send us).    I send the draft bio to the foster and text them to get them to look at it.  I say something like "I'm posting this tomorrow -- anything need to be changed or have anything to add?"    We also sometimes post "coming soon" with a photo if I'm behind on writing the bio.

I have a format that I like that makes it very efficient: first paragraph is M/F, age, and ONE main personality trait.  Second paragraph is more positive personality traits and cute quirks.  Third paragraph is any negatives to the animal (challenges to overcome).   Easy, peasy.

You just need ONE really good volunteer who can't foster but who wants to help who can be the bio-writer -- if you can find someone who writes with flare, then you'll have a distinctive voice for "your" rescue.  You'll get WAY better bios this way than pawning it off on fosters who have no idea what to say. 

The same goes for pictures.  If you have a photo volunteer who can visit the foster home on a weekend, or get some candid shots at an adoption event, with a high-quality camera and who can go home and edit the photos to make them pop, then you'll have fantastic pics to go with your snappy bios.

I stopped letting fosters write bios years ago.  I ask them to text me some bullet points.  They can text me fave pics too, but they're often dark, far away and with bad angles.  When we have great bios and great photos, we get tons of applications so....it's too important to trust to people who don't know how to do them well. 

If you happen to have a foster home that's great at making videos for social media for their foster animals, encourage it!  But don't expect everyone to do it.  Play to people's strengths -- if it's rehabilitating difficult animals, providing really great care, etc. that's enough.  Someone else who can't do that can be strong with the other stuff.

------------------------------
Maggie Thomas
President
Red Stick German Shepherd Rescue

Original Message:
Sent: 08-26-2023 02:21 PM
From: Carol Brendler
Subject: Fosters Who Fail to Market Pets-What are the consequences?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

#FosterPrograms
#MarketingandSocialMedia
#PeopleManagement(includingVolunteerIntegration)

------------------------------
Carol B.
Foster Volunteer/Grants Coordinator
Michigan
------------------------------

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?

There's plenty out there about communicating an organization's expectations for fosters. What we are having trouble with is getting them to do their required marketing tasks. New fosters are expected to come to adoption events (we are a home-based rescue, all-volunteer, serving cats and some dogs), provide bios and up-to-date photos for social media, etc. Lots of our fosters do great with this, but I've been with this group for two years and there are fostered cats that I've never seen at an event or seen a single new photo of. These fosters provide one or two blurry photos for social media and petfinder (if any) at the onset, and bios are never updated. Every week, our director reminds them to get the cats to Petsmart, update photos, rewrite bios, etc. but to no avail. I have offered over and over again to write new bios for these cats and there are several of us who've offered to get new photos-just name the time and place. We've asked them again and again how we can help them, and explained that we cannot become a sanctuary, etc. 🦗🦗🦗🦗 crickets…

So my question, which I've never seen addressed directly, is what do you do next? What is the process to remove this rescuing bottleneck?

• Continue to beg and plead until either the foster passes away, the animal passes, or the organization goes belly up?
• Insist that they adopt the pet themselves? (I suspect this isn't going to work.)
• Offer them an expensive gift in trade? (You might actually come out ahead financially here if someone else gets the pet adopted and off the books, so to speak.)
• Remove the pet from the current foster home (possibly under cover of darkness) and give the animal to a foster who will market it? How does that actually take place? It sounds like a very uncomfortable and delicate conversation to bring up.

I would very much like to read specific examples of how this is handled by groups who don't have a physical location to return hard-to-adopt animals whose foster home are delinquent. It's an ugly, negative topic and I suspect that's why you never read about specific consequences applied to foster who don't meet their obligations in marketing the animals.

I've gone on too long. Any help, rescues?