I'm writing a book about prevention programs. I need your failures more than your wins.
Quick context. I'm wrapping up "The Shift to Prevention," a guide for the field on why upstream work has to become the standard, not the exception. That one's almost done.
The next project is bigger, and I can't write it alone.
I'm starting a book that catalogs prevention programs that have actually been tried in the field. Every kind. Pet food pantries. Pet deposit assistance. Behavior helplines. Vet care subsidies. Landlord mediation. Community cat programs. Crisis fostering. Owner-requested rehoming support. All of it.
For each program, I want three things. What you tried. What worked. What didn't.
The wins are useful. We'll learn from those. But the part the field actually needs, the part nobody publishes, is the failures. The pilot that ran out of money in month four. The partnership that fell apart. The intake form nobody filled out. The grant that funded the wrong piece. The evaluation framework that measured nothing useful. The well-designed program that died because one staff person left.
We don't share that stuff. We share the photos and the numbers that look good in the annual report. Which means every prevention program in this country is reinventing the same mistakes in private.
I want to change that.
If you've run a prevention program, in any capacity, at any scale, I want to hear from you. Successful, failed, half-built, abandoned, still running and limping.
Doesn't matter. The honest version is what I'm after.
You can comment here. You can message me. If you want to be quoted by name, great. If you want to share the story anonymously and have me describe it as "a shelter in the Southeast" or "a rescue in the Pacific Northwest," that's fine too. Your call.
Question for the group. What's one prevention program you tried that didn't work the way you thought it would? And looking back, what do you actually think went wrong?
The comments on this post might end up in a chapter. So write the version you'd want another shelter to read before they made the same mistake.
#AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms#CaseManagement*#CommunityCatManagement#CommunityPartnerships*#FosterPrograms#FundraisingandDevelopment#PetSupportServices*#Rehoming#ReturntoHome(LostPetReunification)------------------------------
BJ Adkins
Founder/Director
Animal-Angels Foundation
Pinson, AL
bjadkins@animal-angels.organimal-angelsfoundation.org
------------------------------