Animal Welfare Professionals

I am wanting to get a sense of how often shelters and rescues update their lists of foster volunteers.  In most cases there are many fosters but far fewer active ones.  Do you remove inactive fosters from your lists of foster volunteers and with what frequency?  Thanks very much!

#FosterPrograms

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LAURA REESE
President
Professional Animal Welfare Services
SC
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We have been open just a little over 2 years. Recently I went through our foster list and contacted some who had applied to be foster homes but were inactive. I asked if they were still interested in fostering and if so, added the option for them to choose overnight/weekend/short term/long term. I had a few who declined entirely, but was able to revive some who just  needed the option to foster for a different length of time or a certain breed/size/situation.  
This is the first time the list has been gone through, but my goal is to update at least every 6 months.

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Devon Avery
Head Volunteer
Hart County Animal Shelter
KY
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We send out an annual email to all fosters with the opportunity to "update their preferences" - so they can add or remove who they are willing to foster (for cats, it could be orphaned kittens, moms with litters, medical cases, small litters (1-4) or large litters (4-7), etc) and include the option to remove yourself from our foster list.

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Erin Dams
Community Relations Coordinator
Roanoke Valley SPCA
Roanoke VA
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This message was posted by a user wishing to remain anonymous

If you remove inactive fosters, try to keep them engaged in other ways. Twice, before I got involved in rescue, I was an active foster who became inactive mostly because my dog had issues with the fosters. In one case, I was asked if I wanted to remain on the list. In the other case, I was unaware that I had been removed from both the list and the volunteer web page.  By being removed, I couldn't respond to emergency pleas for assistance (including food, blankets, beds, money..). I stopped donating to them. 

We are very similar to other responses. We email annually during our slower time to check-in to see if they are still available to be on our foster contact list and to update their preferences and contact information. Once they are an established volunteer, they may forget to update their address if they have moved, we want our fosters to be within a certain range from the shelter in case their foster animal needs emergent care.  

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Wendy Arnold
Animal Programs Manager
Humane Society of Central Oregon
OR
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We send an email in January to all of the fosters that haven't taken in any animals the previous year to see if they want to stay on the list and maybe find out why they haven't taken anything in. It really doesn't do any good to have a large foster base if only a handful of them actually foster, so we check once in January if they want to continue or not. We also email twice a year for updated vet records for their personal pets as we require those. Sometimes a foster will let us know then if they want to continue fostering or not. 

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Erin Robinson
Foster Coordinator
Licking County Humane Society
OH
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Thanks so much to everyone for the responses.  This is very helpful!

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LAURA REESE
President
Professional Animal Welfare Services
SC
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