Animal Welfare Professionals

I'm part of a 2 tech team that runs our shelter's neonatal program. We don't get a lot of bottle baby fosters. I did a training for fosters at another area shelter today. There was a great turn out. I talked a bit with their foster supervisor about their recruiting methods. She said they do a lot of posts in neighborhood FB pages. We have a huge foster program at our shelter, just not a lot of people for nursery. Does anyone have other suggestions for getting people excited and engaged with taking on bottle babies? Our nursery does kittens and puppies. We're a temporary stop, most of our tiny ones are transferred to a partner organization. If we had more fosters for these groups we would be able to keep more in our program. Any suggestions would be very much welcomed! TIA! 😺🐶

#FosterPrograms

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erin coleman
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Hi Erin, I'm Laurel, the cat welfare supervisor at the Nebraska Humane Society. I know that our foster program is in close communication with our veterinarians and the honest communication with them helps. We also just last weekend had what we call a kitten shower where people in the community came into the shelter last saturday and there were activities all day. Our current fosters brought in some kittens that people were able to visit, there was face painting and kitten yoga, kitten paintings, booths showing off our volunteer and foster programs, and we gave tours of our nursery area where we got to talk about how many kittens we get in each year, how fostering kittens works, and answer questions that the public had. Just from that short tour alone I know we got at least one more household to sign up to be kitten fosters! I think doing even a smaller scale version of that would be great for your shelter, or even just a series of facebook posts on your shelter's page talking about the foster program, maybe a take over tuesday kind of thing where you follow around one of your current kitten fosters. That would give the public a better idea of what your asking them to do and kind of stir up excitement for the program. For us we also only require fosters to foster one animal each year to remain on our foster roster, I don't know what your program is like but I would suggest saying they can try out fostering for one litter or one kitten and see how they like it, that might take the ease off of it for some people.

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Laurel Nelson
Cat Welfare Supervisor
Nebraska Humane Society
NE
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Hi Erin,

Glad you got me thinking about this! Here are some ideas:

• Make sure your fosters and supporters understand why neonatal kittens are particularly in need of foster-- it's a critical time for them to be socialized with humans, their immune systems haven't fully developed yet, etc. This can help motivate them to try it.
• Have a "growth mindset" and offer training and resources so fosters can continually develop their skills. Here are some resources you can point them toward:
  • Taking the fear out of bottle feeding and basic kitten care (MU course)
  • Flash classes (short videos on different foster-related topics
  • You can find a ton of neonatal-related templates & resources in our MPF Resource Library
• When you create pleas for bottle baby fosters, it helps if you show the actual kittens who need foster right now (general asks tend to not work quite as well)
• Target some of your recruitment efforts to people who already have some of the skills they'll need, like nearby vet clinics and medical facilities
• Offer fosters shorter time periods to foster, like they do in the Kitten College program. This way, neonatal fosters pass on their kittens to another foster once they're weaned and can take more or take a break. Check out this video about the program.
• Talk about fostering all the time in your communications and watch it become the norm in your community
• If any neonatal fosters have adoptable pets right now, market the heck out of them so they get adopted and that home is open for more neonatals 
• And just some general recruitment resources:
  
  • Does your animal organization need more foster caregivers? These 6 questions can help (blog)
  • How to place more pets in foster homes (MU course)
  • What market research tells us about recruiting foster caregivers (blog)

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Kelly Duer
Senior Community Solutions Specialist
Maddie's Fund
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