Animal Welfare Professionals

Good morning everyone! I am the lead shelter tech for a very rural animal shelter-I am literally the ONLY person at the shelter M-TH every week. We have one other shelter tech who works part-time over the weekend and cleans on holidays when our shelter is closed. We recently went through a period of chaos where our shelter was severely over-capacity and we had about 76 animals housed within our walls! It was NUTS!! Way to much for one person to handle alone. During this time, we pleaded with our higher ups to please hire another shelter tech. Their answer was no. We do not have it in our budget to add another staff member; so, I am working on trying to build a volunteer program, but have no idea where to even start. I've talked with some Volunteer Coordinators and gotten some pretty awesome ideas. The biggest struggle is going to be getting this thing started and properly training our volunteers on safe animal handling. Being the only one here, I take care of everything from cleaning to phone calls and adoptions/networking. It's a lot of work and I'm looking for a way to start this program that doesn't entirely drown me! I'm thinking if we do incorporate an actual orientation and tour of the shelter, it would be best to have those on Fridays when we have both myself and our other tech here. I know it's going to be slow-going and tough at the beginning until we get a routine in place and find what works best for our shelter. My questions for you guys are:

• What ideas do you have to help in this process/get this thing up off of the ground?
• Are there any educational videos that you recommend that might benefit a new volunteer when it comes to animal handling/body language?
• If you are part of a small shelter (similar to ours) or you volunteer for one, what is/was the onboarding process? What did you find most helpful?
• What techniques do you use to ensure the safety of your volunteers and lower the chance of bites?
• Do you have any kind of incentives that help retain volunteers? 
• If you have volunteers that don't work with the animals, what other things do you have them help with (laundry, dishes, mopping??)? 

Any help/input would be greatly appreciated!! I feel like an overwhelmed dog in the toy aisle at Petco!! So many things around me, but I can't seem to focus on just one! :D 

Thank you!!
#EducationandTraining
#PeopleManagement(includingVolunteerIntegration)

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Holly Brown
Shelter Technician
Heber Valley Animal Services
Heber City, UT
------------------------------

Hi Holly,

Sounds like a tough position to be in. Thank you for all your efforts to save companion animals. I hope things can improve for you soon. 

I don't know how much good advice I can give you, but I've been running a smallish nonprofit shelter is a somewhat rural setting for over 1 0 years, so here's what I would offer:

1. Don't make the process to becoming a volunteer too easy! You want people who will be committed and stay with you for a while. They should have to jump through a few hoops to show they are really interested. 
2. I highly recommend videos from Fearfreehappyhomes.com. They are easy to access, free, and have lots of great content. I tend to focus on dog and cat body language at my initial trainings. 
3. For onboarding, we have them submit an application along with a $15 fee. They are then able to attend a once-monthly training class that lasts about one hour. 
4. We stress safety at the trainings. We ask that new volunteers take things slow and check with staff before handling any animals. We also label animals clearly that should not be handled by volunteers.
5. We are working on incentives, but for now we name a Volunteer of the Month, and offer free treats during their sessions. 
6. Volunteers are always welcome to help with laundry! Occasionally, we might have them help with sweeping, mopping, or wiping down kennels.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

Brandon
Great River Rescue

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brandon mustful
------------------------------

Absolutely! The one thing I don't want to do is waste my time on someone who is not serious about volunteering! Occasionally we have small groups of children accompanied by an adult that want to "volunteer". This is usually a one-time thing and we have them help us with grunt work like organizing donations and things like that. If we have any kid-friendly animals, I'll let them do a heavily monitored meet-and-greet and educate them about animal safety (particularly dogs and dog bites!). I love having these groups, but would be elated if we could get some older people to consistently volunteer that don't need as much monitoring! I feel like a fee would put most people in our community off, but can also see how it would help draw in more serious inquiries. I will definitely check out the videos from the website you recommended and hopefully start getting things together! Thank you so much for your response and ideas!!

------------------------------
Holly Brown
Shelter Technician
Heber Valley Animal Services
Heber City, UT
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-19-2023 10:20 AM
From: brandon mustful
Subject: Volunteer Program

Hi Holly,

Sounds like a tough position to be in. Thank you for all your efforts to save companion animals. I hope things can improve for you soon. 

I don't know how much good advice I can give you, but I've been running a smallish nonprofit shelter is a somewhat rural setting for over 1 0 years, so here's what I would offer:

1. Don't make the process to becoming a volunteer too easy! You want people who will be committed and stay with you for a while. They should have to jump through a few hoops to show they are really interested. 
2. I highly recommend videos from Fearfreehappyhomes.com. They are easy to access, free, and have lots of great content. I tend to focus on dog and cat body language at my initial trainings. 
3. For onboarding, we have them submit an application along with a $15 fee. They are then able to attend a once-monthly training class that lasts about one hour. 
4. We stress safety at the trainings. We ask that new volunteers take things slow and check with staff before handling any animals. We also label animals clearly that should not be handled by volunteers.
5. We are working on incentives, but for now we name a Volunteer of the Month, and offer free treats during their sessions. 
6. Volunteers are always welcome to help with laundry! Occasionally, we might have them help with sweeping, mopping, or wiping down kennels.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

Brandon
Great River Rescue

------------------------------
brandon mustful
------------------------------

Ideally you can find a recently-retired teacher, or someone with a background in coaching, scouting, running camps, that can take charge of all visits by children, whether educational or "volunteering".  Don't keep that on your list of things to handle personally!

Good luck with this!  It sounds like you have good instincts.

------------------------------
April King
Volunteer and Board Member
Kotor Kitties
+1 206 407 5336
http://www.kotorkitties.org
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-19-2023 02:00 PM
From: Holly Brown
Subject: Volunteer Program

Absolutely! The one thing I don't want to do is waste my time on someone who is not serious about volunteering! Occasionally we have small groups of children accompanied by an adult that want to "volunteer". This is usually a one-time thing and we have them help us with grunt work like organizing donations and things like that. If we have any kid-friendly animals, I'll let them do a heavily monitored meet-and-greet and educate them about animal safety (particularly dogs and dog bites!). I love having these groups, but would be elated if we could get some older people to consistently volunteer that don't need as much monitoring! I feel like a fee would put most people in our community off, but can also see how it would help draw in more serious inquiries. I will definitely check out the videos from the website you recommended and hopefully start getting things together! Thank you so much for your response and ideas!!

------------------------------
Holly Brown
Shelter Technician
Heber Valley Animal Services
Heber City, UT
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 01-19-2023 10:20 AM
From: brandon mustful
Subject: Volunteer Program

Hi Holly,

Sounds like a tough position to be in. Thank you for all your efforts to save companion animals. I hope things can improve for you soon. 

I don't know how much good advice I can give you, but I've been running a smallish nonprofit shelter is a somewhat rural setting for over 1 0 years, so here's what I would offer:

1. Don't make the process to becoming a volunteer too easy! You want people who will be committed and stay with you for a while. They should have to jump through a few hoops to show they are really interested. 
2. I highly recommend videos from Fearfreehappyhomes.com. They are easy to access, free, and have lots of great content. I tend to focus on dog and cat body language at my initial trainings. 
3. For onboarding, we have them submit an application along with a $15 fee. They are then able to attend a once-monthly training class that lasts about one hour. 
4. We stress safety at the trainings. We ask that new volunteers take things slow and check with staff before handling any animals. We also label animals clearly that should not be handled by volunteers.
5. We are working on incentives, but for now we name a Volunteer of the Month, and offer free treats during their sessions. 
6. Volunteers are always welcome to help with laundry! Occasionally, we might have them help with sweeping, mopping, or wiping down kennels.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

Brandon
Great River Rescue

------------------------------
brandon mustful

Hi Holly,

Stepping back for a minute, I know you were pretty exuberant about saying 76 animals for your shelter was nuts, but that's a really important point.  That's not just crazy, wow, what do we do, go to management, nothing oh well, then keep on with business as usual.  That needs to be put in perspective as unsafe, abusive to you and your other tech, and unhealthy for the animals. 

At 10 minutes of care a day, which should be a drastic underestimate if you think about properly cleaning, feeding, walking, and caring for an animal, for 76 animals that's almost 13 hours...a day.  Also, are you doing adoptions as well, because if so that's just beyond too much.  It is very admirable that you want to put together a volunteer program, and it may very well be great for your shelter, but to shoulder that by yourself on top of animal care duties means your supervisor is really falling down on the job.

If nothing else, light a fire under them about the liability issues.  If you're in the shelter by yourself and something happens, not only are the animals going to be worse off if you're not there, the city could be on the hook for a big negligence claim, doubly so if you've brought that to their attention.

On the volunteer side, a couple of ideas:

1. Given your workload, offload as much of this as possible, as soon as possible.  If you can, find a volunteer who's willing to help with administration, scheduling, logistics, etc.  It's not just recruiting a bunch of volunteers and then you're set, it takes a ton of time to train, schedule, answer questions, keep contact lists, find people to fill in, continue recruiting, keep in communication so everyone is engaged and updated, and in general run smoothly enough that you don't lose volunteers.
   
   
2. I'm sure other folks here will have better libraries of training materials, but even just going on youtube and finding basic shelter training from other shelters can be helpful.  The major players like Best Friends, ASPCAPro, HSUS, and here on Maddie's also have great print libraries in this area.
   
   
3. We're also a rural shelter and are in the process of revamping our volunteer training process.  Right now we're looking at Recruitment -> Phone Conversation -> Video/Online Training -> Shelter Tour -> Shadowing with current volunteer/staff -> Regular schedule.
   
   
4. We also require at least a 6 month commitment with at least 1 shift per month (ideally one per week), and require anyone under 18 to be accompanied by an adult guardian who is also volunteering.
   
   
5. For volunteer safety, we don't allow new volunteers to immediately handle dogs unless they have a specific dog handling background and have done some training with our staff.  We are also adding color coded cage cards to designate which animals are allowed to be handled by any volunteer, expert volunteers, or staff only.  Also have pre-fitted collars/harnesses and appropriate leashes next to each dog kennel so they're not grabbing the wrong thing.
   
   
6. Definitely get volunteers to help with laundry and dishes.
   
   
7. Post a big wide net to recruit volunteers.  Do you have a local community college?  Can the local paper do anything for free?  You have 2,600 followers on Facebook, hammer that one hard, get it up on the city website, and out in the city's mass email/newsletter if that exists.  Ask for the local chamber of commerce to help out.
   
   
8. For recruiting, have an application process that's enough of a light barrier to as best as possible weed out people who are very uncommitted, won't show up, or aren't competent, but not so much of a barrier that it blocks potentially good volunteers from wanting to complete the process.
   
   
9. If you're feeling overwhelmed, focus on getting everything organized first.  Have an onboarding and training process set.  Have developed tasks and limits for volunteers so everyone knows what they will be doing.  Get a schedule together that you can make available to new volunteers to get them set up.  Have some sort of application and contact info collection process and a place to easily store and access that.  See if you can identify a volunteer, volunteer coordinator early on.  The better your process, the less likely you will be to bleed or overwhelm the volunteers you do recruit.

Good luck!

------------------------------
Jeff Okazaki
Humane Society of Jefferson County
------------------------------

You are absolutely right and we've tried making all of these arguments to our city officials regarding our staffing issues. Our supervisor is very supportive and does what he can to help us out at the shelter. Unfortunately, he's also one of 2 ACOs for our area. We officially run under the city, BUT we service the entire county. So our ACOs are in the same boat as far as being overwhelmed and understaffed. :( Usually, we don't have that many animals here at the shelter at a time-the most we've had (before this year) was about 46. Even that number is still too much for one person, but it was much more manageable! 76 animals had both of us shelter techs rethinking our career choice!!! I am going to continue fighting for more staff and am totally prepared for an uphill battle. For the meantime though, I'm just wanting to get something together to take a little bit of the burden off of my colleague and I. I do pretty much everything that relates to the shelter: intakes, adoptions, vaccinations, networking, administering medications if they need them, public outreach/education, social media, receptionist duties, communication with the ACOs regarding complaints and cases-the list goes on. I'd love to see if we could get some volunteers willing to do some of the receptionist duties like taking phone calls and such. I appreciate your response and LOVE some of the things you listed for the program! Thank you!!!

------------------------------
Holly Brown
Shelter Technician
Heber Valley Animal Services
Heber City, UT
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-19-2023 10:51 AM
From: Jeff Okazaki
Subject: Volunteer Program

Hi Holly,

Stepping back for a minute, I know you were pretty exuberant about saying 76 animals for your shelter was nuts, but that's a really important point.  That's not just crazy, wow, what do we do, go to management, nothing oh well, then keep on with business as usual.  That needs to be put in perspective as unsafe, abusive to you and your other tech, and unhealthy for the animals. 

At 10 minutes of care a day, which should be a drastic underestimate if you think about properly cleaning, feeding, walking, and caring for an animal, for 76 animals that's almost 13 hours...a day.  Also, are you doing adoptions as well, because if so that's just beyond too much.  It is very admirable that you want to put together a volunteer program, and it may very well be great for your shelter, but to shoulder that by yourself on top of animal care duties means your supervisor is really falling down on the job.

If nothing else, light a fire under them about the liability issues.  If you're in the shelter by yourself and something happens, not only are the animals going to be worse off if you're not there, the city could be on the hook for a big negligence claim, doubly so if you've brought that to their attention.

On the volunteer side, a couple of ideas:

1. Given your workload, offload as much of this as possible, as soon as possible.  If you can, find a volunteer who's willing to help with administration, scheduling, logistics, etc.  It's not just recruiting a bunch of volunteers and then you're set, it takes a ton of time to train, schedule, answer questions, keep contact lists, find people to fill in, continue recruiting, keep in communication so everyone is engaged and updated, and in general run smoothly enough that you don't lose volunteers.
   
   
2. I'm sure other folks here will have better libraries of training materials, but even just going on youtube and finding basic shelter training from other shelters can be helpful.  The major players like Best Friends, ASPCAPro, HSUS, and here on Maddie's also have great print libraries in this area.
   
   
3. We're also a rural shelter and are in the process of revamping our volunteer training process.  Right now we're looking at Recruitment -> Phone Conversation -> Video/Online Training -> Shelter Tour -> Shadowing with current volunteer/staff -> Regular schedule.
   
   
4. We also require at least a 6 month commitment with at least 1 shift per month (ideally one per week), and require anyone under 18 to be accompanied by an adult guardian who is also volunteering.
   
   
5. For volunteer safety, we don't allow new volunteers to immediately handle dogs unless they have a specific dog handling background and have done some training with our staff.  We are also adding color coded cage cards to designate which animals are allowed to be handled by any volunteer, expert volunteers, or staff only.  Also have pre-fitted collars/harnesses and appropriate leashes next to each dog kennel so they're not grabbing the wrong thing.
   
   
6. Definitely get volunteers to help with laundry and dishes.
   
   
7. Post a big wide net to recruit volunteers.  Do you have a local community college?  Can the local paper do anything for free?  You have 2,600 followers on Facebook, hammer that one hard, get it up on the city website, and out in the city's mass email/newsletter if that exists.  Ask for the local chamber of commerce to help out.
   
   
8. For recruiting, have an application process that's enough of a light barrier to as best as possible weed out people who are very uncommitted, won't show up, or aren't competent, but not so much of a barrier that it blocks potentially good volunteers from wanting to complete the process.
   
   
9. If you're feeling overwhelmed, focus on getting everything organized first.  Have an onboarding and training process set.  Have developed tasks and limits for volunteers so everyone knows what they will be doing.  Get a schedule together that you can make available to new volunteers to get them set up.  Have some sort of application and contact info collection process and a place to easily store and access that.  See if you can identify a volunteer, volunteer coordinator early on.  The better your process, the less likely you will be to bleed or overwhelm the volunteers you do recruit.

Good luck!

------------------------------
Jeff Okazaki
Humane Society of Jefferson County
------------------------------

We are larger than you but we are understaffed quite a lot and our volunteers help us TREMENDOUSLY. We have certain dogs that volunteers can handle and they help with those. They also help us clean, do dishes, prep meals, etc. Sometimes you have volunteers who don't want to work with the animals and they might just want to clean or do laundry, etc. You also have some people who can only pop in for a short duration of time. It's important to work with whatever the volunteer(s) can offer so that everyone can win. Ex. we used to have designated shifts but then that didn't work for a lot of people and getting help for an hour of cleaning was better than nothing!

Our orientation consists of a tour and showing people how we do things (like prep dinner, read the rx diet board, use the washing machine, how to properly leash a dog). Basics! But then when you get a routine and everyone is trained and you know who is doing what, you can take more time and dedicate to each individual and ask what they would like to get out of this (like what they'd like to learn, like maybe they've never walked a big dog and want to learn how, etc). And you work with the person as a team!

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Nisa Katz
Homeward Trails Animal Rescue
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