Animal Welfare Professionals

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

I 100% agree. Being a rescue without an onsite vet prevents us from applying for those types of grants. We need to help our communities by providing an avenue for vet care and medications. Euthanisa is not the answer!

Transportation is another hurdle. The local animal shelter has a twice a month pet food pantry and some food pantries have pet food.

It's very disappointing to see such a great need and not be able to help. Owner surrenders keep increasing. 

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Beverly, you just described the exact loop that burns rescues out. You see the need, you want to help upstream, but the funding structure rewards intake volume and onsite capacity instead of prevention work. So the surrenders keep climbing and you keep catching what falls.

Transportation is one of the biggest barriers we hear about. We work with a municipal program that started providing transport to spay/neuter appointments because they realized families were signing up at community events but never showing up. It wasn't a motivation problem. It was a ride problem. Once they solved that, their no-show rate dropped dramatically.

The food pantry piece matters more than most people realize. A family running out of pet food is usually 2-3 weeks away from surrender if nothing changes. Catching them at that moment with food, a vet referral, or even just a conversation about what else is going on can stop the whole cascade.

What you are describing, the gap between what your community needs and what your rescue can provide without an onsite vet or grant access, is exactly what networked prevention infrastructure is designed to close. You do not have to be everything to everyone. You just need to be connected to partners who fill the gaps you cannot.

If you want to see what that looks like in practice, our Shift to Prevention guide breaks down how smaller orgs without big budgets or brick-and-mortar clinics can still do prevention work through partnerships. Free download, no email gate: animal-angelsfoundation.org/ShiftToPrevention.html

Owner surrenders do not have to keep climbing. The system just has to start meeting families before they hit the point of no return.

I 100% agree. Being a rescue without an onsite vet prevents us from applying for those types of grants. We need to help our communities by providing an avenue for vet care and medications. Euthanisa is not the answer!

Transportation is another hurdle. The local animal shelter has a twice a month pet food pantry and some food pantries have pet food.

It's very disappointing to see such a great need and not be able to help. Owner surrenders keep increasing. 

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Our rescue has a policy that a cat can be returned at any time during its lifetime.  We started microchipping about three years ago.  At adoption, we inform the new owner to register the chip in their name and leave our contact information as a secondary in case phone numbers change or the shelter can't reach them.  

We are lucky to have a low cost spay neuter clinic in our area.  We strongly promote spay and neuter at community events and hand them one of the clinic's brochures. When people ask where can I take my pet to be fixed, we provide the clinic's phone number.  This clinic also holds low cost vaccine events. 

Beverly, you just described the exact loop that burns rescues out. You see the need, you want to help upstream, but the funding structure rewards intake volume and onsite capacity instead of prevention work. So the surrenders keep climbing and you keep catching what falls.

Transportation is one of the biggest barriers we hear about. We work with a municipal program that started providing transport to spay/neuter appointments because they realized families were signing up at community events but never showing up. It wasn't a motivation problem. It was a ride problem. Once they solved that, their no-show rate dropped dramatically.

The food pantry piece matters more than most people realize. A family running out of pet food is usually 2-3 weeks away from surrender if nothing changes. Catching them at that moment with food, a vet referral, or even just a conversation about what else is going on can stop the whole cascade.

What you are describing, the gap between what your community needs and what your rescue can provide without an onsite vet or grant access, is exactly what networked prevention infrastructure is designed to close. You do not have to be everything to everyone. You just need to be connected to partners who fill the gaps you cannot.

If you want to see what that looks like in practice, our Shift to Prevention guide breaks down how smaller orgs without big budgets or brick-and-mortar clinics can still do prevention work through partnerships. Free download, no email gate: animal-angelsfoundation.org/ShiftToPrevention.html

Owner surrenders do not have to keep climbing. The system just has to start meeting families before they hit the point of no return.

I 100% agree. Being a rescue without an onsite vet prevents us from applying for those types of grants. We need to help our communities by providing an avenue for vet care and medications. Euthanisa is not the answer!

Transportation is another hurdle. The local animal shelter has a twice a month pet food pantry and some food pantries have pet food.

It's very disappointing to see such a great need and not be able to help. Owner surrenders keep increasing. 

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Excellent point!  If we really want to Save Them All we need to eliminate the need for animal shelters.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Oh my gosh, I am so glad someone is bringing this up! I wish that rescues and shelters would start being proactive instead of reactive. We should place more funds on food pantries, low cost or free spay neuter, affordable clinics, etc. If we would do this, I am positive this would reduce intakes dramatically.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Herein lies our problem. As a cat Sanctuary we take care of chronically ill, behavioral challenged and senior cats but for the life of me I can't find grants to help us. Unfortunately I'm about out of ideas to get money from places since there's only 3 of us. It really limits things.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

I hear you. Funding for sanctuary and hospice care is one of the hardest things to find in animal welfare. Most grants are built around adoption outcomes and intake numbers, which means organizations doing the work nobody else will do, caring for the animals that are not going anywhere, get overlooked because their metrics do not fit the standard grant template.

A few places worth looking at. Banfield Foundation has Pet Advocacy Grants ($1,000 to $10,000) that fund direct animal care, not just adoption programs. BISSELL Pet Foundation's Partners for Pets grants support shelters and rescues broadly. The Petfund.org helps with individual animal medical costs. And if you have not already, get your Candid (formerly GuideStar) profile to Platinum level. It is free, takes a couple of hours, and some funders will not even look at you without it.

With only three people, the grant writing itself is the bottleneck. One thing that helped us: write one strong case statement about what your sanctuary does and why it matters, then adapt it for every application instead of starting from scratch each time. The core story stays the same. The ask changes.

If you want to connect offline I am happy to share what we have learned about finding funding as a small team. We are a one-person operation at launch so I understand the bandwidth problem personally.

Herein lies our problem. As a cat Sanctuary we take care of chronically ill, behavioral challenged and senior cats but for the life of me I can't find grants to help us. Unfortunately I'm about out of ideas to get money from places since there's only 3 of us. It really limits things.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.

Thanks so much for your tips for grants for organizations that focus on sanctuary and hospice.  I work for an exclusively senior dog rescue and sanctuary. We do adopt out dogs that are healthy enough to be adoptable, but our focus is on making sure senior dogs are cared for and loved until the very end whether that means adoption, foster, or life at the sanctuary. I appreciate your suggestions for funding opportunities as well as your thought-provoking post!

I hear you. Funding for sanctuary and hospice care is one of the hardest things to find in animal welfare. Most grants are built around adoption outcomes and intake numbers, which means organizations doing the work nobody else will do, caring for the animals that are not going anywhere, get overlooked because their metrics do not fit the standard grant template.

A few places worth looking at. Banfield Foundation has Pet Advocacy Grants ($1,000 to $10,000) that fund direct animal care, not just adoption programs. BISSELL Pet Foundation's Partners for Pets grants support shelters and rescues broadly. The Petfund.org helps with individual animal medical costs. And if you have not already, get your Candid (formerly GuideStar) profile to Platinum level. It is free, takes a couple of hours, and some funders will not even look at you without it.

With only three people, the grant writing itself is the bottleneck. One thing that helped us: write one strong case statement about what your sanctuary does and why it matters, then adapt it for every application instead of starting from scratch each time. The core story stays the same. The ask changes.

If you want to connect offline I am happy to share what we have learned about finding funding as a small team. We are a one-person operation at launch so I understand the bandwidth problem personally.

Herein lies our problem. As a cat Sanctuary we take care of chronically ill, behavioral challenged and senior cats but for the life of me I can't find grants to help us. Unfortunately I'm about out of ideas to get money from places since there's only 3 of us. It really limits things.

Genuine question for the field.

Name one nationally-funded program that pays a shelter for the animals they prevented from ever coming in.

I'll wait.

We measure live release rate. We measure length of stay. We measure adoption numbers. All output. All happening after the family has already lost the pet.
We built a system that pays us to process animals after intake, then act surprised when intake never goes down.

If the only thing we fund is the back end, the front end will keep filling. Every year. Forever.

So here's what I want to know. What would change in your shelter or rescue if even 20% of your funding was tied to families you kept together, not animals you placed?

Curious what people think. Especially if you disagree.