Animal Welfare Professionals

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  • 1.  What do your organizations do when they reach capacity?

    Posted 12-21-2022 03:18 AM
    Do you have a written plan or is it more ad hoc?
    #AdmissionsandIntake(includingIntake-to-placement)
    #AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms
    #MarketingandSocialMedia
    #OrganizationalManagement

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    Julie Jacobsen
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  • 2.  RE: What do your organizations do when they reach capacity?

    Posted 12-28-2022 08:34 AM
    Hi Julie,

    We do not have a written policy in place, but a general understanding to actively work towards emptying the kennels quickly when we reach capacity and there is little movement for a couple of days. To do that, we do some or all of the following:
    - Doing a special with reduced adoption fees for cats, which is financed through a special fund people donate to.
    - Advertise certain dogs more prominently on Social Media (either our long-term residents or sometimes when we need to make room quickly a dog that will get adopted quickly).
    - Some Hard-To-Place animals will receive sponsorships where the whole adoption fee is donated by another person, otherwise we try to stay away from no-cost adoptions.
    As we take mostly owner surrenders, we subsequently fill the kennels with animals from our waiting list. Unfortunately we are in a constant at capacity state with a waitlist of 80 animals, so I'd love to hear other ideas as well.
    Best,

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    Nora Paech
    Development Director
    Snake River Animal Shelter
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  • 3.  RE: What do your organizations do when they reach capacity?

    Posted 12-29-2022 05:41 AM
    I've worked at a few shelters now, and here is what we've done:  reduced or waived adoption fees, put out pleas to our fosters and field trip volunteers to take dogs for field trips /sleepovers/a week to get them out of the shelter and gather stories/videos/photos to help promote dogs for adoption, put out a notice to the community about how full we are, blast on site volunteers for help cleaning and walking animals, enrolled animals that are harder to place/have a long LOS in Foster-To-Adopt, and reduce intakes to urgent/emergency only.

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    Krystyna Zarn-Langford
    Geauga Humane Society's Rescue Village
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