Animal Welfare Professionals

I think trust should be one of the most important metrics in animal welfare because without it, many of the other numbers become harder to improve. If people don't trust an organization, they may not call for help, bring their pets in for services, report lost pets, or ask for resources before surrendering an animal. That lack of trust can actually increase shelter intake and decrease positive outcomes.

If trust became a key performance indicator, I think organizations would spend more time listening to their communities instead of just talking to them. We would measure things like whether people felt respected, whether they would return for services, whether they would recommend us to a friend, and whether they believed we treated every person with dignity regardless of their income, race, or background.

To me, trust isn't a "soft" metric-it's a leading indicator of long-term success. When communities trust us, they are more likely to seek help early, reunite with lost pets, participate in preventive care, volunteer, donate, and become partners in our mission. The best animal welfare outcomes happen when people see us as a resource instead of a place of last resort. That's the kind of success worth measuring.

#CommunityPartnerships*
#Diversity,Equity,InclusionandJustice
#PeopleManagement(includingVolunteerIntegration)

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K. D. Thompson
Executive Director
The FIDO Foundation
NE
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K.D., I think you are right that trust is a leading indicator, and I want to push on the measurement half of your post, because that is where this idea usually dies.

The methods you listed are the standard ones. Did you feel respected. Would you return. Would you recommend us. Were you treated with dignity. Every one of those is asked of somebody who already walked through the door.

But the whole premise of your argument is that when trust is low, people do not come. Which means a satisfaction survey systematically cannot see the population you most need to measure. You will get good scores from the families who already trust you and silence from the ones who do not, and the number will look like it is improving while the actual problem sits untouched in a neighborhood that has never called you once.

So I would measure trust behaviorally instead. Not what people say about us. What people do.

The first one is timing. How far ahead of the crisis does the call come? A family that phones three weeks before the eviction trusts you. The same family phoning the morning of does not, or did not know you existed, and both of those are things you can fix. If trust is rising, contacts move earlier. That is a number you can chart.

The second is whether they come back for something different. Someone who used the pantry in March and calls you about a vet bill in July has decided you are safe. Single-service households who never return are telling you something too.

The third one is the metric almost every shelter already collects and nobody reads as trust: reclaim rate. When a lost dog is not claimed, we tend to file it under apathy. Often it is fear. Fear of the fine, fear of being judged, fear of being told they are not a fit owner. I have been going through the numbers for a small Alabama city where reclaims fell to six animals out of more than seven hundred impounded in a single year. Nobody there needs a survey to know something is broken. That number IS the survey.

The fourth is whether people tell you the true reason. If your intake notes say moving and housing far more often than they say I cannot afford this and I am ashamed, you are not collecting reasons. You are collecting the socially safe version of reasons, and that gap is a trust reading.

None of that requires new software or a consultant. Most of it is already sitting in the database, being counted for other purposes.

One caution I would add. Trust is asymmetric in time. It is built over years and spent in a single interaction, usually by one tired person at a front counter at four in the afternoon. So if this becomes a KPI, it has to be measured close to the ground, at the level of individual interactions, not as an annual score that averages away the day somebody got turned away.

The reframe I would offer: we already measure how many animals came in. Trust is the measure of how many families felt they could come to us before it got that far.

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Join The Shift To Prevention.

BJ Adkins
Founder/Director
Animal-Angels Foundation
Pinson, AL
calendy.com/animal-angels
bjadkins@animal-angels.org
animal-angelsfoundation.org
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