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.

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.

#FundraisingandDevelopment

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

Hi BJ, I love this post. Thank you for asking the question.

We need to lean more on prevention rather than just reacting. Flip the narrative.

I am a certified trainer and run a small nonprofit (The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.), and prevention is the core of our work. I've worked with private clients providing sliding scale or pro bono support to those who couldn't afford help with their pets-folks on fixed income or unhoused guardians. My nonprofit focuses on education across all ages-teaching the human-animal bond, body language, and a better understanding of behavior.

What I see, over and over, is that most relinquishments are not about lack of love-they're about lack of support, access, or understanding at the right moment.

And respectfully, I think this is where reacting alone has not worked.

We've built systems that respond after intake-and we've gotten very good at it-but intake itself hasn't meaningfully decreased the overpopulation of unwanted dogs and cats. That tells us something.

If even 20% of funding were tied to keeping families together, I believe we would start investing differently-earlier, upstream, and in ways that reduce the need for intake in the first place.

Prevention isn't visible in the same way. It's harder to measure. But it's where lasting change happens.

We need a mindset shift about where impact actually begins-before intake, not after.

Really appreciate you opening this conversation.

---

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA
------------------------------

Julielani, thank you. The 20% number is the right kind of specific. Most prevention advocates ask for "more," which gets nodded at and then ignored. A concrete percentage tied to family retention forces funders to examine where their dollars actually flow versus where the problem actually starts.

The harder-to-measure piece is where I keep landing. Prevention isn't actually harder to measure, it's that nobody has built the shared infrastructure to capture it. Intake gets measured because every shelter has to log it. Helpline outcomes don't get measured because most orgs don't run a helpline, and the ones that do don't share the data with each other or with funders. That's a structural gap, not a measurement gap.

Your work with fixed-income and unhoused guardians is exactly where the data sits. The interventions you're already doing every day, sliding-scale behavior support, education at the moment somebody is questioning whether they can keep their dog, those are the case outcomes that should be showing up in field-level reporting. They aren't, because nobody asks for them.

We're building something that tries to change that. The Animal Welfare Resource Network connects prevention-focused orgs into a shared data layer so the calls, the resources distributed, the retentions, and the outcomes all become visible across regions. Davis is a long way from Birmingham, but the model is built to scale.

Would love to compare notes if you're open to it. Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels.

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

Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 09:29 AM
From: Julielani Chang
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hi BJ, I love this post. Thank you for asking the question.

We need to lean more on prevention rather than just reacting. Flip the narrative.

I am a certified trainer and run a small nonprofit (The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.), and prevention is the core of our work. I've worked with private clients providing sliding scale or pro bono support to those who couldn't afford help with their pets-folks on fixed income or unhoused guardians. My nonprofit focuses on education across all ages-teaching the human-animal bond, body language, and a better understanding of behavior.

What I see, over and over, is that most relinquishments are not about lack of love-they're about lack of support, access, or understanding at the right moment.

And respectfully, I think this is where reacting alone has not worked.

We've built systems that respond after intake-and we've gotten very good at it-but intake itself hasn't meaningfully decreased the overpopulation of unwanted dogs and cats. That tells us something.

If even 20% of funding were tied to keeping families together, I believe we would start investing differently-earlier, upstream, and in ways that reduce the need for intake in the first place.

Prevention isn't visible in the same way. It's harder to measure. But it's where lasting change happens.

We need a mindset shift about where impact actually begins-before intake, not after.

Really appreciate you opening this conversation.

---

This keeps your point firm: reacting hasn't solved the problem, without sounding like you're dismissing shelters.

If you want it even sharper or more "you," I can push it further-but this one should land really well in that audience.

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA
------------------------------

Thank you, BJ. 

I agree that in many ways, the field has normalized measuring downstream outcomes because intake is visible and standardized, while prevention work remains decentralized, relationship-based, and often community-led.

Yet those upstream interventions may be the very things reducing future intake pressure.

I also appreciate your point that prevention data already exists in the day-to-day work of organizations supporting guardians before relinquishment happens. We simply have not built systems that value or aggregate those outcomes consistently.

I also think fostering belongs in the prevention conversation. A foster home can prevent behavioral deterioration, reduce stress, improve transitions into adoptive homes, and ultimately increase placement success and retention. Prevention is not only about stopping intake, but also reducing the emotional and behavioral fallout that can happen after intake. 

I would absolutely be interested in learning more about the network you're building and love to compare notes. 

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 10:07 AM
From: Bj Adkins
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Julielani, thank you. The 20% number is the right kind of specific. Most prevention advocates ask for "more," which gets nodded at and then ignored. A concrete percentage tied to family retention forces funders to examine where their dollars actually flow versus where the problem actually starts.

The harder-to-measure piece is where I keep landing. Prevention isn't actually harder to measure, it's that nobody has built the shared infrastructure to capture it. Intake gets measured because every shelter has to log it. Helpline outcomes don't get measured because most orgs don't run a helpline, and the ones that do don't share the data with each other or with funders. That's a structural gap, not a measurement gap.

Your work with fixed-income and unhoused guardians is exactly where the data sits. The interventions you're already doing every day, sliding-scale behavior support, education at the moment somebody is questioning whether they can keep their dog, those are the case outcomes that should be showing up in field-level reporting. They aren't, because nobody asks for them.

We're building something that tries to change that. The Animal Welfare Resource Network connects prevention-focused orgs into a shared data layer so the calls, the resources distributed, the retentions, and the outcomes all become visible across regions. Davis is a long way from Birmingham, but the model is built to scale.

Would love to compare notes if you're open to it. Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels.

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


Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 09:29 AM
From: Julielani Chang
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hi BJ, I love this post. Thank you for asking the question.

We need to lean more on prevention rather than just reacting. Flip the narrative.

I am a certified trainer and run a small nonprofit (The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.), and prevention is the core of our work. I've worked with private clients providing sliding scale or pro bono support to those who couldn't afford help with their pets-folks on fixed income or unhoused guardians. My nonprofit focuses on education across all ages-teaching the human-animal bond, body language, and a better understanding of behavior.

What I see, over and over, is that most relinquishments are not about lack of love-they're about lack of support, access, or understanding at the right moment.

And respectfully, I think this is where reacting alone has not worked.

We've built systems that respond after intake-and we've gotten very good at it-but intake itself hasn't meaningfully decreased the overpopulation of unwanted dogs and cats. That tells us something.

If even 20% of funding were tied to keeping families together, I believe we would start investing differently-earlier, upstream, and in ways that reduce the need for intake in the first place.

Prevention isn't visible in the same way. It's harder to measure. But it's where lasting change happens.

We need a mindset shift about where impact actually begins-before intake, not after.

Really appreciate you opening this conversation.

---

This keeps your point firm: reacting hasn't solved the problem, without sounding like you're dismissing shelters.

If you want it even sharper or more "you," I can push it further-but this one should land really well in that audience.

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA

Julielani, the foster-as-prevention point is the one most people miss. The downstream cost of foster failure is huge: behavioral deterioration in kennel, stress-related health issues, longer length of stay, returns, and the trauma cycle that keeps both the dog and the next adopter from succeeding. Prevention isn't just upstream of intake. It's also upstream of every failed placement.

We run four foster types at AAF for exactly that reason: Foster-to-Train (animals get basic skills before adoption), Finder-to-Foster (the person who picked up the stray fosters until reunification or rehoming), Temporary Crisis (Bridge cases, like the one we're actively managing where an owner is hospitalized and the alternative would have been the shelter), and Regular Foster. Each one targets a different prevention point in the lifecycle.

Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels. Grab a slot and let's compare notes.

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

Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 02:42 PM
From: Julielani Chang
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Thank you, BJ. 

I agree that in many ways, the field has normalized measuring downstream outcomes because intake is visible and standardized, while prevention work remains decentralized, relationship-based, and often community-led.

Yet those upstream interventions may be the very things reducing future intake pressure.

I also appreciate your point that prevention data already exists in the day-to-day work of organizations supporting guardians before relinquishment happens. We simply have not built systems that value or aggregate those outcomes consistently.

I also think fostering belongs in the prevention conversation. A foster home can prevent behavioral deterioration, reduce stress, improve transitions into adoptive homes, and ultimately increase placement success and retention. Prevention is not only about stopping intake, but also reducing the emotional and behavioral fallout that can happen after intake. 

I would absolutely be interested in learning more about the network you're building and love to compare notes. 

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 10:07 AM
From: Bj Adkins
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Julielani, thank you. The 20% number is the right kind of specific. Most prevention advocates ask for "more," which gets nodded at and then ignored. A concrete percentage tied to family retention forces funders to examine where their dollars actually flow versus where the problem actually starts.

The harder-to-measure piece is where I keep landing. Prevention isn't actually harder to measure, it's that nobody has built the shared infrastructure to capture it. Intake gets measured because every shelter has to log it. Helpline outcomes don't get measured because most orgs don't run a helpline, and the ones that do don't share the data with each other or with funders. That's a structural gap, not a measurement gap.

Your work with fixed-income and unhoused guardians is exactly where the data sits. The interventions you're already doing every day, sliding-scale behavior support, education at the moment somebody is questioning whether they can keep their dog, those are the case outcomes that should be showing up in field-level reporting. They aren't, because nobody asks for them.

We're building something that tries to change that. The Animal Welfare Resource Network connects prevention-focused orgs into a shared data layer so the calls, the resources distributed, the retentions, and the outcomes all become visible across regions. Davis is a long way from Birmingham, but the model is built to scale.

Would love to compare notes if you're open to it. Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels.

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


Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 09:29 AM
From: Julielani Chang
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hi BJ, I love this post. Thank you for asking the question.

We need to lean more on prevention rather than just reacting. Flip the narrative.

I am a certified trainer and run a small nonprofit (The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.), and prevention is the core of our work. I've worked with private clients providing sliding scale or pro bono support to those who couldn't afford help with their pets-folks on fixed income or unhoused guardians. My nonprofit focuses on education across all ages-teaching the human-animal bond, body language, and a better understanding of behavior.

What I see, over and over, is that most relinquishments are not about lack of love-they're about lack of support, access, or understanding at the right moment.

And respectfully, I think this is where reacting alone has not worked.

We've built systems that respond after intake-and we've gotten very good at it-but intake itself hasn't meaningfully decreased the overpopulation of unwanted dogs and cats. That tells us something.

If even 20% of funding were tied to keeping families together, I believe we would start investing differently-earlier, upstream, and in ways that reduce the need for intake in the first place.

Prevention isn't visible in the same way. It's harder to measure. But it's where lasting change happens.

We need a mindset shift about where impact actually begins-before intake, not after.

Really appreciate you opening this conversation.

---

This keeps your point firm: reacting hasn't solved the problem, without sounding like you're dismissing shelters.

If you want it even sharper or more "you," I can push it further-but this one should land really well in that audience.

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA

Your point that prevention exists upstream of every failed placement really clicked for me. We often talk about prevention only as avoiding intake, but behavioral deterioration, stress, failed transitions, and returns are all part of the same continuum.

I also love how intentionally your foster models target different intervention points instead of treating fostering as one generic category. Temporary Crisis especially resonate with me because they preserve stability during vulnerable moments before the human-animal bond breaks completely.

Your Foster-to-Train model especially stood out to me because that overlaps closely with work I already do through HART. A big part of my role has been helping foster dogs build foundational skills, decompress, and transition more successfully into adoptive homes.  Sometimes, I continue to work with the adopted pup and the new adopter to ease the changes for both. I've seen firsthand how much prevention can happen inside foster care itself when behavior support is part of the process rather than something added only after problems emerge.

I've also been thinking and learning more about "safety net fostering" as part of prevention work - short-term support systems that help stabilize situations before surrender becomes the only perceived option. It may overlap quite a bit with your Temporary Crisis model, and I'd love to learn more about how you structure those cases.

Reading your framework makes me realize many of us are already doing prevention work - we just haven't had shared language or infrastructure around it.

I'll grab a time on your calendar. There are so much to talk about.

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 03:36 PM
From: Bj Adkins
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Julielani, the foster-as-prevention point is the one most people miss. The downstream cost of foster failure is huge: behavioral deterioration in kennel, stress-related health issues, longer length of stay, returns, and the trauma cycle that keeps both the dog and the next adopter from succeeding. Prevention isn't just upstream of intake. It's also upstream of every failed placement.

We run four foster types at AAF for exactly that reason: Foster-to-Train (animals get basic skills before adoption), Finder-to-Foster (the person who picked up the stray fosters until reunification or rehoming), Temporary Crisis (Bridge cases, like the one we're actively managing where an owner is hospitalized and the alternative would have been the shelter), and Regular Foster. Each one targets a different prevention point in the lifecycle.

Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels. Grab a slot and let's compare notes.

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


Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 02:42 PM
From: Julielani Chang
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Thank you, BJ. 

I agree that in many ways, the field has normalized measuring downstream outcomes because intake is visible and standardized, while prevention work remains decentralized, relationship-based, and often community-led.

Yet those upstream interventions may be the very things reducing future intake pressure.

I also appreciate your point that prevention data already exists in the day-to-day work of organizations supporting guardians before relinquishment happens. We simply have not built systems that value or aggregate those outcomes consistently.

I also think fostering belongs in the prevention conversation. A foster home can prevent behavioral deterioration, reduce stress, improve transitions into adoptive homes, and ultimately increase placement success and retention. Prevention is not only about stopping intake, but also reducing the emotional and behavioral fallout that can happen after intake. 

I would absolutely be interested in learning more about the network you're building and love to compare notes. 

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA


Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 10:07 AM
From: Bj Adkins
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Julielani, thank you. The 20% number is the right kind of specific. Most prevention advocates ask for "more," which gets nodded at and then ignored. A concrete percentage tied to family retention forces funders to examine where their dollars actually flow versus where the problem actually starts.

The harder-to-measure piece is where I keep landing. Prevention isn't actually harder to measure, it's that nobody has built the shared infrastructure to capture it. Intake gets measured because every shelter has to log it. Helpline outcomes don't get measured because most orgs don't run a helpline, and the ones that do don't share the data with each other or with funders. That's a structural gap, not a measurement gap.

Your work with fixed-income and unhoused guardians is exactly where the data sits. The interventions you're already doing every day, sliding-scale behavior support, education at the moment somebody is questioning whether they can keep their dog, those are the case outcomes that should be showing up in field-level reporting. They aren't, because nobody asks for them.

We're building something that tries to change that. The Animal Welfare Resource Network connects prevention-focused orgs into a shared data layer so the calls, the resources distributed, the retentions, and the outcomes all become visible across regions. Davis is a long way from Birmingham, but the model is built to scale.

Would love to compare notes if you're open to it. Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels.

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


Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 09:29 AM
From: Julielani Chang
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hi BJ, I love this post. Thank you for asking the question.

We need to lean more on prevention rather than just reacting. Flip the narrative.

I am a certified trainer and run a small nonprofit (The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.), and prevention is the core of our work. I've worked with private clients providing sliding scale or pro bono support to those who couldn't afford help with their pets-folks on fixed income or unhoused guardians. My nonprofit focuses on education across all ages-teaching the human-animal bond, body language, and a better understanding of behavior.

What I see, over and over, is that most relinquishments are not about lack of love-they're about lack of support, access, or understanding at the right moment.

And respectfully, I think this is where reacting alone has not worked.

We've built systems that respond after intake-and we've gotten very good at it-but intake itself hasn't meaningfully decreased the overpopulation of unwanted dogs and cats. That tells us something.

If even 20% of funding were tied to keeping families together, I believe we would start investing differently-earlier, upstream, and in ways that reduce the need for intake in the first place.

Prevention isn't visible in the same way. It's harder to measure. But it's where lasting change happens.

We need a mindset shift about where impact actually begins-before intake, not after.

Really appreciate you opening this conversation.

---

This keeps your point firm: reacting hasn't solved the problem, without sounding like you're dismissing shelters.

If you want it even sharper or more "you," I can push it further-but this one should land really well in that audience.

------------------------------
Julielani Chang
The Life of Kai: Compassion Connections Inc.
Davis CA

I just joined and love that this question is one of the first I saw.  I am a volunteer for the Louisiana State Animal Response Team (LSART) who's main purpose is to help during/after disasters. A few years ago, I developed a "pet project" and called it Ralph's Responders or RALPH (Ready and Living Prepared Heros). The goal is to teach kids about animal care and including their pets in disaster planning. My hope is that kids would go home after a program and like when a firefighter teaches kids about having a fire plan, the kids would ask their parents about their pet plan, thus forcing parents to be involved. There's a lot of good resources for this on our website under the kids corner at www.lsart.org that range from pet profiles to games.

I also wrote the book Rowen and the Animal Shelter that teaches kids what to do when they see a stray, who animal control is, what animal shelters do, and how they can help their local shelter. There's resources in the back of this book including discussion questions, games, how to help their shelter, and caring for their pet.

I joined Maddies to learn pain points and if there are other educational resources that I could develop to help prevent things.

------------------------------
Sara Kimball
Volunteer Community Education
Louisiana State Animal Response Team
LA
------------------------------

Sara, welcome to Maddie's. You picked the right thread to land on.

The kids-as-vector approach is sharp. Most animal welfare education aims at adults who are already doing the deciding, but adults also have the most fixed habits and the strongest defensiveness about being told they're doing something wrong. Kids don't have that filter. They come home from school, ask the questions, and the parent has to answer. That's how fire plan education actually changed household fire preparedness over a generation, exactly the framework you're applying to pets.

The disaster prep angle is also a real prevention angle that often gets missed. Surrender doesn't only happen from slow-burn financial or housing pressure. It happens after hurricanes, floods, and house fires when families couldn't bring their animals to evacuation shelters or didn't have pet emergency kits ready. Asheville Humane mentioned earlier in this thread that Hurricane Helene reshaped their entire intake model. Disaster prevention is surrender prevention, just on a faster timeline.

Rowen and the Animal Shelter sounds like it's filling a real gap too. Most rescue and shelter education for kids is either too clinical or too sentimental, and the practical "what to do when you see a stray, who animal control is, how shelters work" piece almost never gets covered at a kid-comprehensible level.

I'd love to compare notes. AAF runs prevention-first work in central Alabama, and one of our content arms (Keep The Pet, a comedic dog training video series) is family-friendly enough that there might be cross-promotion or co-development angles, particularly on disaster prep content for kids. My Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels.

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

Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 03:18 PM
From: Sara Kimball
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

I just joined and love that this question is one of the first I saw.  I am a volunteer for the Louisiana State Animal Response Team (LSART) who's main purpose is to help during/after disasters. A few years ago, I developed a "pet project" and called it Ralph's Responders or RALPH (Ready and Living Prepared Heros). The goal is to teach kids about animal care and including their pets in disaster planning. My hope is that kids would go home after a program and like when a firefighter teaches kids about having a fire plan, the kids would ask their parents about their pet plan, thus forcing parents to be involved. There's a lot of good resources for this on our website under the kids corner at www.lsart.org that range from pet profiles to games.

I also wrote the book Rowen and the Animal Shelter that teaches kids what to do when they see a stray, who animal control is, what animal shelters do, and how they can help their local shelter. There's resources in the back of this book including discussion questions, games, how to help their shelter, and caring for their pet.

I joined Maddies to learn pain points and if there are other educational resources that I could develop to help prevent things.

------------------------------
Sara Kimball
Volunteer Community Education
Louisiana State Animal Response Team
LA
------------------------------

I am so glad you understand what I'm going and why. I just went to your website and WOW! Incredible work and we seem to have the same goal- prevent vs repair. 

In my experience its not always that people are being neglectful on purpose, they just didn't know the right way. Would love to help with what you're doing and work together to help people and pets.

------------------------------
Sara Kimball
Volunteer Community Education
Louisiana State Animal Response Team
LA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 05-07-2026 05:30 PM
From: Bj Adkins
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Sara, welcome to Maddie's. You picked the right thread to land on.

The kids-as-vector approach is sharp. Most animal welfare education aims at adults who are already doing the deciding, but adults also have the most fixed habits and the strongest defensiveness about being told they're doing something wrong. Kids don't have that filter. They come home from school, ask the questions, and the parent has to answer. That's how fire plan education actually changed household fire preparedness over a generation, exactly the framework you're applying to pets.

The disaster prep angle is also a real prevention angle that often gets missed. Surrender doesn't only happen from slow-burn financial or housing pressure. It happens after hurricanes, floods, and house fires when families couldn't bring their animals to evacuation shelters or didn't have pet emergency kits ready. Asheville Humane mentioned earlier in this thread that Hurricane Helene reshaped their entire intake model. Disaster prevention is surrender prevention, just on a faster timeline.

Rowen and the Animal Shelter sounds like it's filling a real gap too. Most rescue and shelter education for kids is either too clinical or too sentimental, and the practical "what to do when you see a stray, who animal control is, how shelters work" piece almost never gets covered at a kid-comprehensible level.

I'd love to compare notes. AAF runs prevention-first work in central Alabama, and one of our content arms (Keep The Pet, a comedic dog training video series) is family-friendly enough that there might be cross-promotion or co-development angles, particularly on disaster prep content for kids. My Calendly is calendly.com/animal-angels.

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


Original Message:
Sent: 05-06-2026 03:18 PM
From: Sara Kimball
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

I just joined and love that this question is one of the first I saw.  I am a volunteer for the Louisiana State Animal Response Team (LSART) who's main purpose is to help during/after disasters. A few years ago, I developed a "pet project" and called it Ralph's Responders or RALPH (Ready and Living Prepared Heros). The goal is to teach kids about animal care and including their pets in disaster planning. My hope is that kids would go home after a program and like when a firefighter teaches kids about having a fire plan, the kids would ask their parents about their pet plan, thus forcing parents to be involved. There's a lot of good resources for this on our website under the kids corner at www.lsart.org that range from pet profiles to games.

I also wrote the book Rowen and the Animal Shelter that teaches kids what to do when they see a stray, who animal control is, what animal shelters do, and how they can help their local shelter. There's resources in the back of this book including discussion questions, games, how to help their shelter, and caring for their pet.

I joined Maddies to learn pain points and if there are other educational resources that I could develop to help prevent things.

------------------------------
Sara Kimball
Volunteer Community Education
Louisiana State Animal Response Team
LA

Our mission is mostly focused on intake prevention. We raise money to support shelters with their programs that help people keep their pets. Right now we give quarterly donations to Cat Adoption Team for their Keeping Cats in Homes program; Red Rover for their On Call Angels program; and Annie & Millie's Place, who help unhoused people keep their pets. When we get "extra", we support pet food banks and TNR for community cats.

I would love to see more tracking of these outcomes, especially since the BIG organizations are so focused on their failing "no-kill" strategy (because that's where the money is) they're basically completely ignoring the fact that preventing intake in the first place is a much better solution to the overpopulation crisis. #nobirthmovement

------------------------------
Sincerely,
Johanna Spielman
Founder of Jamie Brianna's Legacy Fund
https://jamiebriannaslegacyfund.org/
------------------------------

Hi Johanna,

Your last paragraph is the one I keep coming back to. Tracking is the thing nobody wants to do because "no-kill" sells better as a marketing line than honest math does.

That gap is exactly why we built the Animal Welfare Resource Network. The AWRN tracks every Bridge intervention, every Pet Help Desk call, every prevented intake, with cost data and 30/60/90 day follow-ups. The point is to give shelters and grantmakers like you the kind of outcome reporting that lets you defend prevention funding instead of always defending it against the no-kill talking point.

Cat Adoption Team's Keeping Cats in Homes, Red Rover's On Call Angels, and Annie & Millie's Place are the right kinds of programs to be funding. The pattern across all three is that they catch families before the surrender desk. Most of the field does not fund this work because it does not generate placement photos.

A few questions if you're up for it:

1. Are any of the orgs you fund currently using shared infrastructure to report back to you, or is each one reporting outcomes in its own format?
2. What outcomes matter most when you decide whether to fund a program again?
3. Would it be useful if the orgs you fund had a unified way to report intervention type, cost-per-case, and prevention outcomes back to you?

If the answer to that third one is yes, the AWRN does that today.

Either way, I'd love to stay in touch. We just launched a newsletter on prevention work called The Shift to Prevention at theshifttoprevention.substack.com, and AAF's Maddie's Fund webinar with Sara Pizano is June 1 if you want to sit in.

Thanks for the work you're doing. The #nobirthmovement framing is sharper than most.

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

Original Message:
Sent: 05-09-2026 02:08 PM
From: Johanna Spielman
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Our mission is mostly focused on intake prevention. We raise money to support shelters with their programs that help people keep their pets. Right now we give quarterly donations to Cat Adoption Team for their Keeping Cats in Homes program; Red Rover for their On Call Angels program; and Annie & Millie's Place, who help unhoused people keep their pets. When we get "extra", we support pet food banks and TNR for community cats.

I would love to see more tracking of these outcomes, especially since the BIG organizations are so focused on their failing "no-kill" strategy (because that's where the money is) they're basically completely ignoring the fact that preventing intake in the first place is a much better solution to the overpopulation crisis. #nobirthmovement

------------------------------
Sincerely,
Johanna Spielman
Founder of Jamie Brianna's Legacy Fund
https://jamiebriannaslegacyfund.org/
------------------------------

Hi BJ, first I will say we are a very small organization, most of our monthly income goes to these three organizations. I don't formally track the outcomes, CAT and Red Rover send me a story every quarter of how our donation helped a family stay together, but I also know that our donation doesn't cover the full cost of any one story. I picked these organizations because I was already familiar with them.

Are you familiar with Downtown Dog Rescue in Los Angeles? They are specifically an intake prevention organization.

I think the AWRN would be great, and I would love to attend the webinar. I will also check out the newsletter.

Thank you

------------------------------
Sincerely,
Johanna Spielman
Founder of Jamie Brianna's Legacy Fund
https://jamiebriannaslegacyfund.org/
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 05-09-2026 03:21 PM
From: Bj Adkins
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hi Johanna,

Your last paragraph is the one I keep coming back to. Tracking is the thing nobody wants to do because "no-kill" sells better as a marketing line than honest math does.

That gap is exactly why we built the Animal Welfare Resource Network. The AWRN tracks every Bridge intervention, every Pet Help Desk call, every prevented intake, with cost data and 30/60/90 day follow-ups. The point is to give shelters and grantmakers like you the kind of outcome reporting that lets you defend prevention funding instead of always defending it against the no-kill talking point.

Cat Adoption Team's Keeping Cats in Homes, Red Rover's On Call Angels, and Annie & Millie's Place are the right kinds of programs to be funding. The pattern across all three is that they catch families before the surrender desk. Most of the field does not fund this work because it does not generate placement photos.

A few questions if you're up for it:

1. Are any of the orgs you fund currently using shared infrastructure to report back to you, or is each one reporting outcomes in its own format?
2. What outcomes matter most when you decide whether to fund a program again?
3. Would it be useful if the orgs you fund had a unified way to report intervention type, cost-per-case, and prevention outcomes back to you?

If the answer to that third one is yes, the AWRN does that today.

Either way, I'd love to stay in touch. We just launched a newsletter on prevention work called The Shift to Prevention at theshifttoprevention.substack.com, and AAF's Maddie's Fund webinar with Sara Pizano is June 1 if you want to sit in.

Thanks for the work you're doing. The #nobirthmovement framing is sharper than most.

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


Original Message:
Sent: 05-09-2026 02:08 PM
From: Johanna Spielman
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Our mission is mostly focused on intake prevention. We raise money to support shelters with their programs that help people keep their pets. Right now we give quarterly donations to Cat Adoption Team for their Keeping Cats in Homes program; Red Rover for their On Call Angels program; and Annie & Millie's Place, who help unhoused people keep their pets. When we get "extra", we support pet food banks and TNR for community cats.

I would love to see more tracking of these outcomes, especially since the BIG organizations are so focused on their failing "no-kill" strategy (because that's where the money is) they're basically completely ignoring the fact that preventing intake in the first place is a much better solution to the overpopulation crisis. #nobirthmovement

------------------------------
Sincerely,
Johanna Spielman
Founder of Jamie Brianna's Legacy Fund
https://jamiebriannaslegacyfund.org/

Thank you for this. Two quick pieces.

Yes, very familiar with Downtown Dog Rescue. Lori Weise's Shelter Intervention Program is one of the foundational case studies in prevention work, and DDR is one of the organizations we studied closely when designing AAF's Bridge program. The intake-door intervention model they pioneered in 2013 is the same logic underneath what we do, just applied to seven counties in Central Alabama instead of South LA.

Red Rover and CAT make sense for what they do well. AAF works in a complementary lane: the operational coordination layer that ties  shelters, vets, landlords, food pantries, and rescues together so families do not bounce between organizations during a crisis. Different role, same mission.

Glad you will be at the June 1 webinar. The Shift to Prevention newsletter is at theshifttoprevention.substack.com if you want to subscribe before then and if you like, you can download the Shift to Prevention Guide

https://animal-angelsfoundation.org/downloads/AAF_Shift_To_Prevention_Complete.pdf

Thank you for the recurring giving. That is what keeps prevention work going.

BJ

Hello BJ,

This is a very interesting point. In this vein of conversation, I did some research recently for a project and learnt something shocking; The burden of providing outside care to prevent new shelter intakes, aka pet food pantries, free/discounted pet care, free/discounted grooming? Falls almost entirely on privately run organisations. Government subsidised shelters provide only a small amount of community care, perhaps due to the strictness of government budgets and contracts. It's shocking, because it means the burden of care is heavily on already overburdened private organisations. It's also important to note that many of these programs, especially pet food and supply pantries, are reliant on donations, which means the quality and outreach of these programs are very limited. I certainly think better government support is critical to really keep animals in their loving homes, becuase the current system is overstrained, unfairly balanced, and unsustainable in times of crisis. I am curious if anyone has any additional input on this matter. 

------------------------------
Analis Howell
Pet Sitter
Family Businessw/ Trusted Housesitters
NC
------------------------------

Analis, you put your finger on it. The data backs you up. Sara Pizano's 2026 "Go-To Guide for Animal Services" tracks the math: 5.8 million shelter intakes a year nationally, 77 percent of owner surrenders are cost-driven, and 47 percent of all intake comes from the highest-vulnerability census tracts while only 8 percent comes from the lowest. The system is built downstream of the problem.

The structural reason is the contract. Municipal animal services contracts are written for downstream activity. Animals received, animals housed, animals euthanized, animals adopted. They are paid per intake, not per prevention. So when finance asks "what are we getting for this money," the metrics that come back are all downstream. Prevention spending does not exist as a line item in most municipal animal services budgets.

The one place I have seen this break is Dr. Antonio Caldwell's Pet Care Connect program. He runs a municipal animal welfare operation that redirects general fund money toward door-to-door spay/neuter, microchip scanning at fire stations, and 311 call heat-map deployment. Roughly 160 S/N signups per event. His own finance department pushes back on the cost. He keeps making the case anyway because the alternative is the cleanup his agency already pays for. PCC is not a separate nonprofit. It IS the municipal shelter, redirecting money toward prevention.

That is the model AAF is trying to scale. We sent direct mail to all 41 county commissioners across our seven-county Central Alabama service area in April with the same argument framed for taxpayers: every prevention dollar saves three to five dollars on the downstream side. We packaged the spreadsheet math as a Municipal Prevention Case PDF on our website if anyone wants to pull from it. First commissioner response came in 30 days later.

The system you described is unsustainable because the incentive structure rewards the cleanup. Until prevention is a contracted line item, private nonprofits will keep carrying the bag. The fix is municipal budget structure, not just more donations.

Thank you for naming it. Keeping an eye on this thread.

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

Original Message:
Sent: 05-09-2026 06:00 PM
From: Analis B. Howell (She/Her)
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hello BJ,

This is a very interesting point. In this vein of conversation, I did some research recently for a project and learnt something shocking; The burden of providing outside care to prevent new shelter intakes, aka pet food pantries, free/discounted pet care, free/discounted grooming? Falls almost entirely on privately run organisations. Government subsidised shelters provide only a small amount of community care, perhaps due to the strictness of government budgets and contracts. It's shocking, because it means the burden of care is heavily on already overburdened private organisations. It's also important to note that many of these programs, especially pet food and supply pantries, are reliant on donations, which means the quality and outreach of these programs are very limited. I certainly think better government support is critical to really keep animals in their loving homes, becuase the current system is overstrained, unfairly balanced, and unsustainable in times of crisis. I am curious if anyone has any additional input on this matter. 

------------------------------
Analis Howell
Pet Sitter
Family Businessw/ Trusted Housesitters
NC
------------------------------

The data for metrics and performance indicators are available for NGO funders and potential government funding, but there is a parallel need for human services alongside the intake prevention effort and the slow trend towards intake prevention funding parallels the marginal progression of One Health-type  programs. Funding stakeholders need clarity on what prevention will look like because there is a risk of the "prevention conundrum" (meaning if we're preventing a problem then how do we know that there's still a problem to prevent that would require continued funding?)

We should see an acceleration to intake prevention funding as One Health programs gain traction and similar support. In that vein, we need to have early inter-service conversations about what efficient collaboration should look like and where responsibilities should sit. 

------------------------------
Lawrence Minnis
George Mason University
DC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 05-09-2026 06:00 PM
From: Analis B. Howell (She/Her)
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hello BJ,

This is a very interesting point. In this vein of conversation, I did some research recently for a project and learnt something shocking; The burden of providing outside care to prevent new shelter intakes, aka pet food pantries, free/discounted pet care, free/discounted grooming? Falls almost entirely on privately run organisations. Government subsidised shelters provide only a small amount of community care, perhaps due to the strictness of government budgets and contracts. It's shocking, because it means the burden of care is heavily on already overburdened private organisations. It's also important to note that many of these programs, especially pet food and supply pantries, are reliant on donations, which means the quality and outreach of these programs are very limited. I certainly think better government support is critical to really keep animals in their loving homes, becuase the current system is overstrained, unfairly balanced, and unsustainable in times of crisis. I am curious if anyone has any additional input on this matter. 

------------------------------
Analis Howell
Pet Sitter
Family Businessw/ Trusted Housesitters
NC
------------------------------

Lawrence, the One Health parallel is the right one, and the prevention conundrum is exactly the funding trap AAF is trying to design around.

On the One Health alignment: Colorado just operationalized it. HB26-1229 (signed May 8) recognizes the human-animal bond as a social determinant of health and authorizes the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to factor that bond into public health planning. That is One Health embedded directly in state public health code. The funding aperture you predicted is opening in real time. The state that follows Colorado becomes the second state where intake prevention can plug into CDC and HHS budget streams instead of competing with food banks for animal welfare grants.

On the prevention conundrum: this is the design problem AAF is solving with measurement infrastructure. Prevention success cannot be allowed to look like absence. Funders defund the absence of a problem. The fix is comparative real-time measurement. The AWRN platform is built to surface (a) cases prevented per dollar deployed, (b) cost-per-intake-avoided vs. cost-per-intake-processed in the same jurisdiction, and (c) demand pressure that did not result in intake. That last one is the invisible at-risk pool that HistLOS reporting and most current shelter dashboards completely miss. If prevention stops, the demand pressure curve spikes within months. Funders see the curve. The conundrum collapses.

On inter-service collaboration: this is the operational layer AWRN was designed to be. The platform sits underneath animal welfare orgs, vet clinics, landlords, food pantries, social workers, and municipal animal services so they all see the same case from their own angle. Where responsibilities sit becomes a configurable workflow, not a turf war. We are running this live across seven counties in Central Alabama with one out-of-state beta partner in Colorado already on the platform.

The conversation you described needs to happen at the state interagency level, not just inside animal welfare conferences. If your lab is working on any of this from the policy or behavioral economics side, I would want to see where the framework overlaps with what AAF is operationalizing in the field. Let's add it to the agenda for our call.

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

Original Message:
Sent: 05-13-2026 06:02 PM
From: Lawrence Minnis
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

The data for metrics and performance indicators are available for NGO funders and potential government funding, but there is a parallel need for human services alongside the intake prevention effort and the slow trend towards intake prevention funding parallels the marginal progression of One Health-type  programs. Funding stakeholders need clarity on what prevention will look like because there is a risk of the "prevention conundrum" (meaning if we're preventing a problem then how do we know that there's still a problem to prevent that would require continued funding?)

We should see an acceleration to intake prevention funding as One Health programs gain traction and similar support. In that vein, we need to have early inter-service conversations about what efficient collaboration should look like and where responsibilities should sit. 

------------------------------
Lawrence Minnis
George Mason University
DC
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 05-09-2026 06:00 PM
From: Analis B. Howell (She/Her)
Subject: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Hello BJ,

This is a very interesting point. In this vein of conversation, I did some research recently for a project and learnt something shocking; The burden of providing outside care to prevent new shelter intakes, aka pet food pantries, free/discounted pet care, free/discounted grooming? Falls almost entirely on privately run organisations. Government subsidised shelters provide only a small amount of community care, perhaps due to the strictness of government budgets and contracts. It's shocking, because it means the burden of care is heavily on already overburdened private organisations. It's also important to note that many of these programs, especially pet food and supply pantries, are reliant on donations, which means the quality and outreach of these programs are very limited. I certainly think better government support is critical to really keep animals in their loving homes, becuase the current system is overstrained, unfairly balanced, and unsustainable in times of crisis. I am curious if anyone has any additional input on this matter. 

------------------------------
Analis Howell
Pet Sitter
Family Businessw/ Trusted Housesitters
NC