Animal Welfare Professionals

How as an outsider, yet a known quantity (volunteer/donor) do you help a little momandpop rescue usher in change to bring them into the 19th century? I have worked in two municipal shelters, and many kinds of non-profit rescues for the past 25 years. We all need and have to have municipal shelters and small rescues, they are symbiotic. I wish they could work together better, but they seem to be so personality driven that they can't. There is so much physical day-to-day work to be done which is tangible and so exhausting that you cannot even think about anything else at the end of the day. I used to help during the holidays in the shipping department of a manufacturer I worked for; it was so satisfying to see the huge pile of taped boxes ready to ship at the end of the day, it was so much more energizing than my deskwork which never saw an endpoint. There is so much daily visible work that has to be done to keep the animals alive, but the People Part which people seem to hate, has to be done or the animals are just housed indefinitely. The marketing, and the stuff that actually gets the animals out of the shelter and onto a couch is left by the wayside. It is so easy to say "I hate people", but working with animals because you hate people makes no sense. You cannot separate the two, there is always a human element to every rescue pet we have, from the owner surrender to the adoption. We as the animal's advocate have to learn to gently persuade someone to keep their pet, or to steer a potential adopter towards any kind of dog as long as it is a pibble  or an old, small, blind, toothless, platinum kibble bite-case. The People Part to me is equal parts elementary school teacher, Mom, social worker, animal behaviorist, therapist, cheerleader, magician, and used car salesman. You have to listen, analyze, communicate, and wait patiently sometimes, and when you have only four staff people between the front of house and back of house, it is almost impossible to not have customer service be, "WHAT?!?" . Suggesting any kind of change or updates even while offering to pay for it, do all the work, take all the Maddie's Fund courses, show them the science-based data, write the pilot program, and its grant, all while providing pizza and ice cream is still met with a shriek and possibly a well-aimed stapler to your head. 

I do not want to start yet another small non-profit, I want to help the existing ones and help them work together better. Le sigh.

How as an outsider, yet a known quantity (volunteer/donor) do you help a little momandpop rescue usher in change to bring them into the 19th century? I have worked in two municipal shelters, and many kinds of non-profit rescues for the past 25 years. We all need and have to have municipal shelters and small rescues, they are symbiotic. I wish they could work together better, but they seem to be so personality driven that they can't. There is so much physical day-to-day work to be done which is tangible and so exhausting that you cannot even think about anything else at the end of the day. I used to help during the holidays in the shipping department of a manufacturer I worked for; it was so satisfying to see the huge pile of taped boxes ready to ship at the end of the day, it was so much more energizing than my deskwork which never saw an endpoint. There is so much daily visible work that has to be done to keep the animals alive, but the People Part which people seem to hate, has to be done or the animals are just housed indefinitely. The marketing, and the stuff that actually gets the animals out of the shelter and onto a couch is left by the wayside. It is so easy to say "I hate people", but working with animals because you hate people makes no sense. You cannot separate the two, there is always a human element to every rescue pet we have, from the owner surrender to the adoption. We as the animal's advocate have to learn to gently persuade someone to keep their pet, or to steer a potential adopter towards any kind of dog as long as it is a pibble  or an old, small, blind, toothless, platinum kibble bite-case. The People Part to me is equal parts elementary school teacher, Mom, social worker, animal behaviorist, therapist, cheerleader, magician, and used car salesman. You have to listen, analyze, communicate, and wait patiently sometimes, and when you have only four staff people between the front of house and back of house, it is almost impossible to not have customer service be, "WHAT?!?" . Suggesting any kind of change or updates even while offering to pay for it, do all the work, take all the Maddie's Fund courses, show them the science-based data, write the pilot program, and its grant, all while providing pizza and ice cream is still met with a shriek and possibly a well-aimed stapler to your head. 

I do not want to start yet another small non-profit, I want to help the existing ones and help them work together better. Le sigh.