Bj Adkins

RE: How do you deal with ending a temporary foster situation?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-24-2026 09:45 AM
Found In Egroup: Animal Welfare Professionals \ view thread

Hey, I run a similar program at Animal-Angels Foundation in Central Alabama. We call our equivalent The Bridge, with crisis foster as a sub-program. We have hit this exact wall a few times in our first year and the answer has gotten clearer the more we run it. The contract is the answer. You already ...

HUD memo on ESA accommodation is coming, and your call volume is about to change

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-23-2026 12:18 PM
Found In Egroup: Animal Welfare Professionals \ view thread

The New York Times reported today that HUD is circulating an internal memo that would dramatically narrow Fair Housing Act protections for assistance animals. Emotional support animals would be largely excluded. Service animals would face tighter scrutiny too. The justification HUD is using is the ESA ...

RE: Where is prevention?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-22-2026 11:40 PM
Found In Egroup: Animal Welfare Professionals \ view thread

Karen, the history you laid out is real and worth respecting. Spay/neuter is the biggest prevention win the field has ever produced. From 17 million dying in shelters in the 1980s to under 500,000 today, that is decades of work and it is the playbook everyone points to. Here is where I want to push ...

RE: adoption educational program

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-22-2026 06:43 PM
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Socially Conscious Sheltering is a real framework that came out of real practitioner experience trying to balance resource constraints with animal welfare commitments. The No Kill movement is also a real framework that came out of real practitioner experience trying to push the field past a euthanasia-default ...

Free Claude/ChatGPT workflows I built for my nonprofit, sharing the files

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-22-2026 05:43 PM
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Every AI tool I tried for my own nonprofit produced something that sounded like a regional auto insurance company. The donor thank-yous were generic. The grant LOIs needed three rewrites. The board update drafts had to be tossed. I spent the last six months figuring out what actually fixes that. The ...

RE: What requirement did you remove from your services that surprised you with results?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-22-2026 12:48 PM
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Karen, This is exactly the kind of answer I was hoping the thread would surface. Every one of those removed requirements maps to a gate the field has treated as untouchable for decades. Two of yours land hardest for me. The proof-of-financial-need removal for spay/neuter is the same call we made when ...

RE: Animal Overpopulation and Lack of Services in Rural Areas

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-21-2026 10:51 PM
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Brittany, welcome. Rural prevention work is one of the hardest lanes in animal welfare and one of the most needed. Glad you're stepping into it. A few things that might help based on where we are at Animal-Angels Foundation (Central Alabama, 7 counties, 501(c)(3) approved March 2026, sole operator at ...

RE: Foundation and Corporate Support

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-21-2026 10:48 PM
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Here's a reply you can paste: Roxanne, this is the question I keep coming back to with our fundraising coach. Here's what's been working for us at Animal-Angels Foundation in central Alabama. We are early stage (501(c)(3) approved March 2026, sole-operator launch), so this is built in the trenches. ...

RE: Dog return rates are skyrocketing- is the economy to blame?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-21-2026 10:41 PM
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Yes. We are seeing the same pattern in central Alabama, and our intake forms read identical to what you described. Returns of dogs that have been in their homes three, five, eight years. Not adoption failures. Not behavior problems. Long-tenured owners who have hit a wall financially and have nothing ...

RE: Can Social Media Build a Foster Movement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-21-2026 07:20 PM
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Brynnadele, thanks for amplifying the village point. That one matters because the operational truth underneath it is harder than the social media surface makes it look. You cannot post "fostering is supported" if your actual support stack is one volunteer coordinator answering DMs at 11 PM. The content ...

RE: What requirement did you remove from your services that surprised you with results?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-21-2026 04:36 PM
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Bonnie, thank you for naming this so plainly. The behavior you described, owners dumping the dog or calling animal control claiming a stray when they hear about the waiting list, is happening everywhere it gets reported and probably twice as often where it does not. You and your team are not imagining ...

RE: Screening Volunteer Applicants & Weekend-Only Volunteers

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-20-2026 09:30 AM
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This sounds like an operations problem dressed up as a screening problem. The screening you use shapes who applies, but the bigger lever is how the shifts themselves are structured. A few patterns that work: Require a minimum weekday commitment to qualify for weekend slots. One weekday shift per month, ...

What requirement did you remove from your services that surprised you with results?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-20-2026 04:34 AM
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Every org has requirements. Income documentation, residency proof, pre-existing spay/neuter status, surrender fees, foster ownership minimums, age limits, breed restrictions. They make sense on paper. They protect resources. They filter for serious applicants. They keep the workload manageable. But ...

RE: Can Social Media Build a Foster Movement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-19-2026 10:37 PM
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Brynnadele's reframe (marketing dogs vs. building a movement) is the actual unlock in that thread. Katy's specificity-and-vetting point is right too. Draft reply that lands AAF's angle without stepping on either of theirs: Brynnadele, your reframe is the actual unlock here. Most rescue social media ...

RE: Where is prevention?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-18-2026 08:47 AM
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Eva and Jessica, both of you are working on threads of the same problem and AAF is the third thread. We run prevention infrastructure in Central Alabama and operate from the same mission frame as SAFE Pet Partners: helping pets by helping people. Eva, your "based on models of other successful prevention ...

RE: Where is prevention?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-18-2026 06:49 AM
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Hi Jody, Thank you for reading and for the kind words. Means a lot coming from someone who's done this work hands-on. The 20% exit rate detail caught me. That's a brutal place to do animal welfare. The fact that you stayed in the field after seeing what intake-prevention can do tells me you're working ...

RE: Where is prevention?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-17-2026 06:45 AM
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Adriana, Your line about government reaction versus proactive prevention is the entire thesis. Most people inside Animal Care and Control would not say it out loud. You did. Thank you. Free, community-targeted spay and neuter is exactly the lever. AAF runs ours as SNIP. Free access through partner ...

RE: Where is prevention?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-17-2026 04:39 AM
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Jessica, Thank you for jumping in. The human-side stabilization piece is the exact layer AAF's Bridge program is built around. Our Pet Help Desk catches families before they make the surrender call. The Bridge funds the food, supplies, vet care, and crisis foster placements that keep the family together ...

Where is prevention?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-16-2026 06:07 PM
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I have been watching the same blind spot show up in every animal welfare conversation this month, across four completely different groups of people, and I need to name it. Sylacauga, Alabama proposed shooting stray dogs with a .22 rifle as a population control measure. The story went national. Advocates ...

RE: Returned Adoptions - who takes their animals back?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-15-2026 08:51 AM
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Laurie and Kim, We do the same with our adoptions. Basically, for life, they can bring them back to us at any time, and that's because we would much rather get them back than any of the alternatives. What happens quite often in our area if the shelter is full is they get dumped in a neighborhood or ...

RE: adoption educational program

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-15-2026 08:46 AM
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Hi Rosemary, Glad you asked. The 7/30/60/90 cadence came out of a problem we kept seeing across the rescue ecosystem. The first 90 days post-adoption is where returns get decided, and most orgs are flying blind during exactly that window. The 3-3-3 rule is the right mental model. 7/30/60/90 is the ...

7/30/60/90 Adopter Follow-Up Framework via Animal-Angels Foundation

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-15-2026 08:45 AM
Found In Library: Animal Welfare Professionals

Reply from discussion thread, " adoption educational program " Glad you asked. The 7/30/60/90 cadence came out of a problem we kept seeing across the rescue ecosystem. The first 90 days post-adoption is where returns get decided, and most orgs are flying blind during exactly that window. The 3-3-3 ...

RE: adoption educational program

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-14-2026 05:17 PM
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Linda, yes, with the caveat that I use it as a starting framework for adopters, not a rigid rule. The 3-3-3 sets realistic expectations (decompression, settling, bonding) that prevent an adopter from returning a dog at day 4 because the dog isn't sleeping on the couch yet. But I pair it with AAF's 7/30/60/90 ...

RE: adoption educational program

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-14-2026 04:45 PM
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Catherine, thank you for this. The veteran-to-veteran connection is real and the work you are describing is exactly the kind of thing AAF wants to build into our volunteer model long-term. Veterans and first responders bringing structured purpose into shelter work, while the work itself helps with the ...

RE: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-13-2026 06:19 PM
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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 ...

RE: New open-access article published on the dog adoption decision process

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-13-2026 04:47 PM
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Lawrence, thank you. Looking forward to the conversation. A few things I will bring to it: a walkthrough of the Sniff & Greet design (we have run a small set of structured low-stress matching sessions worth comparing against your visitation-phase data), the Pet Help Desk CallIntake schema that captures ...

RE: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-13-2026 04:43 PM
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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 ...

RE: Lessons from Maddie and Life of Kai: Supporting Dogs and Humans Through Transition

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-13-2026 04:40 PM
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Julielani, this is exactly the work I want more of in the Maddie's community. Bookmark-worthy. The first infographic maps almost one-to-one onto AAF's Adoption Boost program, the post-adoption support arm of our six core programs. We run a 7/30/60/90 day follow-up sequence and your 2-day/2-week/4-month ...

RE: adoption educational program

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-13-2026 04:34 PM
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Sofia, this is right in AAF's lane. We run Adoption Boost as one of our six core programs and the question of where to put the education has been our biggest design conversation. What we have landed on: pre-adoption education works best when it is short, optional, and behavior-aware. The real retention ...

RE: SOP - Intake Prevention

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-13-2026 04:31 PM
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Amber, we are mid-build on this exact thing at AAF and would love to see what others share. What we have so far on the prevention coordinator workflow: A printable one-page intake form mapped to a structured database (CallIntake entity in our AWRN platform), with 23 reason codes and 16 routing destinations. ...

RE: Monthly foster bootcamp

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-13-2026 04:28 PM
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Melissa, this is exactly the gap I keep running into. We are running four foster types at AAF right now (Foster-to-Train, Finder-to-Foster, Temporary Crisis, and standard placements) and the ongoing support layer is the piece I have not figured out yet. New fosters get a packet, an animal, and then a ...

RE: Can storytelling and community literacy partnerships help shelters increase adoption visibility and fundraising?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-12-2026 11:12 PM
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Hi Serena, Welcome aboard. Storytelling is one of the most underused levers in animal welfare, and it's exactly where I think the field is headed. At Animal-Angels Foundation we've been treating real cases as content from day one. Lisa called our Pet Help Desk from a hospital bed about her dog Buddy. ...

RE: New open-access article published on the dog adoption decision process

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-12-2026 08:22 PM
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Hi Lawrence, This is the framework I've been waiting for. The signal-to-noise framing maps directly to what we built at Animal-Angels Foundation. Three pieces stand out from a practitioner perspective. The "noise" problem (incomplete information, breed misdesignation, behavioral assessment validity) ...

The intake question we forgot to ask every new partner

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-12-2026 08:16 PM
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When we started building our partner network, we onboarded based on services offered. Who does spay and neuter. Who handles food assistance. Who takes behavioral support cases. We thought that was the directory. Then a Pet Help Desk caller needed urgent vet care. We looked at the directory, picked the ...

RE: What our intake reason codes miss, and what we started tracking instead

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-12-2026 08:10 PM
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Hi Karen, Yes. The breathing problems story is exactly the pattern. The surface reason is a socially acceptable version of what the family couldn't bring themselves to say. Skin allergy and ongoing medical care is a completely different intervention than "wife can't tolerate the smell," but only one ...

RE: What our intake reason codes miss, and what we started tracking instead

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-12-2026 08:09 PM
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Hi Tasha, Thanks for jumping in. The fact that you're willing to take this back to your adoption team means a lot. When you talk to them, the most useful question is usually: "Are there reasons families surrender that don't fit any of our existing intake codes?" Most teams have far richer information ...

Pets aren't furniture anymore. Colorado just made it official.

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-12-2026 12:50 AM
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Most people scrolled past it last Friday. Colorado's Governor signed HB 26-1229 into law, formally recognizing the human-animal bond as a social determinant of health. Sounds small. Isn't. It's the most important prevention law this field has seen in a generation. The second issue of The Shift to ...

RE: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-11-2026 05:00 PM
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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 ...

What our intake reason codes miss, and what we started tracking instead

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-10-2026 11:44 PM
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Something I keep running into as we build out our Pet Help Desk is how badly standard intake reason codes describe what actually drives surrender. A caller says housing. We code housing. But the real chain is more like: pet rent went from $25 to $50, the security deposit was already a stretch, the apartment ...

RE: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-09-2026 03:22 PM
Found In Egroup: Animal Welfare Professionals \ view thread

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 ...

RE: Returned Adoptions - who takes their animals back?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-08-2026 08:06 AM
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Kim, thank you. Your hope is exactly the bet we're making with AWRN. When every partner can see the same animal record, the same case history, and the same network of available help in real time, "this animal has nowhere to go" stops being a sentence we have to say. The original agency, the new organization, ...

RE: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-07-2026 05:30 PM
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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 ...

RE: Returned Adoptions - who takes their animals back?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 09:43 PM
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Kim, the frustration is fair and the downstream pressure you're naming is real. AAF isn't a rescue so we don't run adoptions, which means we don't have a lifetime return policy in the traditional sense. But orgs that don't stand behind their adoptions absolutely push the work onto whoever picks up the ...

RE: The call nobody tracks

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 04:42 PM
Found In Egroup: Animal Welfare Professionals \ view thread

Ashley, happy to share. Every call to AAF's Pet Help Desk gets logged the same way, regardless of channel (phone, email, or partner referral). We capture caller info (name, phone, county, referral source), pet info if applicable, reason for call broken into about 25 specific categories (pet deposit ...

RE: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 04:26 PM
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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 ...

RE: What would change if we funded prevention, not just placement?

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 10:07 AM
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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 ...

RE: The call nobody tracks

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 09:19 AM
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Looking forward to speaking with you. ------------------------------ BJ Adkins Founder/Director Animal-Angels Foundation Pinson, AL bjadkins@animal-angels.org animal-angelsfoundation.org ------------------------------

RE: The call nobody tracks

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 09:01 AM
Found In Egroup: Animal Welfare Professionals \ view thread

Elsa, this is the second comment on this post from someone tracking the call I keep saying nobody tracks, which is a good problem to have. Hurricane Helene as the forcing function is the kind of detail that doesn't make it into national reports but explains a lot about why some regions moved faster ...

RE: The call nobody tracks

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 07:59 AM
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Sabrina, this is the call being tracked. You're describing what most cities don't have, a structured front door before the shelter door with real outcome data behind it. Reasons for surrender, no-response cases, retentions, rehoming, and completed surrenders in one monthly report is the kind of visibility ...

RE: Saving Lives One Cat at a Time in a Community That Needs Us

Posted By Bj Adkins 05-06-2026 05:32 AM
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Love this. Matching at $2,500 per town is a smart starting number. Big enough to fund real surgeries, around 100 cats if your clinic runs $25 a head, but small enough that commissioners won't choke on it. Asking the community to raise the match first also flips the dynamic. You're not begging for a handout, ...

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