Animal Welfare Professionals

Hello! I'm a board member and foster of a small feline rescue group in a more rural farming community. 
When it comes to the online adoption application a potential adopter fills out, I've been thinking of ways to remove some of the barriers within it and how to propose such ideas to the other 4 board members. 

For those who have any or all of these questions in your application, which one do you feel is the most vital to revamp or fully eliminate? And to those who don't have such questions, what does your adoption process look like and how do you get all of the board members to agree to changes?

- application asks about any current pets in home and if they're UTD on vaccines even if they only have dogs and are wanting to adopt a cat.
- their vet contact information 
- how many hours a day and week do you work
- ever convicted of a felony ( I think this is more so if yes and it's for animal abuse)
-3 non family references and their phone number and email to contact
-landlord information if you're renting doesn't matter if it's apartment or home 
- D.O B (don't adopt out to under 18yr old) who all lives in the home and ages 

I've had to personally fill out an application for a foster I've adopted just for records reasons, but even I felt like it was too long with too many questions.
Our adoption coordinator gets vet records either from the applicant or their vet, calls landlord if renting( to ensure they can have a pet or another if they already have one to essentially look out for them so they don't get in trouble for having too many) and reaches out to their references (which sometimes someone may not have 2-3 non family references). 

We do meet and greets as well whether in person or virtually if they live a distance away however it can easily take a week for everyone to be contacted and respond back. There's a humane society about an hour from our "central" location and they're able to do same day adoptions and afford to do adoption fees as low as $5 which opens up a whole other discussion. 
What would you eliminate from our application process to be more inclusive as well as speed up the entire process from submitting the application to adoption?

Thanks!!
#AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms

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Tracy Hanson
Ellie's Legacy Pet Rescue
Alexandria MN
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That does seem like a lot. Do you do criminal background checks, or is that counting on honesty? 3 references is a lot. Some people struggle with 3 for a job application, because they are not social, haven't worked much, etc, and animals are their best friends and greatest companionship. We don't ask many of the questions you do, however I sort of wish  we did check with landlords and vets. Seems some of our biggest reasons for returns are not able to have pets (caught), and health concerns (some preventable).  Our minimum age is 21 y/o, extremely rare exceptions. 
I think questions included should have a reason you will actually consider orvtake action on.

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Vicky DeGroote
Adoptions Services Manager
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2023 05:21 AM
From: Tracy Hanson
Subject: Adoption applications

Hello! I'm a board member and foster of a small feline rescue group in a more rural farming community. 
When it comes to the online adoption application a potential adopter fills out, I've been thinking of ways to remove some of the barriers within it and how to propose such ideas to the other 4 board members. 

For those who have any or all of these questions in your application, which one do you feel is the most vital to revamp or fully eliminate? And to those who don't have such questions, what does your adoption process look like and how do you get all of the board members to agree to changes?

- application asks about any current pets in home and if they're UTD on vaccines even if they only have dogs and are wanting to adopt a cat.
- their vet contact information 
- how many hours a day and week do you work
- ever convicted of a felony ( I think this is more so if yes and it's for animal abuse)
-3 non family references and their phone number and email to contact
-landlord information if you're renting doesn't matter if it's apartment or home 
- D.O B (don't adopt out to under 18yr old) who all lives in the home and ages 

I've had to personally fill out an application for a foster I've adopted just for records reasons, but even I felt like it was too long with too many questions.
Our adoption coordinator gets vet records either from the applicant or their vet, calls landlord if renting( to ensure they can have a pet or another if they already have one to essentially look out for them so they don't get in trouble for having too many) and reaches out to their references (which sometimes someone may not have 2-3 non family references). 

We do meet and greets as well whether in person or virtually if they live a distance away however it can easily take a week for everyone to be contacted and respond back. There's a humane society about an hour from our "central" location and they're able to do same day adoptions and afford to do adoption fees as low as $5 which opens up a whole other discussion. 
What would you eliminate from our application process to be more inclusive as well as speed up the entire process from submitting the application to adoption?

Thanks!!
#AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms

------------------------------
Tracy Hanson
Ellie's Legacy Pet Rescue
Alexandria MN
------------------------------

Hi Tracy,

We're also a rural shelter that just went through a similar process.  We had a very restrictive 4 page application that we just pared down to 1 page.  Looking at your questions specifically:

• Application asks about any current pets in home and if they're UTD on vaccines even if they only have dogs and are wanting to adopt a cat. 
  We eliminated this requirement completely.  Yes vaccinations is best practice, but focus on education to convince adopters to do this.  You have ZERO control about what an adopter is going to do once an animal leaves a home, plus the big eye opener for us to talking about having people who got denied because they weren't up to date, even though their last cat just died at 20+ years old.  That cat clearly wasn't lacking in care even though vaccines weren't up to date.
• Their vet contact information. 
  We eliminated this requirement also for the same reason as above.  The big eye opener there again was our in-house vet told us she wouldn't pass the application check.  It also drastically delayed our application approvals in waiting for someone to get back to us.
• How many hours a day and week do you work. 
  We also eliminated this requirement!  Again, you have no control over what someone will do once they leave your building.  This question at worst encourages people to lie.  And even at best, if they work zero hours a week today, you have no control over tomorrow.  What if their partner loses her job and they both have to go back to work 20 hours a day, a week after they adopt the animal? 
• Ever convicted of a felony.  We modified our requirement here.  In our state it's relatively easy to do a background check so we restrict based on any history of animal abuse, domestic abuse, or child related crimes (essentially we would never adopt to anyone who has hurt an animal or could use an animal to hurt someone else).  We also have a 5 year restriction on violent crime and the person must have no pending felonies or misdemeanors that could result in jail time.  Beyond that, if someone was convicted of a felony 20 years ago, that doesn't necessarily make them a bad pet owner today.
• 3 non family references and their phone number and email to contact. 
  Whew, that one is a doozy, we did not have a requirement like that, it seems very invasive and very time and labor consuming for staff.  In the end, the adopter is either going to find 3 people who will easily say whatever they want, so it's not a helpful reference for you.  Or they will find that to be too uncomfortable and will go get an animal anyway and your cats will sit while other cats that you could be serving won't have space to come to you.
• Landlord information if you're renting doesn't matter if it's apartment or home . 
  We kept this requirement because our staff was very concerned about getting rid of it.  The data for open adoptions basically shows that this is rarely a reason that people return animals.  In most cases, even if a landlord doesn't allow something, the person gets away with it and it's not your job to enforce those requirements.  You also have no control over if and when someone moves, or if exceptions can be made.  We made that argument, staff was still worried so we kept this question.
• D.O B (don't adopt out to under 18yr old) who all lives in the home and ages. 
  We kept this question.  We require 18+ adoptions for our contractual obligation.  DOB is required for all adults in the household for background checks.  We no longer require DOB for children because people don't want to give that info out and you can't background check kids anyway.  Instead we have our staff ask questions to the adopter when they're here to try to help them understand best fit for their family, and what animals are suited for them if they have kids.

One of the important points for us in this process was making sure that as we moved to open adoptions we had discussions along the way with board and staff to explain everything, find comfort levels, and keep things that people were worried about.  It can be an incremental process.

The other really important piece of information is, during the pandemic there was, for the first time in about 20 years, a reversal in the trend of people adopting from shelters rather than pet stores and puppy mills.  While this was in part due to the lack of supply at shelters, we also know from the data that millennials are MUCH more likely to not want to give out their personal information and if you put up barriers, they will go somewhere else.  This means more animals sit with you for longer, they're more likely to get sick, and cost you more money.  That also means when you have animals at your shelter or rescue who aren't moving, they're taking up spaces that would otherwise go to another animal in need, which means that animal not coming in has an even worse outcome.

There are lots and lots of great references on Open Adoptions and resources out there in terms of experts who will talk with your shelter and materials you can give to your board and anyone who's resistant to this process.  Plus your timing is really good because a lot of these changes are covered under the Open Arms Challenge that started this week, so you might even be able to snag some money for making these changes.

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Jeff Okazaki
Humane Society of Jefferson County
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2023 05:21 AM
From: Tracy Hanson
Subject: Adoption applications

Hello! I'm a board member and foster of a small feline rescue group in a more rural farming community. 
When it comes to the online adoption application a potential adopter fills out, I've been thinking of ways to remove some of the barriers within it and how to propose such ideas to the other 4 board members. 

For those who have any or all of these questions in your application, which one do you feel is the most vital to revamp or fully eliminate? And to those who don't have such questions, what does your adoption process look like and how do you get all of the board members to agree to changes?

- application asks about any current pets in home and if they're UTD on vaccines even if they only have dogs and are wanting to adopt a cat.
- their vet contact information 
- how many hours a day and week do you work
- ever convicted of a felony ( I think this is more so if yes and it's for animal abuse)
-3 non family references and their phone number and email to contact
-landlord information if you're renting doesn't matter if it's apartment or home 
- D.O B (don't adopt out to under 18yr old) who all lives in the home and ages 

I've had to personally fill out an application for a foster I've adopted just for records reasons, but even I felt like it was too long with too many questions.
Our adoption coordinator gets vet records either from the applicant or their vet, calls landlord if renting( to ensure they can have a pet or another if they already have one to essentially look out for them so they don't get in trouble for having too many) and reaches out to their references (which sometimes someone may not have 2-3 non family references). 

We do meet and greets as well whether in person or virtually if they live a distance away however it can easily take a week for everyone to be contacted and respond back. There's a humane society about an hour from our "central" location and they're able to do same day adoptions and afford to do adoption fees as low as $5 which opens up a whole other discussion. 
What would you eliminate from our application process to be more inclusive as well as speed up the entire process from submitting the application to adoption?

Thanks!!
#AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms

------------------------------
Tracy Hanson
Ellie's Legacy Pet Rescue
Alexandria MN
------------------------------

Hi,

What has helped us is the electronic version of our adoption application. We setup a jotform to simplify the process, we also still have a paper form.  I agree with removing references as people will tell you what you want to here. As well as what Jeff stated below about vet visits, our vets would tell you the same thing:)  

We have the landlord question only to check and make sure pets are allowed, we know many applicants "hide" the number of pets so they do not have to pay the monthly deposit.

We have a question about tell us about your "typical" day just to get a feel if the cat they want is a good fit for their lifestyle. We are most concerned that the cat will be indoor and be a good fit for the cat as well as the family. 

We did have 18 year old but just changed to 21 year old and up.

Here is the link to our form. https://form.jotform.com/sandrah64/adoptapp

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Sandra Hill
Operation CatSnip of Kentucky, Inc
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2023 05:21 AM
From: Tracy Hanson
Subject: Adoption applications

Hello! I'm a board member and foster of a small feline rescue group in a more rural farming community. 
When it comes to the online adoption application a potential adopter fills out, I've been thinking of ways to remove some of the barriers within it and how to propose such ideas to the other 4 board members. 

For those who have any or all of these questions in your application, which one do you feel is the most vital to revamp or fully eliminate? And to those who don't have such questions, what does your adoption process look like and how do you get all of the board members to agree to changes?

- application asks about any current pets in home and if they're UTD on vaccines even if they only have dogs and are wanting to adopt a cat.
- their vet contact information 
- how many hours a day and week do you work
- ever convicted of a felony ( I think this is more so if yes and it's for animal abuse)
-3 non family references and their phone number and email to contact
-landlord information if you're renting doesn't matter if it's apartment or home 
- D.O B (don't adopt out to under 18yr old) who all lives in the home and ages 

I've had to personally fill out an application for a foster I've adopted just for records reasons, but even I felt like it was too long with too many questions.
Our adoption coordinator gets vet records either from the applicant or their vet, calls landlord if renting( to ensure they can have a pet or another if they already have one to essentially look out for them so they don't get in trouble for having too many) and reaches out to their references (which sometimes someone may not have 2-3 non family references). 

We do meet and greets as well whether in person or virtually if they live a distance away however it can easily take a week for everyone to be contacted and respond back. There's a humane society about an hour from our "central" location and they're able to do same day adoptions and afford to do adoption fees as low as $5 which opens up a whole other discussion. 
What would you eliminate from our application process to be more inclusive as well as speed up the entire process from submitting the application to adoption?

Thanks!!
#AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms

------------------------------
Tracy Hanson
Ellie's Legacy Pet Rescue
Alexandria MN
------------------------------