This weekend, Kansas City Pet Project, and 2 other area shelters, are a part of the ASPCA Mega Match A Thon. It has been an amazing event for us in the past and this year appears to be no different. On Friday, day 1 of our 3 day event, we did 81 adoptions -- getting us well on our way to our goal of 200 over the course of the weekend. 81 surpasses our single day adoption record of 77 that we did on the 4th of July 2012.
One of the many challenges in pulling off a big adoption event like this is that we have a lot of adopters come in, and a lot of volunteers helping these adopters. That's not the problem, except that sometimes it's a challenge for volunteers (and staff, or me for that matter) to make good matches between dogs and adopters because they don't know the personalities of all 300 dogs on sight (and we rotate animals through on average of every 14 days, so they're not there for long usually).
So a group of our volunteers made "key cards" to help peple make their matches.
The cards are a fun way to help adopters quickly determine important things like energy level, personality, ability to live with cats, children and other dogs -- so that people can quickly identify pets that will fit their wishes and lifestyle.
As we like to say, we have a dog for just about everyone, but not every dog will work for everyone.
It was really fun, and impressive to watch the adopters walking through the kennels yesterday with their "key cards" as they looked for the match for their family.
And in the spirit of "meeting your match" I thinks this was a great way to make adopting a dog easier, more fun, and more streamlined.
Thanks to our awesome volunteers who helped put these together. It was no small task. But their benefit is certainly being seen in the adoption numbers this weekend.
That is awesome!!!!!!!
Posted by: Lori | October 19, 2013 at 09:50 AM
This is a great idea and could be used in shelters, too. I'd like to see another one developed for cats whose true personalities often are hidden just because of the stress of being in a shelter environment.
Posted by: db | October 19, 2013 at 10:18 AM
Fantastic use of clever graphics. Hope the idea spreads.
Posted by: jan | October 19, 2013 at 12:38 PM
This a great idea. We did something similar based on energy level for one of the local shelters we work with.
One thing we struggle with is foot traffic. How do you guys generate such a high level of people to come in? Ar you in a central location or already had decent foot traffic before you took over?
Our shelter is a bit out of the way and not well-known. We did get on local news station and newspapers, but needed more foot traffic to have this kind of success.
Also, what percentage of your shelter population are pit bulls/pit mixes and how many did you adopt out during event?
Do you have average length of stay, live release rates for pit bulls and pit mixes? Reason I ask is a large portion of our population are pits and we'd like to set realistic goals.
Posted by: Friends of Newark NJ Animal Shelter | October 19, 2013 at 01:54 PM
Wonderful idea - I have volunteers who could pull this off for my hounds. Thank you for sharing - and congratulations on a GREAT adoption weekend.
Posted by: Roberta | October 19, 2013 at 04:35 PM
Newark -- Yeah, we struggle with foot traffic sometimes too. Our shelter is definitely in an out-of-the way location (it's a 40 year old shelter that is actually behind a former city landfill). We've really worked hard on it with social media and being involved in events in our community. For this event we also did some TV advertising (which I know is cost prohibitive in Newark).
One other thing we've done is we opened up a small retail location. Because of the slow economy, several of our outdoor shopping centers have open retail spaces and we were able to score a really good deal on about 2,000 square feet of space. It cost us a fair amount up front to pay for the lease and the kenneling, but we did more than 1000 adoptions out of that location in just the first 9 months -- so it's been a huge bonus for us.
Posted by: Brent | October 20, 2013 at 09:52 AM
BTW, I can let you know how many pit bulls were adopted out during the event. It will be a substantial number. About 25% of our total canine intake is pit bulls, and thus, they usually make up 40% or more of our shelter population. Last year we placed nearly 1,000 pit bulls in spite of having to deny a lot of adoptions because of breed bans in neighboring communities. We have a lot of pit bulls and pit bull owners in our community -- and we've generally found that if we make them available for adoption, there is a demand for them.
Posted by: Brent | October 20, 2013 at 09:58 AM
I just love this idea. We could really use this at our cat shelter when we have those big adoption events.
Congratulation on all the adoptions and the great way of making it easier to match pets and guardians!
Posted by: Michaela - Animal Aide of St. Thomas/Elgin | November 02, 2013 at 05:58 AM
great idea.
Posted by: Dog hero | November 07, 2013 at 03:21 PM