KC DOG BLOG

Late Night Musings: Clearing the Shelters

Yesterday was "Clear The Shelters Day" for many shelters across the nation. The Clear The Shelters event is sponsored by Hills Pet Nutrition, Telemundo and NBC Universal, and based on stats from their website, more than 90,000 pets from 1200 shelters found homes in yesterday's event.

Bakersfield Animal Center - 8-17-19

The numbers are staggering:

The Humane Society of Harlingen did 60 adoptions.

Palm Valley Animal Center/PAWS Adoption Center: 302 Adoptions

Albuqueque Animal Shelter: 113 

Brandywine Valley SPCA: 304

Pima County Animal Center: 122

City of Bakersfield Animal Care Center: 210

And so many more....

Humane Society of Harlingen (TX) - 8-17-19

It's an amazing event. And an amazing day. Today, thousands of animals are sleeping in wonderful homes instead of shelters, and thousands of shelter workers are able to work just a little less hard because their shelters are no longer completely full. It may only last for a few days, but it will be a nice, needed break in the heart of summer. 

The value of these events is tremendous. They not only provide homes for loving pets, but provide a huge sense of pride for the shelter workers and volunteers. They also highlight what is possible with adoption programs.

I think one barrier for many shelters is that they don't know when an adoption program is maximized. Their shelter does adoptions, but not enough people come. How does a shelter grow it?

When we started our work in Kansas City at KC Pet Project, within 2 years we had more than quadrupled the volume of animals adopted from the shelter from approximately 1,500 per year to more than 6,000 adoptions per year. How? By doing aggressive marketing of adoptable pets. Removing barriers to adoption. Providing great customer service. And repeating that daily. 

Clear the Shelter events, Super Adoptions, adoption promotions, etc are usually the place many shelters start in seeing the power of these types of promotions. And research has continually shown that mega-adoption events are effective and do not devalue the pets or the homes they go to. 

Brandywine SPCA - 8-17-19

Clear the Shelter Events just save lives...and show the power of marketing, providing good customer service and involving the community into your shelter's live-saving needs and goals. It also creates the opportunity to reshape shelters' thinking and focusing on adoption and live outcomes as a primary space management tool.

And that's worthy of celebration.

 

Very Good Sentences -- Poverty Porn

Here's an interesting article about marketing for charities using "look-away" images. It's not animal-related, but some analogies may apply.

Their post is about "Poverty Porn".  Here's how they describe it:

"Poverty Porn are words and images that elicit an emotional response by their sheer shock value. Images like starving, skeletal children covered in flies... that exploit the poor's condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy for selling newspapers or increasing charitable donations or support for a given cause."

I know we've all seen this. And the concept isn't unique just to showing children in African Nations. The same "shock value" effect also plays a role in those who try to promote dog bite hysteria or some organizations that show shocking footage of abused pets.

They conclude: 

"There are countless organizations and projects that keep falling into the savior trap, trying to do what they think is best, but creating output that is outdated and misguided and old-fashioned. It is Victorian and 20th Century social action swathed in 21st century storytelling technologies. As one commentor has said, poverty porn is the result of an organizations desperate attempt to keep itself relevant and attractive to donors, and is considered necessary for sustainability. It is never about the subject."

Ouch.

You can read the entire post here, at Good. 

Recreating the wheel - very good sentences from the Book Little Boy Blue

A couple of weeks ago, I review Kim Kavin's book, Little Boy Blue. You can read my entire review here.

However, there is a really great section of the book that I wanted to highlight because I found it, and Kim's handling of the issue, interesting.

Later in the book, Kavin explores the juxtoposition between some more progressive shelters in the Northeast to a few of the high-kill shelters in the South. And she specifically talks about how North Shore Animal League (and Northeast Animal League) grew into being major adoption centers.

In the section, she highlights an article written about Alexander Lewyt by the Wall Street Journal in 1975. The section talks about how Lewyt worked to run the rescue like it was a corporation, not just a rescue -- and I think Kavin's words, and the WSJ story, are pretty eye opening. The section begins talking about a mailing that Lewyt wrote to raise funds for the organization:

"The mailing brought in $11,000, which is the equivalent to about $67,000 today. Within the next 5 years, the shelter's staff grew from one to twenty-five employees, its hours of peration increased to every day of the year and its advertising budget alone was earmarked at $50,000 (about $125,000 in current dollars). That's why The Wall Street Journal had taken notice. Lewyt was running the shelter as if it were a corporation -- work he would continue until his death in 1988. 'We have the same concept as bringing any product to the public,'' Lewyt told the Journal in 1975. 'We have receivables, our inventories. And if the product doesn't move, we have a promotion...Most animal shelters are run by well-intentioned people who don't know anything about fund-raising or running the place like a business. The only reason they don't go broke is that a little old lady dies every year and leaves them something'...

Later, Kavin concludes:

"It's incredibly frustrating that shelters with kill rates as high as the one in Person County even exist, especially since the road map for giving every possible dog a home has been available in print since at least 1975, since the day the Wall Street Journal printed an article about Alexander Lewyt that so inspired Cindi Shapiro" (Shapiro later founded Northeast Animal Shelter in Massachusetts after reading the WSJ article). "In that article Lewyt tals about how whe can find a home for virtually any animal, even ones who are blind, deaf, or missing a leg. He told the newspaper that the "unadoptable" dogs simply need to be treated as special cases and marketed in a way that makes their disadvantages seem like attributes."

Try as I might, I was unable to find the article from 1975 that Kavin refers to online (yes, I realize the internet really didn't exist in 1975, but I hoped it had been reposted somewhere). But I think it's very interesting how long a road map for success has been around. The idea that running a shelter like a business, with real Profit/Loss data is not new. The idea that in business terms, shelter animals are "inventory" that need to be adopted out to make room for new inventory daily is essential is not new. And the diea that marketing and promotions can help move these animals out into homes is not new. These ideas have been around for 35 years -- and yet, so few shelters still think of it this way (and sometimes it's even considered taboo to think of animals as "inventory"). Yet, this approach has been successful, over and over again.

Thanks to Kavin for highlighting this story, and for pointing out the disconnect that even 35 years later, how disappointing it is that there are a lot of shelters that still haven't learned from the success of others.

Shedding some pounds

If you caught yesterday's post, you saw a little positive pit bull press that was run by our local media. If you watched the two news stories you probably noted the adoption special that was mentioned in the story.

I usually don't post stuff like this here, but, well, the picture on this flyer is so clever I can't help but post it.

We're so lucky at our organization to have 3 outstanding professional photographers that donate their time and talents to our organization.

Thanks to Kaye Ness Photography, Kim Beer Photography, and Kasi Reames Photography for their dedicated talents and services.

If you live in the Kansas City area, and have pet or family photo needs, I would recommend any of these three to you. They're awesome people,and  have great eyes for the shot.

Observations on placing blame, economics and marketing

There was a news report earlier this week that I think a LOT of urban shelters can identify with.

The report was from Rochester, NY, and reporting that the shelter killed over 1000 'pit bulls' last year in its shelter. The report interviews several people, all pointing to "back yard breeders" as the reason for the killing. If not for all the back yard breeders breeding the dogs, and dumping them at the shelter, the killing wouldn't be happening.

I'm going to pick on Rochester, NY a bit here -- but they're not the only place I've heard this from. And while I'm not intimately familiar with the situation in Rochester, I'm familiar with similar situations that all seem to look pretty close to the same.

But while Rochester no doubt has issues with irresponsible breeding, and people getting rid of dogs, they're also victims of their own poor marketing and poor understanding of economics.

For starters, let's take a look at the website for Rochester Animal Services. This morning, there are exactly 9 dogs up on their website that are available for adoption -- including two that are listed as mixed breed pit bulls. This is a shelter that put down an average of 3 pit bulls per day last year, but only has 2 on its website right now and only 9 dogs total listed as available. Now, I don't know what the capacity of the shelter is, but I'm going to guess that this city of over 1 million people has a shelter with a capacity of more than 9 dogs.

Meanwhile, let's say I fell in love with one of these pit bull mixes, and wanted to adopt. What would that cost me? Well, if it's a puppy less than 6 months old, it will cost me $164.  A dog over 6 months old will cost me $134.

The problem with this happens to be, that according to the people who were interviewed for the original news article, 'pit bulls' are a 'dime a dozen' -- and one guy admitted to buying his pit bull for $30. So, if you are in a competitive market place why would someone come to your shelter and adopt a pit bull puppy for $164 when they can "rescue" one from the guy down the street who just had a litter for 20% of the price.

Price does matter. Ask Walmart -- who built a $400 billion business on offering lowest pricing.

I'm not saying that Rochester Animal Services should adopt dogs out for $30 (although, it's a viable option). I do think they can market the value of getting a vetted/altered dog and get a higher value for them. But I do think they need to be at least competitive with their pricing -- especially in a community like Rochester where more than 30% of the population lives below the poverty line.  One of the biggest helps in controlling animal populations is ADOPTING more dogs -- this way people get new dogs that are altered vs buying unaltered ones.

Again, I'm not saying that Rochester's problems aren't real. They no doubt are - -and are a problem in a lot of urban areas. However, there is a LOT they could be doing to minimize the strain on their shelter -- including better marketing for their adoptable dogs and lowering adoption fees so they are competitive in the market (which would not only get more out, it would prevent more from coming in because more people would begin owning altered animals).  

A lot of solutions can come from better marketing and a better understanding of economics. There are few good solutions that come from just pointing fingers at someone else as the cause of the problem.

Update: Upon writing this, I was notified by a couple of people from the area that it appears as if the city shelter in Rochester does not adopt pit bulls out of the shelter. While they do make them available to rescue groups, they are not mde available to the public. Obviously this would create a further gap for people who want to get a pit bull, and their availability from a means other than neighborhood bred dogs, further escalating the problem.

Thanks for emailing

Over the weekend, I got a snooty email from someone who has apparently taken over an organization's email address from someone else.  The former person who handled this email address (who I kow personallY) apparently subscribed to my blog via email at some point, but the new person apparently isn't a fan and asked that I quit spamming them (never mind that the "unsubscribe" button appears at the bottom of the page, apparently a snooty email is easier).

So I responded with probably a nicer email than the person deserved -- to be greeted with THIS automated response (I've replaced the organizational name to protect the guilty):

Autoreply: XYZ Organization is primarily an advocacy organization. We kindly request to be taken off any crosspost lists, and please note we cannot accept owner give-ups. Normal response time may be up to 48 hours. Thank you for understanding.

Now, keep in mind that this organization also does adoptions -- and this is the very same email response that someone inquiring about an adoptable dog or cat will get when they email.

This isn't the only organization I've seen this from -- in fact, similar type responses are somewhat common.  Yes, I understand that most rescue organizations are run by volunteers and that it is very time consuming to respond to many email requests every day - - but is this really the first correspondence you want to provide a potential adopter? 

Probably not.

What type of first impression is your organization making to potential adopters?  Are you burdening them with the struggles of running a rescue?  Or thanking them for their interest in adoption? 

First impressions can make a difference.