It’s no secret that animal rescues couldn’t function without the support of their foster families and volunteers. But finding these people can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Whether you’re new to animal rescue or have waded through the trenches before, you’ll quickly learn that saving animal lives isn’t a lonely job; relying on your community for supplies and donations is just the tip of the iceberg. But how do you persuade families to take the next step and welcome an animal into their home for an indefinite period? Some animal shelters offer short-term care, such as walking a dog for the day or spending time with a kitten. Capturing these experiences as testimonials (a picture is worth a 1000 words after all) and sharing them on Facebook and other social media platforms is a great way to increase the number of eyes on your animal rescue’s work and increase awareness. ‘to call for help. You can also use incentives to encourage participation in fostering your rescue’s pets.
What is an animal rescue incentive program?
An incentive is “something that motivates or encourages someone to do something”. It’s a little extra boost to give your animal rescue more than just supplies, but also to give one of life’s most precious resources, time. An incentive program is a program your animal shelter puts in place to encourage new foster animals to apply and help. Some examples we’ve seen are brand awareness, dollar amounts, giveaways, or making it a fun competition.
🐾We don’t suggest carrying the load by yourself. This is a great opportunity to help build a community of animal rescuers, inspired by your animal rescue data.
Dallas Animal Services was able to partner with his community, sharing his incentive program on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and Dallas Morning News, to place 160 dogs in 3 days! They did this by offering $150 to new animal foster homes. El Paso Animal Services Center has partnered with the Best Friends Animal Society to run their incentive program by offering $125 to new pet foster homes. More than press crews, pet stores, groomers, veterinarians, and similar playgrounds, consider seeking help from more original places, like the chiropractor who offers pet adjustments or the pet care company. insurance that offers pet insurance. With nearly 40% of U.S. households owning at least one pet, the odds of finding a business run by an animal lover are higher than you might think.
The benefits of an incentive program for rescuing your pet go far beyond creating a community of superheroes. Supporting pet foster families can:
- Increase Pet Adoption Traffic
- Creating space in animal shelters
- Increase word of mouth for your animal rescue
- Create return host families
Fostering animal rescue homes doesn’t have to be a task that requires planning on top of planning. Keeping it simple will help ensure success. Planning means making it clear how much you can give to new foster homes and what gifts you can give to previous pet homes to get them wagging their tails. Melissa Webber of Dallas Animal Services advises that the amount should be “large enough to be truly an incentive.” Make sure you have a central location, like Pawlytics, to track your animal shelter incentives and who is eligible. Some examples of these qualifiers are if they are certain breeds, sizes, species, new pet homes, etc. A great way to determine the best qualifiers for an incentive-based placement is to look at your animal rescue data! Reviewing the data should tell you which animals are struggling to get into foster homes or have longer stays before adoption. Systems like Pawlytics can act as your only source of information, allowing you to collect and analyze your data.
Keeping it simple will also make it easy for people to reach you! The digital availability of the foster application and the contract of your animal shelter facilitates registration. By using animal rescue management software, such as Pawlytics, you can save volunteers time so they can focus on creating the best foster care placements possible. Being able to quickly and digitally send and sign pet placement contracts helps speed up the pet placement process and opens up the possibility of having more paws to help with your rescue.