Shelter Success Simplified

GUEST: Scott Giacoppo. Scott is the Director of National Shelter Outreach for Best Friends Animal Society and oversees the development of lifesaving efficacy and sustainability for animal welfare partners across the U.S. Prior to Best Friends, Scott was president of NACA – the National Animal Care & Control Association – as well as chief of Animal Field Services for the District of Columbia for 10 years, overseeing all animal control and cruelty investigations team members for Humane Rescue Alliance. He began his animal protection career with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as the Special State Police Officer for Cruelty Investigations. 

MAIN QUESTION: How can leaders and managers get staff and public buy-in for return-to-field programs?

TAKEAWAYS:

• Removing cats doesn’t work, never has and never will. Removing a cat is not serving the community; it’s clearing a call log. It only solves the problem for a few weeks at most, as new cats will invariably move in to fill the void. 
• Give your team all the information they need to fully understand why RTF is a better approach, how it works in other communities and why the old way is not effective.
• Some staff may be resistant to change because they don’t want to face the fact that they’ve been doing something that doesn’t work or because doing something new that goes against the way they have always done it can be scary.
• When someone calls to have cat picked up, that’s when the discussion about RTF should start. Explain that:
• Removing cats isn’t effective, as another cat will show up to fill the niche.
• Getting the cat fixed, vaccinated and returned decreases nuisance behavior, including spraying, yowling and fighting as well as preventing the birth of kittens. 
• Share humane ways to deter cats from their garden or yard.
• When an officer has an encounter that doesn’t work out well, talk it through with them, asking them how it may have been handled differently and offering suggestions. 

LINKS:

• Best Friends Network 
• Leadership recommendation: Leadership Freak blog 

GUEST: Kimberly Wade. Kimberly is an expert consultant for Humane Network focusing on communications and social media. She was campaign manager for Maddie's Pet Project in Nevada, communications director at Nevada Humane Society, news producer at KOLO 8 News Now, and has a degree in broadcast journalism and communications from the University of Central Florida. 

MAIN QUESTION: What are some tips for animal organizations to create better social media pages and posts?

TAKEAWAYS:

• If you don’t have a photo, you don’t have a story. 
• To take good photos, avoid a busy background. Get a good clear picture of the animal with their eyes wide open and looking at you. 
• You may hear hundreds of similar stories about why animals end up in your shelter or at your rescue group. The public has not. So gather basic information even if it’s not a unique story to you. Find out what you can about the animal and their backstory, especially where they came from and why they are now at your organization. You need details to tell a story that will interest your followers in adopting or donating.
• Make sure you have a positive spin on a story – don’t point blame. Talk about how your organization helped, how your supporters made it possible and a bright future ahead, thanks to the generosity of kind supporters. Ask for specific help if needed, such as donations and foster homes.
• For social media:
  • You want a minimum of one post a day – this makes your posts more likely to appear in your followers’ feeds. Busy and larger organizations should aim for two to three posts a day.
  • Interact with your followers. Like their comments. Thank them when they make a donation or say something nice.

LINKS:

• Humane Network's team 
• Leadership recommendation: “Managing Yourself to Better Lead Others” (article) by Jo Anne Preston
• “Lead the Way in Five Minutes a Day: Sparking High Performance in Yourself and Your Team" (book) by Jo Anne Preston 

GUEST: Brent Toellner. Brent is the Senior Director of National Programs for Best Friends Animal Society. Prior to joining Best Friends, Brent, his wife, Michelle, and a few others co-founded the Kansas City Pet Project to run the municipal shelter in Kansas City, Missouri.  

MAIN QUESTION: There's a lot of pressure in animal welfare and people can feel alone in their work — what tips and ideas might help?

TAKEAWAYS:

• In animal welfare, we’re pushed to do more with limited resources. People often feel they just need to work harder and do more programs, but that doesn’t work in the long-term. It’s better to reach out for help.
• Someone on the outside can often provide needed perspective. By being a sounding board, they can give you a sense of confidence and make you feel less isolated. You can find this help by creating or developing relationships with your peers at similar organizations. In addition to making connections within the field, people working at similar types of agencies within your own community can also be helpful.  Consultants and representatives of national organizations with outreach teams can also be valuable.
• One sign you need help is if you're feeling stressed that you can never get on top of what’s needed or if you know things need to change but you don’t know how to do it with your existing resources.
• Consider an organizational assessment that looks at what’s going well and that you should keep doing and what is not the best use of resources now.

LINKS:

• Best Friends Network 
• Leadership recommendation: “5 Things an Executive Director Can Do to Build a Strong Leadership Team” by Joan Garry  

GUEST: Scott Giacoppo. Scott is the Director of National Shelter Outreach for Best Friends Animal Society and oversees the development of lifesaving efficacy and sustainability for animal welfare partners across the U.S. Prior to Best Friends, Scott was president of NACA – the National Animal Care & Control Association – as well as chief of Animal Field Services for the District of Columbia for 10 years, overseeing all animal control and cruelty investigations team members for Humane Rescue Alliance. He began his animal protection career with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as the Special State Police Officer for Cruelty Investigations. 

MAIN QUESTION: What are the common issues you find when doing organizational assessments of animal organizations around the country?

TAKEAWAYS:

The two most common challenges to successfully implementing a program are internal communication and training. Scott shared tips on both:

1. Communication:

• Often when leadership decides to pursue a new program, by the time it trickles down to the frontline staff implementing it, the why is lost so staff members revert to doing what they know. 
• Hold productive meetings that include explaining:
• Why the new program works, including a few examples from other places where it has helped and
• How the program is to be implemented. 
• Create a culture of two-way communication, where people are encouraged to ask questions if they don’t understand.  

2. Training

• Make training a priority. Investing time in training improves performance and increases staff retention.  
• Schedule time to do it as a group. Watch a webinar together and discuss it, or schedule time to discuss assigned reading material. 
• Engage staff in how a program is implemented – as this increases their buy in.
• For training resources check out the Best Friends Network Partners page – there’s a link in the show notes.

Scott also talked how frequently leaders and managers assume that things are going well and are unaware of issues. He suggested three ways to know what’s actually happening:

• Schedule time to routinely get out of your office and walk around and observe how things are being done and talk with your team. 
• Plan an annual assessment – this could be a self-assessment or one conducted by consultants. 
• Secret shopping your shelter: Call your own organization and ask a question to see how well (or not so well) your staff is doing helping people. Send a friend in to adopt a pet and have them tell you about the experience.

LINKS:

Best Friends Network  

Leadership recommendations: "The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong" (TED Talk video and blog post)

GUEST: Chris Roy. Chris is a technology guy by day, and the founder of Doobert at night and on weekends. Doobert helps you help animals and is the only software that organizes transport, and the only foster management platform allowing you to send and receive texts with fosters. And Chris has continued to build out Doobert and recently added a new case management module.

MAIN QUESTION: How does Doobert's new Companion Case Management module improve communications with the public?

TAKEAWAYS:

• As animal organizations increasingly focus on becoming resource centers rather than primarily as repositories for animals, it is especially important that we have effective ways to manage communications with the public.
• A good tracking system is needed in order to make sure cases don’t fall through the cracks. Follow-up and trustworthiness are essential to building good community relations.
• Doobert.com has a new Companion Case Management module specifically designed for animal organizations to help them keep better track of public interactions and to effectively collaborate with other organizations in the community.
  • For example, you can assign tasks to specific people and even other organizations, set up automated follow-ups with people seeking help, view cases on a map, and view only tasks assigned to yourself.
• You can create a case to see how it works with a free Doobert account or request a demo for your organization through Doobert.com.

LINKS:

• Doobert.com 
• Leadership recommendation: “Tips for Encouraging Teamwork in the Workplace and Getting People Out of Silos" by Humane Network (article) 

GUEST: Lori Weise. In 1996, Lori founded Downtown Dog Rescue, which rescues dogs and provides services for low income pet owners in underserved communities in Los Angeles County. She is the founder of the South LA Shelter Intervention Program and one of the founding members of the Best Friends Animal Society's initiative No Kill Los Angeles and advised the ASPCA on their Safety Net Program at LA county shelters. And Lori is a national speaker on community programs and the shelter intervention model of keeping pets in homes. 

MAIN QUESTION: How can animal organizations better meet people where they're at?

TAKEAWAYS:

• You're more likely to engage people in a solution successfully when you meet people where they’re at rather than judging them based on how you would do things. Meet people at first with empathy - simply as one pet lover to another. 
• Asking “How can I be of service?” puts you in a better frame of mind to be truly successful and opens real dialogue with people. 
• Many organizations come in with big plans, overpromise, lose steam, and disappear. Don’t let this be you. Try a pilot program first or pick a very targeted group or service to focus on when developing a program or new organization so you can build trust with those you're trying to help and to see if this is something you’ll be able to commit to for the long run.
• Don’t get so focused on preventing people from taking advantage of the service or program that you create barriers that end up keeping people who need it from taking advantage of the program. No program can be perfect and total control is not possible so spend your time figuring out how to help people rather than on how to prevent a few people from benefiting who do not really need it.

LINKS:

• Downtown Dog Rescue (website)
• Leadership recommendation: “Cultivation: How to Build One-on-One Relationships With Your Donors" by Amy Eisenstein (blog post)

GUEST: Kat Albrecht-Thiessen is a pioneer in lost pet investigations. She was a police officer, bloodhound handler, crime scene investigator, and search-and-rescue manager before beginning to apply her skills in 1997 to finding lost pets. She is founder of Missing Animal Response Network and author of the book “Pet Tracker.”

MAIN QUESTION: How can shelters and rescue groups support the public in finding lost pets?

TAKEAWAYS:

• Don’t make assumptions about found pets such as that a pet has been abused or dumped, rather than simply lost and on their own for a long time. Such assumptions can get in the way of reconnecting that animal with their people. 
• Search techniques are different for dogs and cats.
• With cats, the best advice is to get permission from neighbors to do a methodical search of every conceivable hiding place in a two- to five-house radius. (That’s where most cats are found.) 
• With indoor-only cats who have escaped, in addition to doing a search, put out a plate of food and set up a wildlife camera. (Then you can set a humane trap). 
• With dogs, marketing is key: Dogs are often picked up by people so it’s important to get the word out widely so that the finder can learn that the dog belongs to someone who cares about and misses the pet. 
• Shelters and rescues can put a link on their website to MissingAnimalResponse.com, where people can find resources on finding missing pets and connect with volunteers who can help them in their search. 
• And here are a few myths about lost pets:
• It’s not true that putting a missing cat’s litterbox on your porch will bring them back.
• Calling out for your cat generally won’t help and doesn’t mean your cat is not nearby when they don’t respond. They are intentionally staying hidden and silent out of fear or injury. 
• Some shelters will make a situation worse by telling people that a pet was probably eaten by a coyote. Assumptions about coyote predation kills more lost pets than coyotes actually do by inspiring people to give up their search.

LINKS:

• Missing Animal Response Network (website)
• "Pet Tracker: The Amazing Story of Rachel the K-9 Pet Detective" (book available in print, electronically and on audio) 
• Leadership recommendation: "Don't Let Internal Controls Slip at Your Nonprofit Organization" by Blue Avocado (article) 

GUEST: Karen Green is executive director at Cat Adoption Team, the Pacific Northwest’s largest nonprofit, feline-only animal shelter. Before that, she was senior director at the Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs and assistant director of the No More Homeless Pets program at Best Friends Animal Society.

MAIN QUESTION: How can animal organizations build a healthy workplace culture, which is so important in a competitive job market?

TAKEAWAYS:

• Open two-way communication is key to having a strong, positive organizational structure. If there’s a program or policy that isn’t working, you need to know – so staff needs to have a way to share such information with people who can fix the problem.
• Ask for feedback and make it safe for people to give feedback by demonstrating your trustworthiness.
• Implement suggestions when they make sense. 
• If you don’t plan to implement someone’s ideas or suggestions, they are more likely to accept your decision if they feel that their concerns were heard. Repeat back what the person said to make sure you understood before explaining your own position.
• Create an environment where people can have a good work-life balance through reasonable expectations and work hours. When people are at work, they should be working and when off, they should be encouraged to care for the other parts of their lives. 
• Examine staffing levels and processes to support this.
• Gently encourage people who check in when off work by saying something like, “Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?” 
• Sometimes there will be times you just need to put in extra hours, perhaps for a budget deadline, a special event, or a large rescue situation. But make these the exception, not the rule, so that overwork does not create burnout. 
• Address conflicts and issues when they come up. Little problems become big problems over time.

LINKS:

• Cat Adoption Team (website)
• Cat Adoption Team's workplace culture agreement (example)
• "The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout" by Beth Kanter and Aliza Sherman (book)
• "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Steven R. Covey (book)
• "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most" by Douglas Stone (book)
• "Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition" by Kerry Patterson (book)
• "Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity" by Kim Scott (book)
• Leadership recommendation: "How to run more effective daily standup meetings" (article)

GUEST: Bonney Brown was Executive Director for six years at Nevada Humane Society, an open-admission shelter. She has been Chief Operating Officer, National No More Homeless Pets Director and Communications Director for Best Friends and was National Campaign Director for Alley Cat Allies. Bonney is currently president and co-founder of Humane Network, where she is often involved in assessing and creating fundraising campaigns for shelters and other animal organizations.    MAIN QUESTION: What works to engage more members of the community with our animal welfare work so that we can raise more funds — and what doesn't work?   TAKEAWAYS:

• Stories with great photos are powerful. Donors give twice as much when presented with a story about an individual animal than about the overall needs of the organization.
• Don’t expect stories and photos to happen. Assign someone to gather them – it can even be a volunteer.
• Train staff to take better cellphone photos so they can snap something good when a situation arises.
• Use “you” and “your” in your communications so that your audience feels they are a part of what’s happening.
• Thank people. It makes them feel they play a valued role in  your organization’s good works.
• Let people know that donations of any size help. It helps people feel comfortable sending more modest gifts. In fact, research shows that using this phrase increases the number of people who give. 
• Communicate with your supporters more than you think you should. Fundraising is about building relationships, and relationships require communication.

LINKS:

• Humane Network (website)
• End-of-year fundraising tips webinar with Bonney Brown (video)
• Leadership recommendation: “How I Manage My Time - 10 Time Management Tips" by Ali Abdaal (video) 

GUEST: Diane Blankenburg is CEO & Co-Founder of Humane Network. She was Community Programs & Development Director for Nevada Humane Society, Katrina Rescue and Recovery Director for Alley Cat Allies for 2 years, and Network Director for Best Friends Animal Society.    MAIN QUESTION: How can leaders and managers handle internal staff conflict better?   TAKEAWAYS:

• A leader or manager should get involved with a staff conflict if it starts to get in the way of work getting done, goals of the organization, or team relationships. Consider the consequences of not dealing with the situation.
• The ultimate goal is to find common ground among the individuals concerned that you can then build a solution on.
• Sit down with the individuals involved and try to understand the whole picture, knowing that there may be more going on than just the surface conflict. Don’t make assumptions; ask the people involved what is creating this issue.
• When emotions are high, one way to ratchet down the tension is to show empathy, convey you understand how they feel, and reflect back what you've heard from them.
• Conflict is not something to fear. When differences can be expressed and discussed respectfully, conflict can be a healthy part of an organization’s culture that leads to better brainstorming, plans, solutions, and relationships.
• Conflict can sometimes be prevented by setting clear expectations. Having job descriptions, processes and checklists in place, as well as reinforcing the mission and  expectations verbally, can help keep people pulling in the same direction.

LINKS:

• Humane Network (website)
• Leadership recommendation: “How I Manage My Time - 10 Time Management Tips" by Ali Abdaal (video)