The big fun guide to saving cats this summer is now a pdf that can be distributed to any cat group who needs a hand pulling themselves out of a rut of killing.
Someone has had a breakthrough at the RSPCA Victoria. Even though their kill rate is already leaving other major welfare groups the Lost Dogs Home, and Cat Protection Society in their dust, with 17,265 cats admitted and 9801 killed, or 56% (vs 93% and 90% respectively), they have taken the lead in offering Australia’s first trial of free cat adoptions;
RSPCA offers cats free to very good homes
CATS like to be free spirits, and for 100 stray moggies, their wish has come true.For three days, they will be free – first literally and then figuratively with new families.
In an Australian first, from today until Saturday the RSPCA shelter will waive all adoption fees in a bid to promote cats as family pets.
RSPCA animal services executive manager Helen Cocks said the three-day “cat free to good home campaign” highlighted feline welfare issues to hopefully improve the fate of hundreds of thousands of street strays.
2″An adult cat is harder to rehome and compared to dogs, cat claim rates from pounds are low,” she said. “We are keen to make people understand the value of a cat is their companionship, not their cost.”
They’re also supporting their community with extended trading hours;
RSPCA centres in city areas will be open until 7.30pm and regional centres until 7pm every Wednesday and Thursday until mid-March.
While other organisations are still looking for excuses as to why they can’t save lives these guys have got off their derrieres and started today. Right now.
To offer free cat adoption comes from the belief that cats are genuinely better off in homes, rather than killed at the hands of those claiming to be working to save them. Which in Victoria is a belief sadly lacking in other major shelters.
If you’re in Victoria, drop by their Facebook page and congratulate them on showing such great commitment to taking forward steps in life saving.
Got six orange cats in your shelter?
TELL PEOPLE!
Rangas rule the walk
Ginger-haired humans are said to be rare, perhaps endangered along with tigers and Richmond supporters.But if a clowder of six “ranga” cats that have dominated the Hobart Cat Centre this week is anything to go by, Garfield look-alikes have at least some of their nine lives left.
Cat centre manager Lyndell Whyte said that in the past week or two it had been raining ginger cats and all are up for adoption.
Ms Whyte said that Bonnie, the sole female in the six, was helping to bust the myth that all ginger cats were toms, despite genes that dictate that there are a lot more male gingers than female.
These guys have taken a possibly unremarkable event and with a little imagination, made it news. If I were going to be *really* picky, I would say the photo on the article could have been cuter; but this was funny, light-hearted and no mention of ‘having’ to kill the cats anywhere. Just awesome!
Remember Cassie Walker, the shelter manager who was advocating for pets in her community? Well, look at their great adoption campaign!
Oh! Makes your heart sing!
The animals at the RSPCA are all vet-checked and desexed and ready to romp about in your garden, sit on your lap and spread the love in your home like only a pet can.
Perhaps there’s room for a new puppy or kitty at your place?
Have a flick through Finda’s gallery and see if there are any cuties that tickle your fancy.
However, it’s always wise to head out the shelter to meet the animals, as Toowoomba’s assistant shelter manager Cassie Walker points out.
“The main thing we tell people is to come out to the shelter and have a look at the animals so we can see what suits them,” Miss Walker said.
Each Thursday, Finda will publish a gallery of dogs and cats available for adoption.
This is either the second or third week they’ve put this together and called on their community to consider adoption. It seems such a no-brainer to have a local newspaper putting out a regular feature of all the available pets, but these kinds of initiatives need commitment and time and the core belief that if the public get to see these pets, that they will be keen to adopt them – all of which can sometimes be hard to find.
We should all be on the lookout for examples like this of groups doing things right! right! right! and take the time to give them the feedback that we appreciate it.
The RSPCA Million Paws Walk has been crowned the winner of the Best Charity or Cause Related Event at the Australian Event Awards 2010;
The Million Paws Walk is Australia’s premier pet event and the RSPCA’s major national fundraiser. The event started in Queensland in 1994 and in 2010 over 80,000 people and 45,000 dogs hit the pavement to raise much needed funds for the RSPCA. It’s a fun day out for the whole family and helps the RSPCA extend a helping paw to animals in need. Held on the third Sunday of May each year, there are over 80 walks around Australia and one in every capital city and attendance and support continues to grow.
Think about what that means; of all the amazing non-profit cause related events held around the country, the one that has been crowned Australia’s favourite is the one held by an animal rescue charity, that people get to bring their pets to.
A lot of people spend a lot of time running down pet owners uncompassionate and irresponsible. Many animal advocates see the pet problems of our country as insurmountable without the enactment of a host of draconian laws. But maybe the Million Paws Walk’s success is a symptom of a compassionate society desperate to improve the situation for pets.
Could it be that as animal rescuers and welfare advocates we have simply failed to engage and activate our public?
Say it with me; if you want people to adopt your pets, you have to offer more than euthanasia statistics
Cassie Walker believes by purchasing a dog or a cat from the RSPCA the number of pets being put down will drop.
In the last financial year 909 cats and 715 dogs were euthanised in Toowoomba.
Now I say kudos to Cassie for getting her face in the media and advocating for these pets; but we’ve got to move beyond the idea that threatening to kill them is any kind of motivating factor for the public to adopt. It’s not.
Adopters do want to save a life. They just don’t want to feel the awful pressure that if they visit you and see a pet, that not taking it will mean its death. Making people feel guilt and blame is contrary to the joyful feelings they should be experiencing when they consider adding a new pet to their families. No wonder people go to Pet’s Galleria!
Focus on the pets you have right now, who they are, what kinds of families they would suit, that they’re friendly and adoptable, that you’re open on weekends, that you have nice staff who take the time to talk to people about their animal needs… etc
Animal Welfare League QLD had a superb weekend for adoptions;
Did they do it by talking about how many animals they would kill if no one came and adopted them? Of course not; it sounds insane to even say it. They did it by hosting an open day, promoting the event, inviting people to come down and visit and having pet photos which look like this:
In short, selling the benefits of adoption and giving people an impulse to visit by offering a welcoming atmosphere.
The two approaches could not be more different. And only one is successful.
Which does your organisation choose to use?
Image: Labhlakshmi.com
Each spring and summer across the country, thousands of cats and kittens enter a shelter system that is already overloaded. To avoid having to kill the majority of these animals, there are things shelters can be doing in the months leading up to this busy season.
Here’s a plan that any shelter could use leading up to cat season to manage their shelter’s summer rush;
Recognise that it doesn’t help to blame your community
Condemning the public for a kitten rush that happens every year is both futile and largely inaccurate. Owned cats are largely desexed and free-roaming cats will breed whether you put hateful pieces of media out or not. Calling it ‘dumping season’ and your public ‘irresponsible’ builds barriers between you and your community (think ‘Barbara’ from the ANZ ads!).
From now on your organisation will demonstrate its commitment to helping save cats and all media and communications should focus, not on attributing blame, but attracting people to interact with your organisation through positive and heartwarming stories.
Get your Facebook group dusted off
Do you have a Facebook group up and running? Now’s the time to start a conversation with your public; you need them to help you through this time.
Your first article is to call for Foster Carers (there’s a sample article here). You’re going to need lots to care for all the mums and bubs you’re expecting. From now on you need to share a story daily with your Facebook fans; something funny that happened in the office. A cat with a particularly cute name. A photo of an adopter just as they leave you smiling happily. Brainstorm potential topics at your next staff meeting and write them down for inspiration.
Get a photographer
Photos like this:
… will not get your cats adopted. You have to get a professional or a good amateur photographer to visit your shelter most days and get photos of your cats that are like this;
Images Best Friends Animal Society
See how they’re focused on the face? You’ll want to get the images of cats eyes and faces to engage potential adopters.
If your photographers are willing, give them access to upload your cats directly to the web, via your own website, Facebook or PetRescue. Give them the basic details for each cat, then have a staff member go in to add any extra information. This removes the double handling of the photographer sending you the images and you having to work it all out.
The more pets you can adopt now through cute pictures and positive profile on the web, the more capacity will be available when the rush starts in earnest.
Have a PetRescue account
While having your own website is important for raising awareness of the work of your organisation, having your individual cats on PetRescue (www.petrescue.com.au) is vital if you need to adopt large numbers of animals.
PetRescue recieves 3.16 million page views from over 200,000 visitors each month. Because of this enormous audience of people actively looking to adopt, your cats are probably more likely to find the right home for them here than your own organisation’s website.
Also, if you use the PetRescue feed to drive your own website, you only have to do one upload and both sites will be up to date.
Call all of your media contacts
Let them know that you’re coming up to your busy season and need their help to save lives. Find out if their interested in doing a pre-rush spread of available cats and let them know that you can provide high-res professional photos.
Avoid doing ‘kitten dumping’ stories, stray cat floods or anything negative. You need to make the story about adoption, the benefits of cat ownership and any promotions you might be doing on adoptions.
Develop a colour pet-of-the-week advert in your local media
Speak to your usual sponsors about a fantastic opportunity to be seen to be helping animals; a colour pet-of-the-week advert in your local paper. Let them have a big brand opportunity in return for you coordinating with the paper a cute pet each week. Always profile your most cute and adoptable pet, even if its likely that pet will already be adopted. You want people to know that your shelter is a great source of healthy, loving animals.
Be sure to have your phones manned by professional, enthusiastic staff who have a list of your available cats on hand when the story runs. Chances are there will be a lapse between when you send through the profile and when the story features, so those cat included may very well already be adopted. And that’s ok! Explain that the featured cat has been incredibly popular and has already found a new family, but that there are several others that can be emailed or discussed over the phone. Easy!
Check your donation procedures
With all this extra exposure, you’re sure to have people wanting to make donations to help cats find new homes. This is an excellent chance to capture their interest in your work.
Develop a ‘free’ cat adoption program
Free cat adoption has had enormous success overseas in dramatically increased adoptions.
If ‘free’ still makes you feel a bit funny, check out the report ‘Comparison of Attachment Levels of Adopters of Cats: Fee-Based Adoptions Versus Free Adoption’ published the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, that found
The ASPCA are now officially recommending ‘fee waived’ programs as a valid technique for increasing cat adoption (http://www.aspcapro.org/free-adult-cat-adoptions.php). Visit their website to see how other shelters have implemented it, how they’ve recouped costs and got management on side.
Get your in-store program up and running
During kitten season you’re going to want to get as many pet stores as you can on board to help you showcase your animals. Start phoning pet-free stores in your area to find out who would be interested in having kittens in-store over the summer.
A quick and easy program that you could start today would look something like this;
More information on creating an effective in-store adoption program can be provided by PetRescue (info@petrescue.org.au).
Tell people about it! This is another good story for your media contacts; be sure to let them know there are cute kittens in store should they like to visit and get some great pics!
Don’t forget to also have a donation box or ‘wishing tree’ in their store. As people buy gifts for their own pets, they are generally very supportive of buying something for a homeless animal.
A ‘wishing tree’ (a Christmas tree covered in gift tags featuring a pet’s story and suggestions of the kinds of donations you need) can be located at the front of the store. Or a box placed at the checkout where donations can be left.
Again everyone who donated should be invited to leave their details (have a sign in sheet next to the donation box) and be given a ‘thank you’ sheet from your organisation.
Desexing
Obviously, desexing is vital to reducing the number of cats entering your shelter in the coming months. Speak to your local vets about a three month discount promotion for anyone who wants to desex a cat; get them to agree to a voucher that can be collected from your organisation.
For people who are low income earners, or wanting to desex a feral or semi-owned cat desexing should be free. Ask your sponsors if they would be interested in sponsoring a number of desexing operations (say 20 at 100 each) in return for a logo on your website for six months. Have a page of ’supporters’ logos thanking them for their donation.
Now, if people have contacted you wanting to know what to do about a feral, offer them free cat desexing in return for them caring for the cat.
Arrange to extend your opening hours
People are more likely to visit your shelter if you are open at times when they’re not at work. You need to be open full days on weekends, and arrange at least once weekly ‘twilight’ adoption opportunities, where your shelter stays open until 8pm or later.
Then you need to tell people about it! Opening late doesn’t help if people don’t know that you’re open. Announce your summer opening hours on your Facebook page, in your email signatures, in the local media and ask your supporters to put up posters in your local area (vets, shopping centers, community notice boards).
Invite a local radio station to do a late night broadcast from your cattery. Hold a sausage sizzle. Get a local celebrity cat lover to come on site. Offer adoption promotions. Anything that can encourage people to come visit you.
Hold a ‘free’ adoption event
Now’s the time to run your first adoption event. Use ‘free’ as a point of difference; a hook to get the media interested. Let people know you will still be using your normal screening procedures and that all cats are being adopted desexed and vaccinated.
Pick a day when the shelter can offer extended trading hours and invite families to come in as a group after work to choose a new family member.
When you come to sign off on the adoption, give them all the information they need plus an invoice for all the charges you’ve incurred in getting their cat ready for adoption. Often when people are presented with how much the cat has cost you and asked for a donation they will pay what they can. But don’t worry if they don’t! By showing them you’ve provided them value, they’re also more likely to become donors in the future (so make sure their contact details get into your fundraising systems!)
Holiday adoptions
Image: No Kill Nation
While it wasn’t too long ago that holiday adoptions were considered a sin, but nowadays shelters that shut down adoptions for the holiday are few and far between. The overblown fear that holiday adoptions equal impulse gifts that will be given up soon after the holiday, has been replaced with news stories of holiday adoption promotions, reduced fees to encourage lifesaving, happy pets and support for new adopters.
If people are going to buy a pet we’d should encourage them to come, speak to us and get good advice; instead of walking into a pet store. Our rescue groups have policies and procedures that help people make good decisions. We need to yell from the rooftops; shelters are a great place to get a pet these holidays!
Ask your media contact to help you do a Christmas themed promotion (think cats in reindeer antlers and playing with tinsel) and feature a little holiday cheer in all of your cat adoption photos.
Keep your extended hours
While school is out, you’ll want to make it as easy as possible for families to visit. Put out regular calls to your media contacts to ask that they include adoption stories, available pets and cute kitten photos in their publications.
Hold a ‘kitten shower’
Summer is a great time to hold a ‘kitten shower’ featuring some of your newborns (think baby shower but for kittens!). Ask the public to donate things your kittens need or just come on site to hold a baby. A great media release is here:
“Breaking Mews. Animal Friends Hosts a Kitten Shower”
“It’s a boy! It’s a girl! It’s a kitten! Animal Friends is hosting a baby shower with a whole new twist by bringing 30 kittens in from foster homes to help them find forever families.”
The Kitten Shower is your chance to attend a unique “baby shower” where you can meet our adorable new feline arrivals and drop off a shower gift that will help us to provide the litte ones with all that they need for a strong start in life.
The event will be held Sunday, August 5 from noon-3 p.m. at the Ohio Township shelter, officially known as the Caryl Gates Gluck Resource Center. The address is 562 Camp Horne Road.
Animal Friends will be decked out in pinks and blues and there will be shower games. Guests can make treat-filled baby bottles for the kittens to bat around. The homeless kitties even have a gift registry in the Animal Friends retail shop.
Gorgeous! More info on hosting kitten showers here.
Try things. Then try other things
Make adoption promotions the focus of your organisation. Be topical, building around events in your community like movie releases, holidays and sporting events. Some things will work, other things wont; but what’s important is that your focused on getting people in the door and maintaining an air of positivity during this difficult time.
With a bit of creativity now, you can put in place systems and promotions that will help you save the lives of cats and kittens entering your shelter or rescue. Involve everyone in making this time some of your most innovative, successful and fun. Really, what have you got to lose?
What have I forgotten? I just know you have a fantastic adoption/cat promotion idea that I’ve missed off this list. Comment with your ideas :)
You have some dogs that need homes.
Do you
a) kill them
or
b) host an adoption event on a Sunday and tell people about it?
Gladstone folk opened their hearts and their homes yesterday by adopting six orphaned dogs at the RSPCA monthly dog adoption day.
The fourth adoption day was held by the Friends of RSPCA Gladstone, following on from the success of last Sunday’s cat adoption day, from which 14 cats and kittens found new homes.
“Six of our lovely animals were adopted and another three look like going by the end of the week,” Friends of RSPCA Gladstone publicity officer Judy Whicker said.
“We had a great day with a lot of interest, so I’m sure we will get a couple of adoptions from the showings.
9am to 12pm is 3 hrs, which means 6 adoptions was a great result! Not counting those who came forward after such a positive article was printed in the local paper, or the 14 cats adopted the week before.
Just by hosting a Sunday event and telling people about it!
“This is the smile that goes with the cat in the box !!! Adopted at Cat Adoption day”
According to their Facebook page, the Friends of RSPCA Gladstone’s next adoption day is Sunday, October 3. If you’re in the area get down there and show your support, buy something they’re selling or just say thanks to them on behalf of the animals.
Regional pounds across the country kill and claim its because no one wants the pets they have. Could weekend adoption events be the key to saving lives?
Want your local rescue group to feature here on Saving Pets for doing a fantastic job? Send me details of their promotion and their results and I’ll give them props.
If you haven’t already; check out this OK Go clip, featuring some amazing rescue dogs (background on the clip here);
Not only is it an absolutely fantastic hat tip to rescue, with clearly happy dogs doing ‘doggy’ things, this video is a bit of a microcosm for what is happening right now in the rescue industry.
If you’re old like me, you’ll remember a time when music videos weren’t allowed on YouTube. If you recorded one of your favourite bands off Rage and put it up, it would immediately be taken down for infringing copyright and you’d receive a stern letter from the record label. This was because the music industry saw the public as a threat to its profit model, wanted to maintain absolute control on how and where its artists were represented and really liked the status quo and didn’t want to change.
Unburdened by the restraints of big music labels, small artists bucked this trend. They interacted with their public directly through mediums like YouTube, Myspace (and more recently Facebook and Twitter) and started to actively encourage people to share their music and ideas. They could see their public wasn’t their ‘problem’, but were in fact their customers. And they realised that people if people were inspired, engaged and given tools to share their passion that they could generate millions of dollars worth of free promotion (personal recommendations, the holy grail of marketing!)
Now nearly all music videos are uploaded to YouTube by bands. This OK Go video has been viewed 4.4 million times in 8 days! The capacity of an empowered fan base is immeasurable.
The major rescue groups in Australia, are still maintaining a very 1990’s-music-label view to business. They see the public as a threat and an enemy to be coerced at every opportunity. They work to maintain absolute control on how and where their animals are represented, often not only NOT using free social media tools, but actively chasing and threatening the public who take their time to do it on their behalf. They like the power they have under the status quo and don’t want things to change.
The reason most ‘big’ animal welfare groups fail in their efforts to engage their community’s is, like the music industry, you can’t despise your public and ask them to help you. You can’t ask people to be inspired and spread your message, while keeping your performance hidden and refusing to be truthful. You can’t enter the social media space and refuse to talk honestly about your successes and your failings. You can’t present your organisation as a community member, when you lock out your public and refuse to let them work with you.
The new, No Kill advocates are the remixers, the independents and the rock stars of the modern rescue industry, empowering their public to not only speak up for animals, but to promote and support their lifesaving mission. They see their public as a fan base to lead and inspire. They encourage participation and demand that their public aren’t just silent spectators, but vocal advocates helping spread their messages. They are modest, don’t take their community’s support for granted and work to be transparent and accountable.
The shift in mindset is profound. It may even be impossible for those who’ve always had complete control to ever move comfortably in the cloud, working without the safety of ‘walls’ between the public and their organisation. But for tomorrow’s No Kill leaders, this is an enormous opportunity. With no limits, there is no limits to what can be achieved.
You need to join forces with other rescue groups and hold a fee-free adoption event.
I know, right – but, hear me out.
Unfortunately, many non-profit organizations often seem to believe that there is a limited pie of resources out there and, therefore, they are in direct competition with other humane groups in the community. This is really more a matter of perception than reality. Animal lovers are amazingly generous, especially when they feel that groups are working together to get an important job done. And our community, animal groups and the general public have all pulled together to create one of the safest places in the country for homeless pets.
When 41 shelters and rescue groups across Alameda and Contra Costa Counties got together for the Maddies Matchmaker Adoptathon, offering would be adopters free pet adoption, they did so with the aim of emptying their shelters.
Shelters and rescue groups screened applicants as per their usual guidelines and used extended shelter trading hours, as well as PETCO, PetSmart and Pet Food Express stores to showcase their animals. The result? An overwhelming success;
Take a moment to consider that result – what would happen in your community if 1,500 pets were rehomed in a single weekend?
By co-oincidence, on the same weekend, New Zealand SPCA, offered a free-feline Friday. The Wellington, Wairarapa, Newtown, Waikanae, Levin and Masterton offered cats to the public with a waived fee over the weekend.
Their experience?
The Masterton office was flooded with prospective owners on Friday morning, Wairarapa SPCA manager Val Ball said.
Within two hours of opening more than 20 people had called in for free felines and seven cats had been adopted.
”There have been more people than cats here this morning, we’ve been overrun,” she said.
There had been 30 cats rehomed out of the Masterton centre by Friday afternoon and 150 animals given away in their Wellington offices.
I’ve often argued that we should be increasing the value of our rescue pets, by promoting them as ‘better than free’ and I still believe that is true. Many in the community are turned off by ‘free’ – to them it says ‘faulty’, ‘common’ or ‘things nobody wants’ – which is why FTGH ads are usually so ineffective in attracting genuine adopters. I don’t want a free pet – I want a great pet. I’ll just pay for one thanks…
But these promotions are different. ‘Free’ is a talking point. ‘Free’ builds a buzz. ‘Free’ is a cue that tells you it’s a limited time only offer. Groups getting together and offering ‘free adoption weekends’ gets people excited about lots of pets to choose from and promises a fun, festival atmosphere.
Since everyone is getting their pet free that weekend, it doesn’t come with the same ’stigma’ usually associated with a free-rescue pet. And with studies showing no difference in attachment levels between pets where the owner paid a fee – or didn’t – there is no good reason to kill pets ‘for lack of homes’, rather than coordinate your own BIG FREE ADOPTION WEEKEND!
It might just save a few hundred lives.
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