Shelter Success Simplified

GUEST: Mark Robison has been president of CockadoodleMoo Farm Animal Sanctuary for more than 14 years. He is also Senior Consultant at Humane Network and Communications Manager for Options Veterinary Care, a nonprofit clinic. Mark was a journalist for more than 25 years in Stockton, California; Little Rock, Arkansas; and for most of his career at the main newspaper in Reno, the Gazette-Journal

MAIN QUESTION: How should nonprofit animal organizations handle negative reviews, critics on social media posts, and critical investigative reporters?

TAKEAWAYS:

• Respond to all online reviews, including the positive ones.
• Make sure that the person responding to negative reviews understands the big picture and can write clearly and concisely. This person may be you – or you might want to approve responses to negative reviews before they go out. Remember that the response is not just to this individual, but to everyone who will come across the review.
• Respond seriously to criticism, even when it’s unfounded. Express understanding for critics’ concerns.
• Cultivate supporters on social media by regularly liking their comments and responding to their praise and questions quickly. Be transparent and get ahead of criticisms so that your fans understand the issues and background.
• Hide comments by trolls, and respond fully to people who seem genuine in their concerns. Your main audience is not so much the critic as it is everyone else who might come across the complaint. This will give talking points for your fans so they can respond on your behalf wherever they encounter critics in the future.
• Don’t take journalistic investigations personally and don’t stonewall or be defensive. Express solidarity with their desire to inform the community and do right by supporters. Being open and honest will often defuse a reporter’s concerns before a situation blows up.

LINKS:

• Humane Network — website
• CockadoodleMoo Farm Animal Sanctuary — Facebook page
• Options Veterinary Care — website
• Leadership recommendation (article): “Managers: Compassion and Accountability Aren’t Mutually Exclusive" by Amy Gallo for Harvard Business Review

GUEST: Dr. Jennifer Conrad is the founder of The Paw Project, which educates the public about the painful and crippling effects of feline declawing and actively advocates to legally ban declawing at the community and state level. She is currently working in Southern California with nonprofit wildlife sanctuaries for unwanted and abused animals and administering her own company, Vet to the (Real) Stars, which provides humane veterinary care to animals appearing in television and movies. Dr. Conrad has spent more than two decades working on six continents to protect and improve the lives of wild animals. She is a graduate of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and is a member of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians, and the European Association of Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarians.

MAIN QUESTION: What can animal welfare organizations do to make sure efforts to ban declawing of cats are successful?

TAKEAWAYS:

If you would like to see legislation banning declawing in your state or community, be sure to reach out to the team at Paw Project – Pawproject.org – which can help you with airtight language for your proposal. This is important because it’s easy to have proposed legislation get amended with exceptions that make it worse than no new legislation at all. It’s better to kill such bills than let them be passed, where they could enshrine into law the practices you are trying to end.

State veterinary medical associations tend to be the only ones to oppose declawing bans. They are trade organizations concerned primarily with the financial wellbeing of businesses, not with what’s best for the animals.

Veterinary medical associations have pushed a number of myths and outright lies. These include:

~ Myth: Declawing is necessary to protect babies and seniors with thin skin from being scratched. The truth is that declawing makes cats far more likely to bite. A cat scratch is a relatively minor issue but a bite can be much more serious because they more easily lead to infection. For this reason, the CDC does not recommend the declawing of cats to protect human health.

~ Myth: If declawing it not available, cats will be dumped at shelters by people in even greater numbers. This can be demonstrated as untrue in two ways. First, nearly all animal shelters oppose the declawing of cats because they know it results in behavioral issues such as urinating outside the litter box and biting – that really are common causes for cat surrenders to shelters. Second, the documented results of declaw bans show that shelter admissions decline after the practice of declawing is eliminated in a community.

The best thing animal shelters and rescues can do to support a proposed ban in your state is to write a letter in support of banning declawing on your own organization's letterhead and send it to the legislators – including the bill sponsors. Such letters are used in the “bill analysis” when legislators first see the proposal. It demonstrates support to legislators that makes it more likely they will back the legislation.

LINKS:

The Paw Project or email [email protected]

For Nevada residents to comment on proposed declaw legislation:

~ Select bill AB209 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/Opinions/81st2021

~ Email the bill's sponsor Assemblywoman Susan Martinez with "AB209 SUPPORT" in the subject line at [email protected]

Leadership recommendation: Future Fundraising Now blog and newsletter

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: Rebecca Guinn is CEO of LifeLine Animal Project, which manages Atlanta’s Fulton and DeKalb County animal shelters and which opened a new shelter, adoption center and clinic in 2019. LifeLine’s community outreach effort provides free vaccines, spay/neuter and other assistance to thousands of pets belonging to underserved Atlantans. LifeLine’s community cat program, the first and largest organized trap-neuter-return assistance program in Atlanta, has sterilized and vaccinated more than 40,000 community cats; and the LifeLine Spay & Neuter Clinics comprise the largest spay/neuter provider in Georgia, having performed more than 140,000 surgeries to date. Rebecca is active in the Animal Law Section of the State Bar of Georgia and is a member of Best Friends Animal Society’s No-Kill 2025 National Steering Committee.

MAIN QUESTION: How can animal welfare leaders and managers keep an eye on the big picture while staying on top of day-to-day fires?

TAKEAWAYS:

• The leader’s job is to keep the focus on the mission and to get others involved in it.
• Build a team of likeminded people, look for each person’s superpower and tap into it.
• Seek out people with skills that complement others on the team.
• We owe our best to the animals every time. Set that standard for yourself.
• Find the gaps in your community, and figure out what’s needed to close those gaps.
• Regularly ask yourself if you're solving the right problems and what you are trying to make better. Perform gap analyses; over time, you’ll get better at solving for the right problems.
• Embrace both ends of the leash.

LINKS:

• Lifeline Animal Project — website
• Leadership recommendation: Nonprofit Tech for Good website and e-newsletter

Guest: Susanne Kogut is president of the Petco Foundation. She started out in corporate law before her passion for animals led her to become executive director of the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA. She is also vice-chair of the board of trustees for HABRI, the Human Animal Bond Research Institute.

Main question: How does Petco Foundation's new lost-and-found-pets initiative work, and why should shelter organizations participate?

Takeaways:

1 in 3 pets will be lost during their lifetimes, about 10 million each year.

Because supporting the human-animal bond is a fundamental part of our missions, getting them back home should be a priority for animal welfare organizations.

Petco Foundation is creating a national database and leveraging pet facial recognition technology so that there is one central place to seek help with a lost or found pet, making a successful outcome more likely. Dogs and cats are included.

It’s free to sign up and connects with many existing shelter management software platforms.

Grant opportunities are available to encourage groups to sign up so that their animals are included in the database. Additional grants are available to help organizations get animal management software if they don’t already. See Petcofoundation.org/findingrover for details.

“Stray” can have negative connotations so consider using “lost” or “missing” to describe pets who are found or picked up.

And lastly, it’s important not to make assumptions about pets who come to your organization looking rough. Such pets very well may come from loving families but being out in the elements or underlying health issues may give a false appearance of neglect.

Links:

Petco Foundation

Signup and details for Petco Foundation lost-and-found-pets initiative: https://www.petcofoundation.org/findingrover

Leadership recommendation: Tips on using Martha's Rules for board and other meetings

Recorded February 16, 2021