Helping shelters

From our shelter collaborative program, which focuses on peer-to-peer mentoring, to a new data visualization tool, these programs and initiatives save lives now and make it possible to sustain lifesaving gains into the future.

Launching a new shelter program

As organizations increase lifesaving, animals with medical issues start to make up more of their shelter population. Saving those animals depends on the availability of and immediate access to quality veterinary care. 

Thanks to you, in 2023, we launched the national shelter medicine program to increase lifesaving by assessing and improving the veterinary and wellness care animals in shelters receive. 

The program team, headed by Best Friends’ director of national veterinary programs, Dr. Erin Katribe, works both on-site and virtually with shelters, teaching things such as high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter surgeries; disease prevention and outbreak response; and ways to make existing veterinary programs more efficient.

Increasing Brownsville’s save rate

This past May, after struggling with a 26% save rate in 2022, the Brownsville Animal Regulation & Care Center signed on to receive assistance from Best Friends. Best Friends began working side by side with the shelter’s leadership and staff through the national shelter embed program, made possible in part by a grant from Maddie’s Fund®. 

First, Brownsville needed help with the basics. To cut down on the spread of diseases, the staff started vaccinating animals as soon as they arrived at the shelter. 

They changed how they fed and housed pets, helping them to be less stressed during their shelter stay. They expanded the hours that the shelter is open to the public and made the process easier for people wishing to adopt. These changes helped increase Brownsville’s save rate to 75% in September.

Visualizing success

For data to make a difference, it’s got to be easy to analyze, understand, and use. That’s why, with your help, Best Friends launched the Shelter Pet Data Alliance (SPDA). 

This highly visual new data and analytics platform makes it easy for shelters and other animal welfare organizations to track trends and successes, decide what programs to invest in, and determine what help they need from Best Friends and/or their peers to achieve greater lifesaving. 

SPDA lets organizations do something they could never do before without a great deal of effort: compare themselves to their peers to identify areas where their counterparts have had success. With this information, they can better decide to launch new programs, scale up successful ones, and end ineffective programs.

Saving dogs? Check

Finding homes for plus-sized pooches has always been one of the most challenging tasks facing animal shelters. So we figured, why not build a self-assessment tool for shelters to make sure they are checking all the boxes in their quest to get more dogs adopted? 

The goal of the list is to make sure they are exploring all options, such as extending adoption hours or hosting an adoption event during the evening or early morning hours. That way, people who can’t stop in during regular business hours will have the opportunity to adopt. The tool also provides organizations with customized input based on their unique challenges.

National adoption weekends

Can a three-day weekend inspire more people to adopt a pet from a shelter or rescue group instead of purchasing from a breeder or pet store? You bet it can! 

While we can’t give potential adopters an extra day off work, Best Friends waives adoption fees at all our locations during national adoption weekends. We also encourage participating shelters and rescue groups to waive or reduce their adoption fees during national adoption weekends. 

Why? Because many studies and reports have shown that low-cost or free adoptions help more pets find homes and don’t negatively affect how long pets stay in their new homes or how deeply their adopters bond with them. 

This year, three national adoption weekends helped an astounding 30,181 cats and dogs find loving homes.

Adopt Local Challenge

Best Friends’ home state of Utah has a rapidly growing population, and more people means more potential homes for adoptable pets. To connect people to these pets, Best Friends piloted a month-long Adopt Local Challenge. Pet lovers stepped up to support their local shelters by adopting, volunteering, fostering, and promoting the shelters to their communities.

Rescue groups championed shelters on their social media channels to inspire people to support them. Participating shelters set adoption and other program goals. In total, 11 shelters participated, and 612 animals were adopted.