My husband and I are life long dog lovers. We have always had dogs in our home, except for the gap of about three years after our boys graduated high school. Then, when Covid struck, our youngest son was sent home to wait out the pandemic. At the time, we were living in a remote area in northern Idaho…not where our son had grown up, nor where he had any friends. I think it took only about 48 hours for him to announce that, “We need to get a puppy.” Clearly, Mom and Dad were not providing ample entertainment in our newly shuttered lives.
Thus, “Dale”, named after one of the brothers in “Stepbrothers,” became an integral member of our family. Like most Covid dogs, he is spoiled and sticks to us like glue. He worships my husband, doling out any remaining attention to me when my husband is absent.
But what about all the pets waiting to find their homes?
At PlanHero, we are proud to work with a variety of animal rescue organizations. Whether a municipal county shelter, a facility-based nonprofit shelter, or a foster-based group, all of these agencies rely heavily on dedicated volunteers to carry out their mission of saving the lives of the homeless animals in their care.
This is where PlanHero can help. Animal shelters depend on volunteers for a wide variety of vital support, including transporting them to/from the facility, fostering, exercising and socializing both cats and dogs, and cleaning cages. Volunteers are also critical to fundraising efforts, getting the work out about adoption opportunities, and networking to find pets their forever homes.
Organizing Volunteers at Animal Shelters
Using our Group Page feature, you can share all of your volunteer needs with a single link. Check out our example Group Page for Promising Paws Animal Shelter here.
For Promising Paws Animal Shelter, we broke down the various volunteer opportunities into natural groups:
- Driving to and from the vet
- Weekly onsite volunteers
- On-call emergency pick-up drivers
- Adoption event volunteers
- Fundraiser volunteers
- Open house volunteers
PlanHero Signups
While ALL volunteer activities could be included into a single event (signup), we believe it’s easier for volunteers to be able to select their volunteer shifts by function.
We’ve created a signup for drivers to transport animals from the shelter to the vet and back to the vet. View it here.
To help offload the overburdened staff, we created a signup for weekly onsite volunteers here.
For emergency animal pick-ups, we created a signup for drivers who are willing to be “on call” for those dates. You may view it here.
PlanHero Events
We combined the Adoption Event Volunteer signup with Foster Pet Attendance. This way the volunteers for the event are scheduled and we know which foster pet families will be bringing their foster pet(s). Check it out here.
We organized the volunteers for an annual fundraising gala in 2-hour shifts so that everyone can still enjoy the gala. Here’s our example.
And lastly, we added an Open House signup to call for volunteers to oversee various areas/rooms of the shelter and get things nice and spiffy before the open house.
We also created a couple of events without dates. For our “Volunteer Substitute List” and our “Foster Animals List,” no date is needed since they are basically signups based on interest. In addition, we used our Question Forms to ask a few questions to help us better utilize or place the volunteers.
Engage Your Animal Shelter Volunteers
Don’t forget to engage your volunteers in getting the word out about adoption events and specific adoption opportunities. Recruit them to post photos to their social media profiles. Or even have them film a short video during their volunteer shift.
Finally, make sure your volunteers know how much you appreciate them. Your volunteers are your best resource for finding additional volunteers. If they are enjoying a rewarding experience with your organization, they are likely to share it with their friends. Likewise, if they love the animals, but feel the organization is sloppy and makes inefficient use of their time, they are will share that too. Data also shows that volunteers are very likely to contribute financially to the organizations with which they volunteer. So not only are you cultivating volunteers, you’re cultivating donors as well. Take good care of them!
For more information about nonprofit volunteer management, check out our post here.
If you’d like a quick free demo of PlanHero, just sign up here. We are happy to answer your questions and help you get started!
