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Effective conversations go beyond knowing what to say. They also include many verbal and nonverbal factors that make a big difference in how we communicate and present our messages to minimize confusion. In the workplace, poor communication skills can lead to a bundle of crossed wires and misunderstandings that could leave employees feeling disconnected and excluded.
Brevard Humane Society (BHS) opened their doors in 1952. This year marked 70 years of them serving their community, an accomplishment they celebrated at their recent Tuxes and Tails event. The night was filled with celebratory laughter, smiles, and pride. In 2021, BHS found loving homes for over 1200 dogs and cats that entered their care and reunited 76 lost pets with their families. In addition to their work with lost and homeless pets, BHS also operates a low-cost clinic that provides high quality spay/neuter and preventative care to pets across the community. The event was sponsored by Subaru of Melbourne, pictured above with Theresa Clifton, Executive Director of Brevard Humane Society.
Even as the organization celebrated this huge milestone, they are struggling to make an outdated, 60 year old building meet the needs of modern animal sheltering. They have embarked on fundraising efforts to update their facilities. You can learn more about these efforts and help Brevard Humane Society in their mission to provide more comfortable housing for the animals in their care by donating here.By understanding and applying research to our work, we have the ability to maximize the impact of the work we do. Below are three studies that were recently performed that provide valuable insight into our mission of improving the lives of animals and supporting a strong human-animal bond.
During the pandemic, first time fosters were the most likely to adopt. Researchers took data from 19 shelters across the United States and found that first time fosters without pets already at home adopted the shelter pets in their care 77% of the time. The same researchers found that the shelters that allowed adoption visits directly from foster homes, adopted out their pets in two thirds the time as shelters that did not.
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We’ve all been there: you start the week already short-handed and suddenly one key player resigns. As you scramble to make sure you have enough coverage until you can hire a replacement, you can’t help but wonder what could have been done to retain the employee. While we can’t deny that salaries play a role in enticing employees towards a potential role, multiple factors can help build a long-lasting relationship with your team. If there’s anything we’ve learned recently, it’s that it’s not always about the money. By the time your employee evaluates other options, it’s highly likely that there are multiple factors swaying your employee’s decision to move away from the company.
In July 2022 Rich Anderson, Co-chair of Marketing here at FAAWO, announced he is stepping down from his role as Executive Director and CEO of Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League. For more than a decade, Rich dedicated his energy to the community of West Palm Beach. Under his stewardship Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League provided assistance to 380,000 dogs and cats and launched Countdown 2 Zero (C2Z), a collaborative partnership with Palm Beach County with the goal of eliminating unnecessary euthanasia in the community. We join with Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League in wishing Rich well as he leaves to start a new chapter in his life and career.
The Humane Society of North Central Florida (HSNCF) recently had their hard work and dedication to serving communities and animals across north central Florida recognized when they received a $25,000 grant investment from Petco Love. The investment will help to ensure that they are able to keep working toward their mission of eliminating the euthanasia of healthy and treatable pets by matching pets with families for a lifetime, furthering spay and neuter through education and outreach, and being advocates for their community members, human and animal alike.
As COVID cases continue to rise in Florida, many organizations are seeking to rethink their workplace safety guidelines and protocols. Leaders are grappling with decisions about mask mandates, vaccination requirements, and how they can best protect employees and the public they serve. Below are some resources that my help as you navigate changes in your organizations policies.
Pethealth Inc. is proud to announce the return of the Diane & Bob Hoover Annual Innovation Award.
Animal shelters do not often have the opportunity to commit to a major renovation or new building project. So, the decision to start fresh with a new facility or to transform your current space needs to be thoughtfully considered based on a variety of factors, including fundraising capability, site availability, and animal capacity needs now, and at minimum, a decade into the future.
Understanding your fundraising capacity is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. You cannot properly evaluate fundraising capacity without some analysis of your current and future needs. However, you won’t be able to fully define the scope of the project until you know how much money you can raise. We recommend a needs assessment to understand how much it would cost to design and build the project if you were to undertake a major renovation or potentially build a whole new shelter. With this information, your fundraising feasibility consultant can do his or her work more effectively.
With increasing number of natural disasters, there is a need for effective and efficient ways to manage the number of animal transfer to and from your organization. As evidence with California fires or the hurricanes in Louisianna this past year, more and more transfer networks are being created to help get animals quickly out of harms way.
That’s whyPetPoint, in coordination with Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), have built the all-new Transfer Manifest Report — a report designed to make transferring animals, even in emergencies, easier than ever before. Display the animals ready for transfer, along with their vital medical details and behavior status, in a report that opens in Excel for easy sharing or sorting.
The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement is back with another episode of The Intake. Jim Tedford, the President and CEO of The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement, interviewed Steve Zeidman, Senior Vice President, Software Solutions from Pethealth Inc. and the 2020 recipients of the Diane & Bob Hoover Annual Innovation Award, Adan Parra and Michele Anderson from El Paso Animal Services.
Though El Paso Animal Services have multiple worthy initiatives, their focus on using technology to reunite more pets with their loving families was inspiring. Fueled by the creation of Lost and Found pet reports, El Paso’s Pet Finder Map is an interactive and comprehensive tool. It’s become a central location for the community to post a photo of their lost pet or view pets found.
How we occupy and move through spaces have been altered by our need to adapt our lives to controlling the spread of COVID-19. It’s now routine to drop-off and pick-up your pooch through the window of your car while waiting in the veterinary hospital’s parking lot. We suspect that many shelters have already adapted operations by, for example, moving some adoption processes on-line, limiting how many potential adopters can be in the lobby at one time, or making your people-traffic go in one direction with separate entrance and exit doors and floor-mapping flow through animal housing.
There are several design techniques that were already prevalent in the animal sheltering world that others now realize will help make all buildings safer to use and occupy during our time of COVID-19 and afterward. Those in the animal care community already know that air quality, flow and filtration help control the spread of airborne pathogens. Compartmentalizing animal housing into smaller spaces makes it easier to contain a disease outbreak and sanitize a space more rapidly. Automatic door openers make it easier to bring crated and non-crated animals through the doorway and provide a touchless entry.
