Make Foster Onboarding Work for You

Let’s talk about low-barrier foster onboarding! What works, what doesn’t, and how to make it simple enough that people actually sign up and stay involved. 

PLEASE NOTE: Office Hours have been changed due to the Memorial Day holiday. They will now be Mondays, May 5, 12, 19, and Wednesday, May 28, 2025 at 12pm PT/3pm ET.

HOSTS: Kristen Hassen, Principal, Outcomes Consulting
               Kelly Duer, Senior Shelter Solutions Specialist, Maddie's Fund

GUESTS: 

• Stacy Price, Operations Director, One Tail at a Time 
• Clare Callison, Director of National Operations at American Pets Alive! 
• Luis Quintanilla, Senior Director, Sanctuary Animal Care at Best Friends Animal Society 

LINKS:

• Foster application template
• Foster agreement template 
• Evidence supporting a home-based approach to pet sheltering
• 2022 National Foster Survey
• Thinkific

Transcript

Kristen Hassen: 0:00

Welcome to Foster 50, the audio playbook. I'm Kristen Hasson.

Kelly Duer: 0:09

And I'm Kelly Dewar.

Kristen Hassen: 0:16

We're here to talk all about foster barriers and how you can overcome them. I just fostered for one of the shelters I worked with and I saw this dog that had been there two months no one can touch him and they couldn't get him adapted because they couldn't touch him and I said can I take him home and foster him and I haven't fostered for this organization before and they just said yes they said yes absolutely take him here's what he needs when he's ready for his next medical you can bring him back and I took him home that day and it was such a positive, easy experience. They just, they didn't tell me a bunch of rules that I had to follow. They didn't tell me I had to go submit an application and go through a background check. They just said yes. And now this dog is sitting with my other dogs is so happy. It's totally transformed. And I think it really just hit home for me how that could have gone so, so differently. What you are doing to animals by not giving them an opportunity to go to a home is really forcing them to live in a cage for 23 hours a day or more. And they don't get sleep. We know we've had staff spend the night at shelters and talk about how loud they are at night and how it's impossible to sleep. They are... mentally and emotionally exhausted. And I think we have a responsibility to start sending more animals to foster. Like it is not humane how we're continuing to house the animals. And so it needs to not be, how do we send a few more animals? It needs to be, no, no. How do we get out of our own way? Lifeline in Atlanta, they sent, I just talked to their director, 10,000 animals to foster last year. They are under-resourced shelter system in Atlanta, Georgia. They are doing the work. And that's an exceptional example. That's the largest I've heard. But we know tons of shelters, right, Kelly, that send 2,500 to foster.

Kelly Duer: 2:18

Yeah, we'll hear from some of them in this series.

Kristen Hassen: 2:21

Do you remember during COVID we did a foster challenge where we asked people to, I think we called it stay home and foster. It was greater good led that. And it was so disheartening because we had something like 80,000 people sign up to foster with their local shelter. And I think it was a fourth of them were ever contacted, period. And I think about that all the time because I really do think that when it comes to foster, we are the problem. The solution? People. Here's Clare Callison, Director of National Operations at American Pets Alive, discussing how this might look for your organization.

Clare Callison: 2:58

So there's a lot of things involved with this, but I think it comes down to one primary theme, and that is that people are the solution and not the problem. Looking at our processes and our policies on how we can be more inclusive and invite people into our organization. So I really think it comes down to that. And when we think of people as a solution, it makes it pretty clear that when you have a foster home or willing people out there, or even just community members, and you compare that to the shelter, that the shelter is always going to be your last resort. The foster home should always be a first resort because we know all of all of the implications of what that means for dogs and cats if they're at shelters longer. We know that's not ideal. That could be exercises like whiteboarding your entire process start to finish and ask yourself questions. Are these questions we're asking in the foster application, are these checks that we're doing, is this an enjoyable experience? Is this weeding people out? Are we making it easy for people to help us?

Kristen Hassen: 4:34

I want to talk a little bit about what do you hear from shelters about why they put those barriers in place? I think probably one of the most common things that I hear is we had a situation The intent is often to avoid this very specific situation from unfolding again, but the changes that are made to the program not only hurt their ability to recruit fosters, but they often have no direct relationship with the situation they're put in place to avoid. For example, requiring a home visit in hopes that it'll screen out fosters who might refuse to let go of their foster pet. So let's talk a little bit about the trauma response. I think Finn Dowling was the one who said if you are If your reason to not do something is because that one time something bad happened, that that's a trauma response. And I think both of us, it was Finn, right? That said that?

Kelly Duer: 5:21

It was, yes.

Kristen Hassen: 5:23

Totally like, it was such an aha moment for me. Thank you.

Kelly Duer: 5:29

Here's Luis Quintanilla, Senior Director of Sanctuary Animal Care at Best Friends Animal Society, about handling trauma while keeping barriers low.

Luis Quintanilla: 5:38

I think the biggest barrier that I've faced at whatever environment I've been in, whatever shelter I've been in, is that fear of the unknown. And I think for very long, for far too long, there was this sort of shelter mindset, this sort of bunker mentality that it's us versus them. And I think having to really walk away from that and break through that, those old habits, which are understandable. I mean, we carry a lot of trauma with us in this industry, right? It's not that unreasonable to become sort of scarred and sort of closed off and distrustful. But I think the biggest thing that I've tried to instill in my staff is, what are we actually afraid of? What are we actually afraid of? Because the status quo is here. It's been here for decades. It's always going to be there if it turns out that our experiment in trying to open up doesn't work. Obviously, the data doesn't show that. Obviously, we're on the right path here, really opening up. But really, I think it's just fear of change and fear of the unknown. And you sort of get protective of the animals as though they're your own, which is a great instinct. And it can propel your team to achieve miracles because they treat every single animal as though it's their own. But it can also very easily turn into an anchor that holds your entire team back if you get protective of this one individual animal. And no owner or no foster is good enough. So I think that's really a big thing to tackle is that, you know, I think while some of that fear, at least part of it may be very well-founded, which is based on things that we've experienced anecdotally, it can't be something that holds you back. And so I think it's just eliminating that fear and say, hey, look, we're also from the same community that we're a part of. So what are we afraid of?

Kristen Hassen: 7:14

One of the top things we hear is, we can't find fosters. So I think that's number one. But then number two is when they look at why their foster program isn't working, when you go back to that process, you see just You might start with a group of 100 people that want to foster for you and you're whittling it down to nine or 10 versus the 99 of them. And I hear this every shelter. There's nobody. Nobody wants to foster. And so when shelters say that, the first thing I do is look at their recruitment and onboarding process. And I think what we typically find is they're not really recruiting for new fosters. And when they are, the process is so cumbersome. We live in the world of like Amazon, click and you get the thing the next day. Like people are not, they're looking at these processes, they're looking at all the rules and they're self-selecting out, I think.

Kelly Duer: 8:03

One really important factor is onboarding time, which we'll define as the time period from when a person signed up to foster to when they're placed with a pet. The research from our National Foster Survey has shown that the shorter it is, the bigger the foster programs are. So as that time gets longer, the program size gets smaller. So less people are fostering for those organizations.

Kristen Hassen: 8:27

But you've done a lot of research on fostering. What's your takeaway when it comes to what the process should look like? Making it as easy as possible. The process should be fast. of the instant or at least under 24 hours. Someone should be able to walk into the shelter, sign up and take home a dog or cat. Multiple studies have shown that the biggest factor in determining people's behavior is making it easy. Right, like that's why so many people buy puppies online because you hit one button that says take me home and you're done. Right. Do you think the starting point for the orgs that are listening should just be to go through your barriers, like a process of where are you making it difficult or impossible for pets to go to foster?

Kelly Duer: 9:12

Yes, absolutely. I think that going through the barriers could be really helpful. Here's Stacey Price, Operations Director at One Tail at a Time, telling us some of the strategies they're using to keep barriers low while placing thousands of pets in foster homes each year.

Stacy Price: 9:31

Three simple things that if you remember and chant them to yourself over and over again are really helpful. One is that everybody is welcome. Regardless of their capacity for fostering, you're going to need them at some point. So open your arms, open your doors, bring everybody in. Some of our fosters are strictly weekend fosters. So the only thing that they can do potentially is foster through a weekend. We might need that when a foster goes out of town. So that's totally fine. Those people should come in and do... their orientation and be ready to do weekend fosters. And then throw out all the barriers that you possibly can. And I mean shelter barriers as far as making the application process and fostering super accessible. But I also mean, how many times have you talked to a foster and they've said, oh, I can't foster right now because I'm working eight hours a day out of my house. Or, oh, I can't foster right now because my car doesn't work. Those are all barriers that they're putting out. And I have an answer for almost every single one of those to be like, no, you can foster and here's how we're going to do it. So anytime that you find a barrier, either within your program or a barrier for a foster, analyze those and figure out if there's a support system you can put into place to really support those fosters a little bit better and then create a supportive, transparent community. So, so often, you know, fosters may only foster for a couple of weeks every few months and that's fine. We want them constantly engaged with us as an organization. So whether or not they have a current foster, we have them involved in our Facebook groups. We have them involved in our town halls. We do community town halls on everything from what our intake strategy is to what we're seeing throughout the United States with animal rescue. We will talk about anything to make people feel engaged and invested in what we're doing because we need the community in order to do the work that we're doing. Okay, so everybody is welcome. What does that mean? Anybody can be a foster. About our application. We try to keep our application as brief as possible. We do still ask for about 20 questions. I know it could probably be shorter, but most of them are questions about matchmaking. We want people to be able to finish this application easily within one sitting. So one of the things I always think about when I'm looking at our application or looking at our process is if I'm sitting on the couch at night and that ASPCA commercial comes on and Sarah McLachlan starts singing and I go, I want to do something about this. I should be able to engage very quickly with with a website and get an application on file so that that way that motivation keeps piling up versus if there's a long lag time or something becomes difficult, people are very likely to move on. So application is short and then we reach out within 24 hours of the application being submitted. As far as our orientation goes, Guys, I cannot tell you enough about how wonderful Thinkific is. It is free, sort of. So you're able to create your own course, upload it, and then people can complete it. Your first course is free, and they do 50% off for all nonprofits. It is the one thing that if you do need to pay for it, think about how much time you are saving if you aren't doing in-person orientations. We also have a higher conversion rate. So from application to orientation, it like skyrocketed basically when we went to a virtual orientation because it's something somebody can do at 9 p.m. They can do it whenever they're available. They can do it in bits and pieces. It also fits any learning style. So we have it where it's visual, but we also have narration. And then we have little quizzes. So it makes it really easy for somebody to finish it. And our orientation start to finish, if you really pay attention, is somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes long. And that is it. And from there, they are completely onboarded with our foster programs.

Kristen Hassen: 13:51

I see a lot of organizations who really limit what can go to foster and they're missing some of their highest need animals. So I think shelters need to calculate the care time for animals. Like if you have a clinic full of medical animals, keep going to shelters where like you'll have a bunch of kittens with URI that are sitting in the back of the shelter for weeks, often after they're even symptomatic. And those should just be in foster. Like get them out. And one of the other barriers I see is like people don't want to send medication of they don't want to send unaltered pets home. All of this is just these reasons not to do something that is just so obvious. I think when people are wondering about like, okay, if somebody shows up and wants to foster, how do you know they're going to bring the animal back? How do you know that they're a decent person. And I think the same, the same questions would apply to adopters, like the people that are adopting people fostering from you. So those are if somebody shows up, and you're not entirely sure that they should be fostering, really ask yourself why, because if you would let them adopt, they should be able to foster as well. I think we worry more about fostering animals. And to some extent, that makes sense. They're still in our custody. But really, when you hear, when you look at the high volume programs and you look at the risk, the actual risks that are played out, it is so much lower. Like the bad stuff is so much less than the bad stuff that would have happened if those animals had stayed in the shelter, including a lot of them dying.

Kelly Duer: 15:18

Most barriers are created due to fear and uncertainty avoidance, but there will always be risk and uncertainty. Shelters time is much more effectively spent getting to know potential fosters, preparing and supporting them as they take on their roles, create a culture of inclusivity by having one-on-one conversations with potential fosters, providing quality training, and thoughtfully matching people to animals. Studies have shown that taking a conversation-based approach rather than a policy-based approach to adoptions does not impact the quality of care the animal receives or its bond with its owner. And it's also unlikely to impact the quality of care in the foster home.

Kristen Hassen: 15:53

I think maybe for shelters that are listening, you need to set some goals and benchmarks for what you want to do. One great one is 50% of your shelter population has been fostered at any time. That's an easy one. You can even do 25% to start, but some percentage of your total population in foster, a lot of shelters carry 50% of animals that are in their custody in foster. And another one, so if you have 100 animals in a shelter, you would have 100 animals in foster. That would be your half and half there. That's a goal. Another goal is just 80% or more of your animals being available for foster. Some may not be like they are easy. Nine week old puppies that have just been altered and are going to be adopted in a second. They may not be eligible for foster because they're going to get adopted. But the vast majority of your animals should be. Are there any other goals you can think of that? that shelters should have in terms of like saying this is what we want it to look like?

Kelly Duer: 16:53

The process being extremely short 24 hours or less one thing that we don't really look at that i think we should is the number of people who sign up and don't take a pet home and i think that it depends on the organization but I have this sneaking suspicion that it's like 30 or more people who sign up never actually end up taking a pet home and i feel like those people we could cats before they fall through the cracks.

Kristen Hassen: 17:21

And if you're doing a big foster event, like anyone should be able to help process a foster. This is another area that I think is just crazy, frankly, that it can only be the foster coordinator doing the foster placement when it's the exact same process as the adoption process. Like, can anyone in a shelter process a foster? Is that a problem? And if you're doing a big event, can you just ring on everybody and say you can process foster or adoption? I think that's the best case scenario. We've seen the world change so much and it's time for everybody to just get on board and make foster care the center of how we do this. And to do that, overcoming those barriers is step one. That is the first thing shelters have to do is overcome their own internal barriers.

Kelly Duer: 18:04

Next week, we'll be hearing from some of the organizations with the largest foster programs about how they're recruiting fosters in their communities. And Finn Dowling and I will be available to give you a personalized support in growing your foster program during our office hours. We're both here too. If people want to reach out to us, our contact information will be in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening. We can't wait to see you next time.