Bonus Episode: Building and Scaling Foster Programs with Impact

PLEASE NOTE: This episode is from the 2025 Foster 50 Challenge, so some details and timing are out of date. For information on the 2026 Foster 50 Challenge, visit PEDIGREEFoundation.org/Foster50.

Join us for an insider’s look at building and scaling a successful foster program. In this episode, we dive into how to pilot new ideas, gain buy-in from leadership and stakeholders, and use data to drive real change. You'll also learn how to effectively market your program and get a behind-the-scenes view of one of the largest foster programs in the country—including how they make onboarding simple and barrier-free. Whether you're just starting out or looking to level up, this conversation is packed with practical insights you can use right away.

GUESTS:

• Daisy Navin, Foster Programs Manager, LifeLine Animal Project
• Finnegan Dowling, Shelter Program and Engagement Manager, Mutual Rescue
• Stephanie Jackson, Public Information Officer, Louisville Metro Animal Services

LINKS:

• Pilot program worksheet
• Dog field trip program names to inspire your shelter’s next brainstorming session (blog)
• Doggy Day Out toolkit (Mutual Rescue)
• Field trip pilot program toolkit (Maddie's Fund)
• Sleepover/weekend foster toolkit (Maddie's Fund)

Transcript

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UNKNOWN 0:00

music music

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Welcome to the Foster 50 audio playbook bonus episode. I'm Kristen Haston. And I'm Kelly Dewar. And we're here today to talk about a topic that I think we really don't discuss enough, which is how you implement a new foster program or prove or grow a foster program when you are already busy, you're short staffed, the summer is crazy. We're going to tell you how to do it successfully and bring along everyone on your team. First, we'll hear about how one of the largest foster programs in the country is making it easy for fosters to sign up and take pets home. Here's Daisy Navin, Foster Program Manager for Lifeline

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Animal Project. My name's Daisy. I am the Foster Programs Manager for Lifeline Animal Project in Atlanta, Georgia. So a little bit about our shelters. We have three locations in Atlanta, Georgia, specifically Fulton County and DeKalb County. Animal shelters are the ones that we oversee, but then we also have a private shelter location as well that we call our Community Animal Center. Two county shelters are open intake, and they have government contracts, but they're run by the nonprofit, and both of them see over 5,000 dogs and 2,000 cats per year. So it is a very, very large program. We do teeter on that 50% or larger in foster at any given time, especially for cats. Our largest cat populations are going to be those itty bitty kittens. We have a very successful cat fostering program where we get them out of the shelter and into homes with bottle feeders or whatever, usually within the same day. And then the majority of our dog population is going to be that medium to large size dog. In 2024, we sent in total over 13,000 animals to foster, including dogs and cats. And that is over 55% of our animals intakes that came in in 2024. We sent over 400 dogs, 449 animals, dogs out for day trips between our three locations in April 2025. We offer a whole amount of short-term and long-term fostering types. Basically, any single animal that comes into our building, we can strategically place into foster homes for close to any reason. Of course, most of our dog day outings aren't going to be with small dogs because we still are pretty successful in placing those, but We do send smaller dogs out for behavior socialization, foster, court case, life evidence, fostering. And then we just have a whole bunch of different opportunities. Weekend Warriors, our weekend program. And I think one of the biggest takeaways is that all of our short-term programs can easily transfer into any other programs without extra paperwork. We have one foster agreement that covers everything from dog for the day to long-term foster behavior foster. The transition between programs is so easy and really helps with that retention. We do have a trial adoption program that we recently extended from two weeks to 30 days because we had so many people asking to extend to have more time to make a decision or, you know, want to switch into general foster, but they actually wanted to adopt because they felt like they needed more time before they decided to adopt their foster animal. So we do have a foster to adopt program, but it is completely run by our adoption team, which really saves a lot of our foster team's time. We do have an intake diversion team. that's mostly run by our community support team that sees about 75 animals per month completely staying out of the shelter and entering straight into our foster program. And that's everything from large dogs, small dogs, cats, kittens. We don't really discriminate. We also do a really successful holiday Thanksgiving break dog foster program called Home for the Polidays. If you don't have any programs around holidays, I would strongly recommend it. About 30% of the dogs that we put in the past couple of years then go on to be adopted either by that family or that family's friends just because it is such great exposure for these dogs. So allowing your dogs to just have short little trips out around the holidays, it might mean your emergency phone call gets one or two calls about turkey being stolen off the table. But other than that, it is worth it. So going into actual onboarding, who can foster? So anyone over the age of 18 who lives within a reasonable distance to the shelter and can provide transportation for vet visits, emergencies, provide indoor space, and fills out a foster agreement essentially can foster. We do require home visits by Georgia law, the department of agriculture. We can get away with doing some virtual visits. And that was something that opened up around COVID. So that is a simple five minute zoom call where we say turn on your water do you have running water show us your thermostat is the temperature regular are there any leaks in the roof is the food clean cool you pass it's not so much a show me every single hole in your fence or anything like that it is simply like the barest of minimums and we use more so as a opportunity to open conversation about any questions they have about the foster program, as opposed to it being a limiting factor. We do allow people to take animals home before they get that foster home visit. we have an inquiry form, but people don't even have to fill that out. All the inquiry form goes over is their name, their address, their contact information, so their phone number and their email, the location that they're interested in fostering. Since we do have teams on site at each of our locations, we just want to make sure we direct them to the right person. If they have any experience with fostering medical stuff, behavioral things, if they have pets in the home, types of fostering they're interested in, and then how did they hear about us? So that's all the information that we collect. That's linked to a job form on our website. So as soon as they submit, they're sent an automatic email reply that links to an online orientation video and our foster manual and it encourages them to reach out to the team via email and also includes the address, our hours, appointment scheduling. That's really it in terms of what we require for people. For dogs, since we do have so many more, we encourage walk-ins. We let people know there's probably going to be a wait, but we try and limit it, obviously. But then we also try and encourage appointment times. For cats, we have like steps in the email, but mostly most of our cats that are going to foster our kittens that we're sending out over email blasts. So other sign-up notes. We don't ask about owning or renting. We don't really care. We're not going to check in with your landlord. If you're going to take home a Blocky-headed dog, our medical records say they're all mixed breed, because who am I to say what a dog's going to be mixed with? Then within 72 hours of completing that inquiry form, potential fosters are getting that first initial contact from a foster coordinator. So our foster coordinators at each location have a template that just says, hey, I'm so-and-so, I'm a coordinator, I'd love to get you matched with a dog. Can you let me know more about what you're looking for? and start a conversation in that way, but also invites them just to come down to the shelter. Inquiries are automatically pulled from the JotForm into ActiveCampaign, which is our mass email system. So then they are categorized to receive pleas of animals in need and receive our monthly foster newsletter that I send out. So they are constantly being given opportunities to engage and see what our needs are, because they're never ending. The other month, we sent out a plea of dogs in need, and we include this dog named Roscoe. And this person who had never fostered before responded to that email and said, I know Roscoe's original owner. I know they can't keep them anymore, but... I love him and I'd love to adopt him. So even though it wasn't a foster, it was still someone that didn't engage with us after signing up. And then two years down the line after signing up, saw the dog that was their reason to come in. So always giving people opportunities to see the needs is important in my opinion. Fosters who walk into the shelter without filling out the inquiry form, one way we help with wait times is just say, fill out this form. On top of the inquiry form, they must also fill out that foster agreement that says like, won't sell the dog and they promise to feed it and stuff. In-person onboarding is individual and conversation based. So every single person that comes in, the coordinator that's meeting with them is seeing what their comfort level is, matchmaking and going over specific parts of our program based on what it seems like their biggest needs are. So I wanted to talk a little bit about how people hear about our foster program. Over a quarter of our applicants for foster are finding out through friends and family. So really that word of mouth and keeping good relations is going to be a huge driver in your program. Facebook has really taken off for us recently, especially for Urgent Dog Please. Instagram has become... more popular. And then other includes next door before we include the next door option, tabling events, just seeing dog day outs. Because I mean, what is more selling than seeing a good dog out for a walk on the day to get you to want to get involved? We also have ads around town on the backs of buses. That one-on-one engagement of literally just seeing like a dog out with adopt me swag on is really convincing for people to want to engage. So overall, one of the ways that I think we are as successful as we are is we build a culture around availability. So I said that we do offer walk-ins. We don't remove people from like our email campaigns. We make sure that every single person knows what our hours are. We allow foster pickups anytime that we're open, which is basically 11 to seven daily, but that's not necessarily a requirement because I know that's not going to be within every organization's capabilities, but just making sure that You have walk-in hours assigned where people can just walk in and learn about your programs and speak to a coordinator, walk around the kennel and figure out if fostering is going to be a good match is really the best way to get people in is to put the ball in their court and say, okay, we make it as easy as possible. Come on in whenever you're ready to. Staff on site, regardless of whether or not they are foster coordinators, are friendly and familiar with their foster programs to help promote programs to browsing guests, even if they didn't come in for the purpose of our foster program. So if someone just drives by our shelter because they saw it and they want to look at some dogs, maybe when they're in the kennel, a staff member is going to say, have you heard about our Dog Day Out program? And that's how we're getting people engaged.

UNKNOWN 11:26

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SPEAKER_03 11:30

Kelly, I think you and I have both struggled with this. And what seems to happen is that a shelter starts out with a good intention. They're excited about a program. They start bringing people together and all of a sudden they get kind of hit in the face with, but what about this? Or we've tried this before, or we don't have the time for this. I think the word bandwidth gets thrown around a lot. Are these experiences you've had as well? Yes, absolutely. or they don't understand why it's a good use of their time. I think the starting point for all of this has to be that piloting a new program means engaging everyone, communicating really effectively, but also getting to yes. That's where we see those no's. There's either a bunch of little no's that pile up and kind of deflate someone, or there is one big no from someone in charge that stops things. So if this describes anything you've tried to do in your organization, this is for you. We have a really simple worksheet that's a tried and true method. follow this worksheet, complete it, and this will save you a lot of time, energy, and heartache in the future when you do start to run up against resistance or real barriers. We're gonna start with that, and what we recommend is that you actually complete this before you announce the pilot to anyone. If you have an idea or you've been tasked with doing something new, Completing this ahead of time is actually what you need to prepare to answer all the hard questions, justify why you want to do it and pilot it. The first thing that you want to do is just announce the name of your project. program if you're just starting a dog foster program you might just call it our dog foster program or if it's a program that you want to give a special name to i know we work with riverside and they're starting a foster program where they're finding two-week fosters for pets before they go on transport and they're calling that ticket to ride a creative name can sometimes get people excited but make sure that whatever it's called anyone would be able to pick up your sheet and know what it refers to Need ideas for brainstorming? There's a link in the show notes to a blog that lists dozens of cute field trip names. You also want to name three things that you want to accomplish. This really is an important part to think deeply about. I see a lot of shelters starting programs that are great, but I don't know that those shelters have always asked themselves what the end goal is. And so they can start a program without thinking through what are we really trying to get done with this program. We'll give a couple examples of that. And then asking what problem you're trying to solve and how do you know this is a problem. If shelters would just answer this question, it's two parts. What's the problem and how do you know it's a problem? If they would really answer those, they would save themselves a lot of time. So for instance, if I want to start a weekend foster program for dogs, Thanks, folks. I would say that the problem is we're closed on Sundays. A lot of our dogs are sitting in the shelter over the weekend. They're not able to be adopted and they're decompensating. They're getting worse. We don't have a lot of volunteers when we're closed. So the problem we're trying to solve is those dogs. And then what we want to do is we want to make sure that they're tired and happy. When they come back to the shelter, the shelter reopens that they're ready to be adopted. They're more adoptable and they'll move out more quickly. And then if I wanted to answer how I knew that was a problem, I give some examples either grounded in data or anecdotally that represent data but if I know I have 50 kennels and that we know that 50 dogs stay in shelter over the weekend when we're closed what I would want to do is say we're trying to solve the problem of these dogs sitting here the staff time that it takes to care for them and the opportunity they're missing out on it. That set you up then to be able to say, we sent 30 dogs out to foster this weekend. And that meant that we had this much more staff time to accomplish this. 10 of those dogs got adopted the day they came back. So if you don't know the problem we were trying to solve, you will have trouble measuring success. Absolutely. Speaking of problems and goals, creating and using SMART goals can increase the likelihood of your success. Here, Kristen explains what they are and why you should use them. The SMART goal is like a model of piloting changes, implementing processes. It's kind of underutilized. You hear it thrown around a lot, but it really works in animal shelters because it's simple. SMART goal, it stands for specific, meaning you're trying to do something specific. Measurable, you can measure things. the success of it. Achievable, something your team can do. Relevant, meaning relevant to your overall mission. You may start a great birthday party program for kids at your shelter, but if that's not really relevant to your mission of getting animals out, or you can't define how that's relevant, then it wouldn't maybe be a good program to start. And time bound. And this one we really miss out on. Time bound means if we're trying something and we want to measure success, we're defining that time period up front. And that's really what it means to pilot. A pilot can be anywhere from one day to three months, but having that defined time period is critical. So what would be the opposite of a SMART goal? So like a not SMART goal? would be when your boss comes to you and says, I want you to start a transport program for dogs. I want you to transport out as many as possible, as quickly as possible. The challenge with that is that we don't know when we've been successful. We don't know when we failed. We don't have kind of a specific measurable way to know that we have accomplished what we were trying to do. And it's not time bound. If that person says, I want you to start this program, get as many dogs out as quickly as possible. I don't know when the end point is to that. A more effective strategy would be to make it a smart goal and to say, In August, our goal is to transport 100 dogs that weigh over 30 pounds. And we want to do that by August 31. And the way that this connects to our mission is that our shelter is really over capacity. And this will help us clear out 100 kennels for dogs that really need to be in shelter. So that is specific. And you can imagine as a staff person, you know, when you've done a good job, you know, when you've done that versus the other one, which would be like, okay, I'll do as many as fast as I can. And having really measurable goals can also help to get people excited about it. I've seen organizations that they have foster Facebook groups and they'll say, we need 12 dogs taken home this weekend so that we have kennels for the incoming dogs. And it really gets people excited and they update everybody on the progress. It really helps to motivate people as well. It's such a good point. For volunteers, people that aren't their everyday community advocates, It feels like something they can have a part in. So for your volunteers, you know, they can help. You can say, we're trying to get 100 dogs out. Here's the meter where we're tracking how many we have. Here are the ways that you can help. And then they can be part of trying to achieve something together. And I think you're right. It gives them, it makes everybody feel like they're working towards the same thing. Next, how will data help you with your pilot? This word data is going to come up over and over and over again when we talk about foster. It's partly because historically our shelter software programs have really not adequately tracked foster. And that's been a real problem for animal shelters who can't show how much work is going into foster programs through shelter software. And so we want to always have you be looking at your data. And this can be really, really simple. In this sheet, you're just going to talk about what kind of data you'll track. So if you're starting program to try to get your 20 longest day behaviorally sound dogs to a foster home in the first two weeks of July let's say that's your goal the data that you're going to track is you're going to start out talking about you're going to have a list of those 20 dogs their length of stay and then you're just going to track how many did you get into foster that would be a great question how many got adopted from foster how many got adopted soon after returning This does not have to be complicated. This is anyone can do it. It doesn't have to be hard. You can do it in a simple spreadsheet, even a Word doc. But knowing that ahead of time, tracking your data is what will allow you to expand the pilot or make it a permanent program. I think that the other thing about tracking data, too, is that you get success stories. You can really say like, oh, my gosh, remember what happened with this dog? It helps you mark that success that way, too. You do need to know who will be in charge of the program and who needs to be involved. This is another place we see shelters really struggle because the more people you involve, the more you tend to get the no's and the pushback, but we already tried that, it didn't work. Your communication with other people who will be involved in the program is critical before, during, and after the pilot. Communicating with everyone in the organization about why they're doing the pilot and what that's going to look like and why this person is being asked to do this, getting input from them can really help people to become comfortable with doing it. One thing we've both seen a lot is a program that starts out with a lot of steam, but then begins to fizzle out. What we found over time was that they started off marketing it really, really well, but kind of dropped off. And pilot programs, they're kind of like a plant. Like you have to keep watering it. You got to keep talking about it to keep the public and your organization motivated to keep doing it. Let's take a moment to dive a little deeper into ways you can market your pilot program. Here's Finnegan Dowling. Shelter Program and Engagement Manager at Mutual Rescue.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

My name is Finnegan Dowling. I am the shelter engagement and program manager for Mutual Rescue. The great thing about social media now is on one hand, it's sort of all encompassing, which drives us all crazy. But on the other hand, there's so much more opportunities for just quick content. So definitely talk, talk and keep talking. You have stories that disappear after 24 hours. You have reels, all of those sorts of things. Also, maybe create an event. It doesn't have to be a physical event, but you can go ahead and do a Facebook event for the start of the challenge. If you have any local influencers or people that are just local celebrities, business owners, try to get them involved in marketing your program or try to get them to, if you have a short term foster, take a dog out for the day and do a post about it. But one of the big sort of deals that we're not touching as an industry is Nextdoor. Nextdoor is one of the most popular and most trusted social media that people don't really think of as a social media. So it's a great place to ask your volunteers and your staff to post because people are a lot more likely to read those posts and take them seriously if their neighbor is asking them. And also, even though most people don't use the traditional media anymore, most people are getting their media from social or whatever, their news from social, definitely don't be afraid to roll out to the media, especially too because it tends to be an older demographic that looks at that media, but that's a great demographic for fostering. Don't just reach out to the papers, but if you live near a military base, if you live near a college, anything like that, make sure that you're hitting up those media sources too. Most areas have like local pet parenting publications. Reach out to them. Just ask everybody you can ask.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Once your program is launched publicly, you need to keep the momentum going to keep your program strong. Talk about it. Post photos and stories from participants regularly. Tell every success story.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Kelly and I I think we can both agree this is the big thing that makes us pull our hair out because we both work with a lot of shelters that have different foster programs and it's really common that I think we both get these questions we're like well we have a foster program but it doesn't really do anything or it was big when we first started but then it died down and then I'm We look at their Facebook pages. We look at their social media. And fostering is not being marketed. It's just not being talked about. You should be talking about fostering all the time on your social media. And there's so many different ways. It doesn't have to be the same post like we need fosters. But you need to mention it. And you need to mention it at least three to five times a week. How can you do that? Posts about adoptable animals. Obviously, you can say this animal is currently in foster. If you're interested in adopting, great. If you're interested in fostering, like stick that ask in there as well as that post. Stories, you can always do a happy tale and mention that the dog was in foster. And even just, you know, maybe highlighting a foster parent every month on your social media page. I believe it was at Memphis Animal Services. And they sent 37 dogs out on Valentine Day overnights. 15 of them got adopted that day. 10 stayed for longer term foster and only 12 returned at the end of the event. And that was a pretty low lift event. It was just like an overnight weekend foster event. And if you're saying, yeah, but we really don't have any holidays coming up to coincide with the launch. You don't need a holiday. You can create one. Lifeline did an amazing example of just doing an event for the heck of it. They did something called a day for the dogs, teamed up with, I think it was a running group, and they brought everybody from the town into this event. They had a photo booth there and they prioritized their longest stay dogs. So these people were not signing up to take out Shih Tzus and they knew that. And even still, all of those dogs were booked ahead of time. And I have the the statistics somewhere, but it was an incredibly effective, I think 50 to 25% of them did not come back to the shelter. And these were long stay blocky headed dogs. Another thing that we often forget Businesses can foster. Places can foster. I've seen some really great examples of this, particularly with short-term foster. Huberger Subaru up in Colorado, they do a really cool program where they incentivize their staff as a prize instead of coming to work, I think it is. They can come take a dog out for the day or they will adopt a staff dog for the day through the Doggy Day Out program. And that's such a great idea. There was another shelter up in Vermont that was doing it with a liquor store prior to the pandemic. And it was great. Once a week, they would go to the shelter through their day foster program and then just basically adopt a shop dog for the day. And if you want to get people in a good spot, get them when they're on their way home from work, picking up a bottle of wine. We're all sort of competing. The idea is it's a challenge. So why not take that challenge to your community? Your participants are more likely to do more if they think that it's a game. But when you do send dogs out on foster, for any sort of foster, consider making some games around it. Give them a bingo cart to take pictures of the dogs in front of all of these different places. These not only make fostering a fun family thing, your marketing person will be so stoked with you because you'll finally get photos that don't look like animal shelter photos. Give people, if they do short-term fostering, loyalty cards and that way you know as they're people love to to get some sort of thing and if you're wondering well if we game it up then what do we give them we know you're all under resourced right now like swag and gifts don't have to be expensive you can literally just let them name a litter of kittens and most of the public will be really happy with that

SPEAKER_03 28:13

You also want to do some basic, is there a financial cost to the program? If there is, then it's best to be upfront about that and figure out how you're going to pay for it. Most foster programs don't necessarily have to have a cost, but they can really benefit. from having supplies, dog walking equipment, swag for people who participate. Most of it's not very expensive, but boy, it can help. If you're doing a program like a finder to foster program, having crates for people to take a dog home keeps that dog safe, keeps that family safe. Really, those kinds of supplies are the most frequent cost. You also may need temporary staff time, maybe other things you need, but getting that laid out in the beginning is really helpful. Also wanted to find the start and end date upfront. Even if you plan to continue a program forever, don't set it up that way. Set it up to last a certain period of time At the end of that time, commit to doing an evaluation, communication, and a report out on how it went. This can be all summer. You could say all summer, we're going to do this. And once a month, we're going to give you an update. But you do want to define the end because at the end, what you'll be doing is you'll be saying what worked, what didn't work, and do we want to continue this and how. And at that point, you may adopt that program permanently or you may enter another pilot phase. When you're creating your pilot program, before you've gotten it approved, I would suggest talking to the people who are the biggest stakeholders in it, asking them, what are their reservations about it? Because this way you can really get information, and when you present it to them as a pilot, you can answer those questions in their minds right off the bat. For example, if you're starting a field trip program and leadership is concerned about losing dogs during field trips, there are all kinds of ways you can build handling safety into the program. You might make it a rule that dogs go out with a leash and a harness that's clipped to its collar with a carabiner. Loan seatbelt tethers to participants so you don't need to worry about dogs accidentally bolting from cars. Training participants on what to do if a dog gets lost and what not to do, etc. That's a great point. In this case, we really just want to make sure you're setting yourself up for success and to be able to respond. The other question that comes up a lot and should come up right in the beginning is, do you need checklist SOPs, signage? Do you need training materials, website language? Do you need those things for this program? The answer is generally yes, and we sometimes skip this part. Thanks to AI, this is really easy now. You can ask a friend who's already doing the program to send you their materials, put those through AI and just have them sort of made personal for your organization and of course review them all. But this shouldn't take that long, but you do need that stuff. And you need to know upfront how much staff time a new pilot will take. Generally, if volunteers are passionate about what you're doing, this is one of the easiest ways to get them motivated to help because they want to see positive change happening. And we forget to ask them. If I'm working on a team that has no staff time, I have to go find volunteers to help. When you're reporting out on any grant, right? Like you're reporting out to get a grant or you have gotten an award and you have to report success. If you've done this up front, your work's already done because you've done all the work up front. So when it comes time to report out what we did, you've already got it. When you're reporting on the data for your pilot, think outside the box. Data points like the number of new members of your community who engaged with or donated to your organization or the number of new media contacts you've networked with may not have been anticipated, but they're still really important. Don't forget to report on any good stories, like the person who came to the foster training and fell in love with a senior cat while they were there and adopted them right on the spot. Oh, that's really helpful. Sometimes you're collecting data so that you can prove something. You can almost always get people to yes. If you get no initially, you can scale back a little bit. You just need a starting point. If you can get that starting point, you can usually go from there and expand that pilot. But we often just take no for an answer. It's like, okay, okay, okay. It's too hard. Never mind. If you commit to not doing that and saying, I am getting the yes, nine out of 10 times, you will get to a yes, even if if it's a slightly altered version of what you hoped to do in the first place. Here's Stephanie Jackson, Public Information Officer for Louisville Metro Animal Services, describing how she piloted the shelter's wildly successful filter program, starting with a small group of staff and eventually opening it up to public participation.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

So I started out as the foster coordinator in 2016, and it was an established foster program, but didn't send large dogs out to foster. So I applied for some apprenticeships with Maddie's Fund, and I received one with Austin Animal Center and the Medium Large Dog Foster Apprenticeship. And that apprenticeship changed the trajectory of my animal welfare career, not only because of all the amazing people that I met and the information that I learned, but the validation that I received, knowing that what I believed in my heart, that there were other outlets for these dogs that were dying, that it was true because other places did it and other people were doing it. And so that's one of the biggest takeaways from that experience. I believe that field trips and fostering saved dogs. We started the program in spring of 2017, got back, and the first thing I did, I think I was still on the plane when I was typing up an email to our director to say, hey, I got to talk to you. I've got all these things in my brain that I want to get out. And when I got back, I sat down with them, and I had a binder, which Kelly and Kristen always referred to it as your toolkit. Get your toolkit ready when you're going to go talk to your people in power above you that make the decisions, your upper management people. Be sure to have all the things together for all the questions they're going to ask. Have the data, have the experience from other shelters just like yours. Because we're a municipal shelter, we can't really go on information that maybe a private humane society would. We want to go through the municipality side because we have all the laws and things like that, that we need to stay focused on public safety, those kinds of things. So of course, you're going to get all the questions about What if a dog bites? And I just had the toolkit to prepare myself for all those questions that our director at the time was going to ask. And to my surprise, he had very little pushback. We started with staff going out first with dogs. Staff would take those dogs to a park next door and get a quick experience with them and then bring them back. And that happened quite a few times on staff's lunch breaks. Once that was successful, I think it was like just a couple of days, we invited our already established foster and volunteers to come and do a really quick one-on-one orientation with me, which was basically me talking about safety and how to use the tools, which was, you know, the freedom harnesses and stuff. And once they did that, they signed some paperwork and were on their way. It is to me kind of a foolproof program. And if you're not utilizing field trips or sleepovers and you want to save more dogs, you should stop everything you're doing and do that today.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

This all sets you up to not be sitting there feeling demoralized and feeling frustrated that you feel like your team isn't on board or nobody has time. The further you're out of your comfort zone, the more you need this structure. And so if there's any time to try this, use it and let us know how it goes, because it will really help you, especially if you are kind of pushing the limits of what you do now or what you thought you could do. The reason that we're so excited about the Foster 50 Challenge is that it is inspiring animal shelters and rescues to try something that they haven't tried, to push the boundaries, to really make a brave choice, to pilot something that you maybe didn't think you can do. There is never a time when this kind of process is more important. Thank you so much for listening. This is our last podcast for the 2025 challenge for real this time, but you can find more resources in the show notes and on the challenges website. Good luck to you all.