Ideas to increase visitors to shelters

[ewarp]

I need your ideas.

As some of you may know, I work for a low-kill shelter in IL. We have a smaller facility, with approximately 10-20 available dogs/puppies at any time.

Once deemed adoptable (meaning healthy and having passed the temperament test), dogs remain on the adoption floor until adopted. At this time, we're having a problem with adult dogs not getting adopted. Our stats indicate that it's not neccesarily a lack of adult dog adopters vs. other adopters, it's just that general traffic flow to the shelter has decreased considerably.

What can we do in our community to increase traffic into the shelter? We straddle the line between two towns with a joint population of about 55,000- it's definitely a more rural community with a highly fluctuating college population.

We do offsite adoption events every weekend (that's where I'm headed when I finish this), with varying results. We have a fairly high community profile- our obedience classes handled approximately 500 dogs last year, our "Barktoberfest" fund raiser/doggie extravaganza attracted about 2000 people this past October, etc. At the same time, because we opened only a year or two ago, we often hear "I never knew you were here!"

So far, our ideas include:

Lending adoptable dogs to dog friendly businesses for a day once a week or so. This increases the public's exposure to our dogs.

Putting business specific fliers about the shelter. For example, at the local fitness center: "NEED A NEW RUNNING PARTNER? Come meet Suzie!" At restaurants: "Don't you wish you had someone to bring a doggie bag home to?" etc.

Share your thoughts, folks! What do your shelters do?

[roman]

hmm....we seem to have almost the same events as your shelter at the one i am at

does your town have a st.patricks day parade? if they do get your boss to talk to the people in charge of it and get a banner made for the shelter and walk some of the adoptable dogs in the parade wiht you

[calgal]

Take pictures of all the dogs and start a web site for them so people can take a look at them when they can't get down there.
Post pictures at all the Vet. offices and pet stores.

[kalija]

Our local shelter does a "highlight" of one animal each week on a local news show. They take a dog or cat and do a little 5 minute segment on Friday mornings.

[Sheltiemama]

Check with your local news paper and see if they are willing to allow you some advertising space for free or a minimal cost. That way you can advertise what you have available either weekly or bi/weekly. You're not out anything for asking anyway....

[StephanieandTeddy]

Do you have a local TV station/channel? Our shelter often flashes pics of adoptable pets on the weather/news station.

[WolfRyder]

Everyone has suggested what I was gonna suggest In addition, just before thanksgiving, close to 100 animals were dumped on the local HS here. They discussed it and decided to offer all dogs/cats at 1/2 their normal cost. Older animals are less than puppies/kittens.

By Christmas the kennels were almost empty! In all the advertising and printed material and on their website they stressed the importance of not giving animals as gifts and offered a couple seminars on "I think I'm ready for a pet" to help people know what to expect and what to do.

A website is the best. Something with an easy URL to remember. Here, they update the website all the time when an animal is adopted.

Oh! and dogs that have been there a long while are offered 1/2 price. They are featured.

Here's the URL to our shelter http://www.nehumanesociety.org/

[rmci]

A local rescue group brings the dogs downtown with cute little vests saying adopt me. My local shelter has held Dollar Days, which I don't necessarily agree with. It increases the traffic but I think it intices the wrong type of people. Unfortunately, our shelter is way overcrowded, understaffed, and too many dogs are being PTS, so they're trying to get the dogs into homes anyway they can.

[cragarmom]

All of these ideas are excellent ones!

I second the website idea, but even further, blog about it. Set up a blog for your shelter and update it daily with rescue stories, pics of adoptable pets, facts and articles about rescues, upcoming events, etc. Blogging reaches gobs of people and updating frequently keeps people interested. People in your area could check back all the time to see what's going on.

You could also do merchandising - like tshirts or other promotional products (bumper stickers, pins and magnets, etc). A low cost way of doing it is a print-on-demand service (lots available on the web, I've even set up my own store with such stuff) where you really don't invest any money, rather earn money when someone purchases from your online store. If you do have a small budget for an event, you can buy your own branded merchandise and sell it at the event, getting your shelter's name out there every time someone wears a shirt or slaps a bumper sticker on their car (in addition to making a little bit of money to help with costs of running the shelter).

And heck, make a video and put it on YouTube. Videos there also reach tons of people, and even though a video like this one isn't about a rescue or shelter, it got enough hype and made it to CNN! (I'm not bashing that video, I personally thought it was adorable and hilarious!) - but it got national coverage! A really creative or touching video could go a long way!

Just some random thoughts...
Good luck!

Cheers,
Joanne

[Rivsky]

The website idea is awesome - lots of places in Australia do it this way they put up pics with sex, age and breed with a bit of information about what type of home the dog needs (eg high fences, no kids etc) - I think they update them weekly. If you want to know a couple of addresses to see what they've done PM me and I'll let you know.