At its core, the Return to Home Challenge is simple. Find a pet? Get it home. That home might be a cozy apartment, a house with a big yard or, if you’re a community cat, an abandoned lot.
For the month of October, 17 national organizations are inviting animal shelters and rescue organizations who handle lost/stray/at-large dogs and cats to elevate Return to Home (RTH) by creating a culture of return to home within their organization and community. In just 31 days, your organization can create or expand inclusive and diverse new programs or practices to make it easier for your community to help a lost pet or find a pet they have lost, and ultimately keep families together. Simple practices like microchipping, making information about lost pets easily accessible on your website and letting the community know what they should do if they find a cat can go a long way in keeping pets out of the shelter and getting them back into their homes.
Along with saving time, resources and shelter space to help those pets who really need it, you’ll have a chance at the $300,000 in grant prizes, thanks to Maddie’s Fund, Michelson Found Animals Foundation and Petco Love.
As with the previous Challenges, there will be plenty of help along the way. Resources from town halls, standard operating protocols, partnering with local businesses, creating flyers, photography tips and website best practices will be available. Additionally, four Zoom Huddles will be held with a diverse line-up of RTH experts. These Zoom events will bring you together with your peers who are successfully implementing RTH practices to share how they do it.
Note: This year we’ve expanded Return to Home to include the Return to Field/Shelter-neuter release (RTF/SNR) category in addition to the Return to Owner category on the Basic Data Matrix. Traditional trap-neuter-return, while invaluable to your community, is not included in this Challenge.
So, what do you say? Are you in? We hope so!
Learn more or register.
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