Today, more than ever, animal shelters find themselves struggling to communicate effectively with advocates, volunteers, public officials, and even their own colleagues. To complicate matters further, animal shelter and rescue leaders often find themselves on the defensive, communicating from a reactive position. Some common communications mistakes include: engaging on someone else’s terms; closing off communication; oversimplifying complex subjects; getting defensive; and withholding information.

In this session, we’ll teach you how simple shifts in how we think, act, and speak can help you achieve results, win community support, and build trust. You’ll learn eight simple rules to win on the communication front every time and you’ll learn how to avoid communications traps that can make situations worse. You’ll also learn how to talk to stakeholders about complex situations and how to communicate in crisis situations. Finally, attendees will practice, using common examples.

The goal of this class is for every attendee to feel well-prepared to communicate about any subject to everyone from critics to community supporters. If you’ve been struggling to achieve healthy, productive communication with anyone inside or outside of your organization, you’ll get the help you need!

Speaker: Kristen Hassen, Outcomes Consulting

WEBSITE LINK:  https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Z_sQAnOrRde1_0Laab9aHQ

How do we reduce relinquishment to animal shelters? In the U.S. and Canada, approximately 25-30% of animals that enter shelters are surrendered by owners. However, despite many shelters and rescues providing various pet support services for the past few decades, there has been little demonstratable reduction in owner surrendered animals. Currently, many animal shelters use data collected at intake, such as surrender reasons, to create programs that aim to support pet owners to keep their pets. This presentation will outline research into animal shelters, pet owning communities, self-rehoming platforms, and pet owners to demonstrate the complex system of pet surrender. By the end of this presentation, participants will learn how community data can complement animal shelter data to help divert animals from shelters.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this presentation, you will be able to….

• discuss strategies to improve standardization of intake data collection within your shelter
• Identify ways to connect animal shelter data to community-level demographic data to understand risks of surrender
• Interpret data from pet support services, self-rehoming platforms, and pet owners to understand how to promote intake diversion

Can’t attend live? Register anyway and you will get a link to the recording: https://maddies.fund/MIwebcasts

Connect with the guest speaker & ask questions here on Maddie’s Pet Forum: https://maddies.fund/MIwebcastIntakeDiversion

This webinar has been pre-approved for 1.0 Certified Animal Welfare Administrator continuing education credits by The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement and by the National Animal Care & Control Association and has been submitted for approval for 1 hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions which recognize the Registry of Approved Continuing Education (RACE) approval.

Presenter:  Lexis Ly, PhD Student, UBC Animal Welfare Program

Lexis Ly is a PhD student in Applied Animal Biology at the University of British Columbia’s Animal Welfare Program. Her work uses animal shelter and community data to understand how to maintain human-animal bonds, help animal shelter services provide equitable services, and reduce intake to shelters. She is also interested in veterinary disaster response, climate change and pet ownership, and bias in animal shelter adoption.

WEBSITE LINK:  http://maddies.fund/MIwebcastsRegister

An organization’s voice, tone and language are foundational components of marketing and communications, and ultimately can help shape how your community receives your messages. Even more critically, words and language influence how your audience perceives your organization and services well into the future.

In a highly specialized field like animal services, it’s easy to get drawn into “insider-speak” or forget that most community members, despite owning or interacting with pets, aren’t familiar with our particular jargon and terminology. Whether writing an adoption bio, a social post, or a flyer, the language choices you make can change the trajectory of your message and dictate the relationship you have with the public.

This webinar looks at how our marketing efforts — from our social media posts to our signage — can welcome more community members to our mission through the words we choose and the consideration we give to our audience.

Speaker: Caitlin Quinn, Board member of HeARTs Speak, Adjunct Professor at the University of Florida
Caitlin is passionate about working with animal services organizations to reimagine the way they tell their stories and connect with the community. She has served in the animal welfare field since 2008, most recently spending eight years as the director of operations at HeARTs Speak, where she now volunteers as a board member and subject matter expert.Caitlin now teaches shelter marketing for the University of Florida Master’s in Shelter Medicine program and works as a freelance creative consultant and educator. Caitlin lives in the Hudson Valley, NY with her husband and a petite, somewhat-sassy, and definitely adorable, brindle dog named Sally.

About HeARTs Speak: HeARTs Speak is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that unites art and advocacy to increase the visibility of shelter animals. We’re dedicated to changing the way the world sees shelter animals through programs that leverage creativity and collaboration to ensure more animals are Seen and Saved.

Learn more: https://heartsspeak.org/our-mission/

WEBSITE LINK:  http://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0BSMIM15TUaLE6Tmi8rF6Q