What to Avoid When Planning a Pet Adoption Event

Pet adoption events can be a great way for animal shelters to link up their animals with loving owners. However, animal shelter staff need to understand what makes an adoption event good or bad. Avoid these common pitfalls when running a pet adoption event.

Benefits

While some people might attend a pet adoption event just because they were planning on getting a pet soon, others might need some motivation to show up. Offering benefits like free food or waived adoption fees can be a great idea to motivate people to show up and even convince others that they should be looking into a pet during that event as well. Without offering benefits, you’ll run into trouble in that nobody finds it worthwhile to visit an animal shelter during specific event hours.

Advertising

No matter what type of event it is, advertising often is the factor if an event is successful or not. To have a successful pet adoption event, you’re going to need multiple methods of advertising to bring out people from all walks of life. First, ensure that you have print media advertisements such as in the local newspaper along with social media advertising placed on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. To bring in even more people, pet shelter employees should be convinced to start some word-of-mouth advertising to their family and friends. Going without advertising is a clear way to sink any type of event, especially a pet adoption event.

Availability

Willing pet owners typically want to visit a pet adoption event when they know they can find the right pet for them without someone else taking them. Factoring in availability during an event simply means planning around times of the year that you might have more pets than usual along with doing more “emergency” events during times where a shelter might be overcrowded. By having the most availability possible for animals, you’re able to leave many more families happy coming home and potentially back later for additional pets.

Volunteers

Whether the event is happening in a large city or a rural area, it’s important to have enough volunteers on staff. Without having enough volunteers, potential pet owners might leave home early without a pet due to having to wait way too long. To get volunteers, offer various benefits such as free food or offering pay if you can afford it. Not having volunteers is proven to be a good way to ruin any type of event.

Hours

Families with children typically like to visit pet adoption events together so that they can choose who to adopt. To ensure that a wide range of families can attend, consider the hours that you are having the event like having it in the middle of the day instead of at night. Additionally, pet shelter owners might want to consider having their events during the weekend as families might be too busy with school and work otherwise. Adopting the right hours for families of all types will always be crucial in running any type of event.

Creativity

While animal shelter events can seem to all run together sometimes, pet shelter owners can bring more people out by creating unique events. Unique pet shelter events can range around different factors like offering additional activities based on what holiday is coming up or what season of the year it is. Children should specifically be targeted when it comes to creativity as well since parents can easily leave quickly if they find their children complaining that they are bored. Always ensure that your event is as creative as possible when attracting families and children all around your area.