Program Endorsements

We recognize that it’s not always easy to get buy-in from everyone when creating change and implementing new or innovative programming. We created our program endorsements for organizations to use as a resource to give credit to these programs when additional support is needed. These fundamental guides contain information about five important programs that Best Friends supports. They can be used as a quick reference for easily shareable messaging about each program.

Click the links below to be directed to the text for each of these resources. Each section contains an overview, program components, and links to helpful resources. You’ll also find a button to download a PDF version of each.

Community-Based Field Services

Community Cat Programs

Conversation-Based Adoption Services

Return-to-Home Programs

Strategic Intake Services

Best Friends supports community-based field services

Today’s animal control field service departments have seen a significant change in how they can successfully serve their communities. After decades of trying to solve animal-related issues through strict enforcement of the laws, agencies have had greater success by using a community-based approach to these problems. This approach is proving to build better relationships with community residents and encourage higher cooperation and compliance rates, and is resulting in lower animal intake into shelters.

Best Friends Animal Society endorses a community-based model of field services, which can include:

The discontinuation of impounding healthy community (aka stray and outdoor) cats
The discretion to not issue citations when appropriate
Tools and resources such as food and over-the-counter flea and tick treatment to provide free of charge to residents in need

A comprehensive field return-to-owner (F-RTO) program goes beyond simply scanning found dogs for microchips. It can include:

Officers interacting with community members to identify who owns the pet
Posting information about the pet on social media platforms before impounding the animal into the shelter
Actively attempting to locate a dog’s owner before leaving the scene

Resources

Lifesaving Field Services: This online learning module helps animal services officers understand and implement a community-based approach to field operations.

Community Engagement: This free webinar introduces officers to the concept of community-based operations and gives steps for how to get started.

Field Return-to-Owner Playbook: This playbook gives an overview of how to improve or implement a comprehensive field return-to-owner program.

Lifesaving Field Services Playbook: This playbook introduces animal services officers to the concept of community-based operations and gives steps for how to get started.

Community Engagement Strategies: This appendix from the Best Friends Humane Animal Control manual describes how one community made the transition from enforcement-based to community-based field services and how an agency can make that switch.

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Best Friends supports community cat programs

Community cat programs (CCPs) are an integral part of operations for animal shelters across the country. This humane approach is fiscally responsible and effective, providing an immediate, lasting response for cats in and out of shelters. CCPs also free up valuable resources and increase adoption of cats not eligible for return to their neighborhoods. CCPs are as unique as the communities they serve, but all share one central belief: Trap-and-remove does not work.

Best Friends Animal Society endorses CCPs. To Best Friends, these programs can include:

Community cat program endorsement

Implementing trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR) and return-to-field (RTF) for community cats
Passing local ordinances that support or, at the very least, do not work against CCPs
Not accepting healthy community cats into a shelter program when access to spay/neuter is not available
Using strategic intake to leave kittens outside with their nursing mom until they are of age for surgery
Addressing complaints with meaningful nuisance mitigation
Using TNVR in areas of limited resources only to support RTF programs or provide direct intake prevention

Through TNVR and RTF, cats:

Are either feral or friendly
Are at the age and weight that the spay/neuter provider deems appropriate for surgery
Are returned after an overnight recovery period for females
Receive one dose of FVCRP and one dose of rabies (if the cat is old enough, per local legislation)
Are, in most cases, un-microchipped
Are with or without known caregivers

Resources

Community Cat Programs Handbook: The revised version of this handbook is fully updated with the latest research and effective practices to start or enhance a community cat program. The handbook acknowledges the unique relationships between free-roaming cats and community residents, and demonstrates how CCPs benefit everyone.

Community Cat Programs Playbook: This playbook provides a brief overview of CCPs, some details on program composition and a list of resources to aid in creating and implementing a CCP.

Community cat programs online courses: This series of free online learning courses offers information about the various components of a strong community cat program.

People, Pets and Policies: This comprehensive guide, produced with the International Municipal Lawyers Association, provides municipalities with programs and policies that encourage the humane treatment of animals.

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Best Friends supports conversation-based adoption services

Local placement options account for most animal outcomes in shelters with a save rate of 90% or more. However, adoption takes the top spot, representing 63.4% of all outcomes in 2,118 no-kill shelters in 2019. Adoption plays the largest role in both closing the lifesaving gap and leveraging the community to support cats and dogs in shelters.

Best Friends Animal Society endorses the practice of conversation-based adoptions. To Best Friends, that can mean:

Conversation-based adoption graphic

Having nonjudgmental conversations with prospective adopters instead of having them fill out lengthy applications
Striving to be inclusive and counteracting any biases around who is a suitable adopter
Removing home, veterinarian and landlord checks, while providing adopters with information about the importance and availability of veterinary care
Removing the requirement that adopters have a fenced-in yard
Removing adopter and family age restrictions with a focus on supporting adopters to find the pets best matched to their home environment
Offering reduced-fee or fee-waived adoptions
Having open hours outside of standard business hours
Making pets available for adoption as soon as they are taken into the shelter
Having same-day adoptions
Marketing pets to all constituents
Releasing pets prior to spay/neuter with contracts to sterilize or as foster-to-adopt when access to surgery is limited

Resources

Open Adoptions Playbook: This playbook describes basic considerations and steps that every agency can take to create a well-rounded open-adoption program.

Client Service and Adoptions: This online course helps learners understand the differences between client and customer, identify the crucial components of client communication, analyze client service strategies that build long-term relationships and examine proven lifesaving adoption policies and processes.

Best Friends Adoption Barrier Study: This qualitative study was done to understand the pet acquisition process, existing barriers (real or perceived) to adoption and potential solutions to overcome those barriers.

You Asked the Potential Adopter What?: In this editorial, Sue Cosby, Best Friends senior director of lifesaving centers, provides a reality check regarding screening of potential adopters.

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Best Friends supports return-to-home programs

Reuniting lost pets with their people is one of the most critical roles for shelters across the country. A solid return-to-owner (aka return-to-home) program encompasses everyone on the shelter’s team, including animal control officers returning pets in the field (instead of bringing them to a shelter), intake staff scanning stray pets for microchips, volunteers managing lost-and-found social media pages and support given by platforms like Petco’s Love Lost.

Return to home graphic Best Friends Animal Society endorses collaborative and robust return-to-home programs. To Best Friends, a successful return-to-home program includes components like these:

Allows the public to view and place an adoption hold on an animal before the animal’s stray hold period expires
Includes a foster-finder program to help keep pets in the neighborhoods where they were found
Equips officers to support return-to-home in the field
Leverages utility companies to help with dead-end microchips
Promotes communication first when a free-of-restraint pet is found (when a loose pet is found, seeing if the surroundings give any clues as to where the owner is located, then talking to neighbors and leaving ample signage if no owner is found)
Waives return-to-home fees and citations when those are barriers to reunification
Hosts low-cost or free microchip clinics in the community, while offering microchips to the public at the shelter
Includes microchips as a central component of the licensure program
Allows owners to look for lost pets at the shelter anytime staff are on-site, even outside of normal business hours

Resources

Return-to-Owner Playbook: This playbook provides an overview of return-to-owner (RTO) programs and help you implement an aggressive RTO program at your agency. By making every effort to identify and notify pet owners and make the process of reunification easy, agencies can ensure that their limited resources are spent where they are needed most.

Field Return-to-Owner Playbook: Recently, there has been a shift toward field officers playing a role in the overall lifesaving team by working to reduce intake through various programs. This playbook provides an overview of field return-to-owner (F-RTO) programs and help you implement an aggressive F-RTO program at your animal control agency.

A Call-Takers Guide to Fielding Loose Animal Calls During COVID-19: During the pandemic, shelters and field service departments have cut back, even eliminated, their responses to loose animal calls. This is a necessary step and will support lifesaving efforts; however, it can mean challenging conversations with members of the public when they call to make a report. Call-takers should see this as an opportunity to provide helpful information to the public and work to resolve issues by using the resources that already exist within the community.

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Best Friends supports strategic intake services

Limited- and open-admission shelters across the country are successfully transitioning to strategic or managed intake. An appointment-based style of intake allows organizations to provide tailored resources to their constituents and break free of the ineffective, one-size-fits-all practice of open intake.

Strategic intake is beneficial to shelter staff because it helps them to better manage their daily tasks, allowing them to focus on the needs of pet owners and their pets. It benefits pet owners by providing them with individualized attention and resources. Strategic intake should be seen as an expansion of services, not a reduction, because the resources freed up through this approach are redirected to other lifesaving efforts.

Best Friends Animal Society endorses strategic intake. To Best Friends, strategic intake can include:

Expanding the services being offered to constituents
Scheduling appointments with pet owners and then having conversations with them to find the best outcome for their pets, which often includes alternatives to their pets entering the shelter
Partnering with private organizations to help support pet owners needing assistance
Offering temporary foster care and boarding services for pet owners who are unable to care for their pets for a short period of time
Implementing finder-foster programs that help keep stray pets in the same neighborhoods where they were found
Still accepting pets in need of urgent care without an appointment
Practicing return-to-owner in the field and offering a community cat program