Fostering & Adoption

Having consistent fosters and adopters is vital to keeping animal numbers at a manageable level. These free courses will teach you the latest strategies to maximize your limited time and resources to recruit more fosters, engage more adopters, and get your animals into homes.   

ONLINE COURSES

• Client Service & Barrier-free Adoptions- It’s imperative that organizations exceed client service expectations to increase lifesaving. The objectives of this course include understanding the differences between client and customer, identifying the crucial components of client communication, analyzing client service strategies that build long-term relationships, and examining proven lifesaving adoption policies and processes.
• Foster Programming- Organizations all over the country, from large brick-and-mortar agencies to small nonprofits, have successfully implemented robust foster programs that are increasing their lifesaving exponentially. This course presents these groups’ experiences, standard operating procedures (SOP), and proven practices to help you create your own lifesaving protocol for this critical program.
• Virtual Adoptions & Curbside Pick-ups- COVID-19 restrictions and health recommendations don’t have to put a damper on your adoptions. In an effort to continue saving as many animals as possible, many organizations have facilitated processes for virtual adoptions with curbside or off-site pick-ups (“Drive-thru” or “Curbside” Adoptions). Some groups are even delivering animals to their new home. This module will walk you through an overview of these new processes as well as tips and tricks for establishing your own.

MANUALS, HANDBOOKS, & PLAYBOOKS

• Adoptions- In shelters, we often feel that it is our ultimate responsibility to ensure the care of our animals even after they leave our facilities. This ongoing or lifelong commitment often leads to agencies searching for the “perfect” adopter and implementing practices or philosophies that “weed out” those who don’t fit our criteria. But what is “perfect” or even “good enough”? And how many prospective adopters go elsewhere to adopt (or even purchase) animals simply because they don’t fit our concept of an ideal home?
• Foster Programs- This guide is designed to provide an overview of foster programs and help you scale up an existing foster program or implement a new one at your agency. This program is an instrumental component to saving more animals in every community, and relevant whether your organization is a municipal agency or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and whether you run a brick-and-mortar shelter or a rescue group with no facility.
• Kitten Foster Manual- Best Friends' kitten foster care manual has information on preparing for, bringing home and caring for a foster kitten to prepare him or her for a forever home. This manual was written specifically for use by Best Friends in Utah. Please feel free to tailor content to suit your individual organization's unique requirements.

You can find additional information on fostering and adoption here.