After holding management positions at progressive animal-rescue organizations Best Friends Animal Society and Alley Cat Allies, Bonney Brown joined the Nevada Humane Society as Executive Director in 2006. She and the NHS Board were determined to convert NHS from an open-admission shelter that killed most of the homeless animals it received into an open-admission shelter with one of the country’s highest live-release rates.
This brochure summarizes how they did it.
AWLA could use the ten steps listed as a blueprint for how to improve its own results. While all of the steps are important, these two seem especially relevant to AWLA:
3. Invest time and assets in lifesaving. Review every program in terms of its lifesaving impact. If a given program did not significantly and immediately contribute to saving lives, then we gave a hard look at letting it go. Though a program may be a nice thing to do, until we are saving all the animals that can be saved, we have a responsibility to ensure that we focus our resources and attention on creating a true safety net for homeless animals of the community — not next year, but right now.
We… eliminated several humane education projects in order to focus on getting the community immediately involved in saving lives.
For AWLA this could mean scrapping non-lifesaving programs like dog-manners classes and Kids Camp, and choosing instead to host adoption events in concert with rescue organizations or to expand its foster program to include adult dogs and cats.
4. Inspire and Involve the Community. Make a public declaration. While the idea of making a public declaration to become a no-kill community may be intimidating, the declaration itself actually has a powerful effect. Not only does it focus your internal efforts on the no-kill community goal, but it helps inspire and energize the community to support what you do.
To inspire animal lovers to get involved, you need to invite them to be part of something big, exciting, and worth the effort. So declaring an all-out effort to create a no-kill community is an important step in getting the support you need to make it happen.
This is the leap of faith that AWLA’s next Executive Director must already understand or be willing to make. Asking more of the community — asking it to help AWLA make Arlington a national leader in its treatment of homeless animals — will unleash a flood of untapped effort and resources. If AWLA challenges Arlington residents to help it save every homeless animal it receives, and then focuses its efforts on productively managing an army of volunteers, it won’t need to spend its time on fundraising events like Walk for the Animals and Catsino Night.
People like to associate with and contribute to winning organizations. If AWLA becomes one, the fundraising will take care of itself.
