Getting Pets Adopted from Foster Homes

PLEASE NOTE: This episode is from the 2025 Foster 50 Challenge, so some details and timing are out of date. For information on the 2026 Foster 50 Challenge, visit PEDIGREEFoundation.org/Foster50.

Foster homes are great for pets, but they’re also a marketing goldmine. Learn about creating a process to market pets in foster homes and get them adopted- right from the couch.

GUESTS: 

• Rachel Jones, Consultant, Rachel at the Shelter  
• Tori Fugate, Director of Communications, Shelter Animals Count 
• Stephanie Jackson, Public Information Officer, Louisville Metro Animal Services 

LINKS:

• Marketing from Foster Homes Resource Collection
• Adoption from Foster Homes Resource Collection
• How to create a process for marketing and adopting pets from foster homes  (PDF download)
• Getting foster dogs adopted: Five tips for foster coordinators (4 min. read)
• Foster Resource Page Examples:
  • Kansas City Pet Project
  • One Tail at a Time
  • Pima Animal Care Center

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:05

Welcome to Foster 50, the audio playbook. I'm Kristen Hasson. And I'm Kelly Doerr. And we are here today to talk all about marketing pets from foster homes. We share all the time, well, we're getting all these animals into foster and then they're getting stuck there. So what good is that really doing us anyway? And so today we are going to tell you all about how to get those pets from foster to permanent homes without a lot of extra staff time or money. We'll start with a story. So Dalton was one of my first fosters. He was a dog who had been at the shelter for several months. He did well in the beginning, and then he started going downhill because of shelter stress. He got to the point where he was suffering from happy tail, which is When a dog gets so stressed that they're whacking their tail against the kennel and it opens up sores and starts to bleed. What I remember about this dog is that he was spitting, he was stressed, he was panting. His tail was bloody and the walls were bloody and like no one would adopt him. And I, because I was working at the shelter at the time and I remember being concerned about having to put him on a euthanasia list. So he was kind of desperate to get out of the shelter and we took him home for weekend foster. And he was the most amazing dog. He came home and I realized that he was like one of the smartest dogs that I've ever fostered. He could do things like open a door using a knob from the inside. I forget how he was initially marketed, but it wasn't great. It was like, he has happy tail and he's really stressed. He needs to get out of here. And then I remember you taking him home. And then I remember that they didn't, you kind of wrote a story that I don't know that you intended us to just post wholesale, but we did. And we just posted this raw story from you about like how smart he was. This one day we were at home. I was putting on my shoes to go and take him on a walk. and most of my dogs he'd only been there two days so like my dogs it took them a while to learn that this meant going on a walk but him he knew he absolutely knew and so he got all excited and he ran down the hall and i'm putting on my shoes and i'm like what is he doing down there and i walk out into the hall and he's down there he had gone into the closet gotten out my coat and when i looked at him he shook it at me like Get your butt moving. And I just remember this feeling of being like, oh gosh, I want to adopt this dog. Like any dog that is able to think that like complex of thought. And it was such a like beautiful story about him feeling like a sense of belonging enough to do that. I remember he got adopted immediately and there were actually like people arguing over him. And it was like, he was this common person. early middle-aged male pit bull dog that former me would have thought well it's impossible to market this dog in a way that's going to be this effective and it wasn't and so um both a i think it showed the power of what like a tiny moment in foster can do for a dog but also even for those dogs that it is really hard to distinguish them when you've got 25 50 male Two to four year old pit bull dogs, how do you distinguish them? All it takes is getting them to foster and you can tell that same story, that same individualized story about every one of those dogs if you just get them out to foster for a couple of days. So let's say I've got one foster coordinator, I've got 50 animals in foster. I have no idea what to do to get these pets out of foster and into homes. And I know like a lot of times the shelters will have sent animals out. They won't have given people a lot of instructions. What do you tell the fosters about how to market their pets? Like how do you get that information in a way that doesn't take a lot of extra time or money? Like is there automation here or how does that actually like practically work? What I would tell people is there is a document called how to create a process for marketing pets from foster care. And it goes over a lot of the different options. What it tells you is how to create a process that works for you and is efficient because it's not a one size fits all. It's more what works best for your organization. And there are quite a few options out there. In the past, when a pet's gone into foster care, there's a tendency for the organization to feel like they're safe and refocus their energy on marketing pets who are still in the shelter for adoption. This can lead to a long length of stay in frustrated foster caregivers. But there's a better alternative. Marketing foster pets heavily for adoption in order to move them through foster homes more quickly. This can allow your organization to put more pets into foster with the caregivers you already have. It allows caregivers to gain experience with a greater number of pets, minimizes attachment, and sends them powerful messages about how much you value their time. First, set the expectation that you'll need their help marketing their foster pets from the get-go. Point them toward resources for learning and let them know what you're looking for. Ask them to provide marketing material like photos, videos, write-ups on outings the pet has been on, etc. every 7-10 days and use it to market their foster pet on social media. If a caregiver is hesitant to help with marketing, match them up with a volunteer who can take great pictures or help with marketing. This is the perfect time to introduce you to Rachel Jones who consults through her business, Rachel at the Shelter. She built a process for marketing and adopting pets from foster homes when she managed a very large foster program in Arizona, and she has some great insights for us.

SPEAKER_04 6:19

Hello, I am Rachel Jones, the adult dog foster coordinator for Pima Animal Care Center, and I work to place our long-stay dogs and dogs in behavioral decline in foster homes so that they can decompress and we can glean that sweet, sweet marketing material that'll find them adopters. So I don't even know where to start with discussing why foster marketing is important, because to me, foster and marketing should be completely synonymous. One of the biggest concerns I hear from people wanting to start a foster program or ramp up their foster program is, well, we send dogs to foster all the time, and they just sit there. They haven't found foster to be beneficial in length of stay. And nine times out of ten, it's because there's no marketing plan in place. When I first got here, I assumed everyone was like me, and foster marketing was the most exciting thing in the whole world because I was a caregiver that just loved writing and taking photos. And so that's what all I did, and I plastered it all over Facebook, and long-stay dogs would get adopted like that because I liked those things. A lot of caregivers don't like doing those things, so you need to help them, and that's where the marketing plan comes into place. Since we've started applying a structure to the way our dogs are marketed, we've seen an expedited length of stay for our long stay blockheads who go to foster. Gary Petronik has been working with us to analyze our data, and this is verbatim from his most recent analysis. The foster care system had a beneficial effect on length of stay. The effect of going to foster and then returning was important. Dogs were adopted much faster after returning from foster than dogs adopted right out of the shelter without going to foster. And this is long stay blockheads, not puppy that come of age, get altered, and then go up on the adoption floor. So by the end of last year, we had some stuff figured out. Now foster marketing is just a built-in expectation. The Dog Foster Online Orientation has a section dedicated specifically to marketing, just to get new fosters into the mindset of marketing their foster dog. And when they go out, they have access to a bunch of new resources. When they go out, they go out with a physical copy of our marketing manual. They go out with the link to our foster resource page, which has a digital copy of the foster marketing manual. It has adoption paperwork. It has tips for writing. great bios, links to HeartSpeak, tips for taking great photos, and there's links to our foster and staff and volunteer Facebook pages where a lot of people collaborate and brainstorm on marketing ideas and help each other out as well as just post great marketing material themselves while they're sharing with each other. That said, a lot of your fosters, if not most of them, will hate the idea of marketing their foster animal. Some of them may even be borderline combative about it because they hate writing and taking photos and they can have all the resources in the world and they're still not going to want to do it. So we have started automating some things that have helped with this immensely. When dogs go to foster, their online profiles are updated immediately. It just says email pack.foster at pima.gov to ask about me. So that when people are searching online for fosters, that dog isn't just lost in the wind. There's a point of contact if they want to ask about them. And then at the one week mark, there is a wonderful questionnaire that we have ripped straight out of the AMPA handbook that just asks questions like, look into this dog's eyes, what are they telling you? That paint a really amazing picture of... what their foster animal is like, and it kind of gets them into that creative headspace, even if they're resistant to it. A lot of fosters don't think of themselves as creatives, but they love talking about their foster dog, and the questionnaire gives them a way to capitalize on that without feeling forced into writing a biography. And then when they email that biography back, oftentimes it's accompanied with photos, and we can just copy-paste that questionnaire into that dog's shelter profile, which updates to Pet Harbor pet finder and adopt a pet. We also will schedule a Facebook post if there are some particularly cute photos and oftentimes that's just enough to get an adopter's foot in the door. I would say a majority of our From Foster adoptions come from either a Facebook post or just updating their shelter profile with that questionnaire and some cute photos. It's also important for us to maintain a Google spreadsheet of who has responded to the questionnaire, who has sent photos, and which dogs have had scheduled Facebook posts or not. That helps us a lot with who to nag going

SPEAKER_03 10:52

forward.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

This system has worked incredibly well for us, but since at PAC you can foster for any amount of time, and that is wonderful for all of our dogs, but many dogs will come back within a few days or a week because that's convenient for the foster. So it's important for us to capitalize on what we learn about that dog and foster while we have that time, even if they don't get adopted from foster. So when it's time for a dog to come back, we have our fosters schedule a foster return through acuityscheduling.com. We love them so much. I'll talk about acuity with anyone all day. It's the best thing in the world. But we have a custom template that also asks a bunch of questions that we'll use to help market that dog. And when they fill that out to schedule their appointment it sends me an automated email and I can just copy paste into their web profile and then I will print out that questionnaire I'll attach it to a kennel card with an updated photo if they sent that as well and then I will put a foster prompt on the kennel card it says I am back from temporary foster care read the back of my kennel card to learn more about me and that has had a huge impact on our length of stay for animals returning from foster My favorite way to recruit fosters is to never shut up about fostering. It's not complicated. You just have to not shut up about it. We get walk-ins almost daily that just come from Facebook posts that weren't even a foster plea. Maybe it was we were marketing a dog in foster to adopters. They filled out the questionnaire. We posted it. And then at the bottom we say, you know, packed up foster people that come to ask about me or sign up here to become a foster caregiver yourself. And sometimes people just see that, think that looks fun. I have time. I could foster for any length of time. Maybe I'll sign up. Maybe I'll walk in tomorrow. We also have a wonderful communication specialist. Her name is Nikki Reich and she has us in the media pretty much every other day, which is wonderful. We, especially during kitten season, we have walk-ins almost every day during kitten season, just because we're in the media. A lot of people aren't on Facebook, but they do read the newspaper. They do listen to the radio. They do follow, KGUN.com. So media partnerships have been really, really huge for our foster program as well. Talking about foster all the time online, on our social media, and in the news is pretty much what single-handedly built a foster culture in Pima County. You don't have to do anything crazy. You just have to really be excited about foster and not shut up about it.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

A really important thing is to set expectations from the beginning. So right there on your foster landing page in your foster manual, let fosters know we need your help with adoption. So we'd love pictures. Here's where you send them. Any stories that you have, videos. There is a whole bunch of training that is automated that you can take advantage of. We have two courses on Maddie's University that are geared straight to fosters in teaching them how to market their foster pets. So I guess like if I'm going to use a Trello board or I'm going to use a Facebook group, one of the things that I've seen work is allowing, having a place that's public where fosters can see each other's posts and then they can share them. So there's a lot of great voluntary led pages that are like, actually doing the marketing themselves and not relying on the main platforms of the organization. Is that something that you're seeing work, like allowing kind of some volunteers or fosters to do marketing themselves of foster pets? Yes, absolutely. And I think it can be really, really effective. Some organizations have say a private group on Facebook for volunteers and fosters where they can share information, but maybe a couple of the fosters run a separate page where they take some of that information and post it to the public. Because really, what is better than having a foster who is experienced and is often able to take new pets. Here's Tori Fugate, Director of Communications at Shelter Animals Count, to tell us about automating the marketing for the Doggie Day Out program at Kansas City Pet Project.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

My name is Tori Fugate, and I am the Chief Communications Officer at KC Pet Project, and we have a very robust Dog Day Out program. It depends on the day, but usually we have at least two appointments available every hour that people can go online and then immediately you can schedule an appointment for your dog day out. Foster appointments are made through Acuity and we love this platform because we can send out email reminders, we can send text reminders. The people who are signing up for appointments can manage that on their own. So if they have to cancel for any reason, they can go on and cancel that themselves. Or if they need to reschedule, they come and get their dog. We encourage everyone to tag us on Instagram, use our hashtag KCPetProject. And so then when they're out and about, we can reshare. Then at the end of their dog day out, everybody is expected to fill out a survey. We really only ask a couple of questions. We ask, how'd your day go? And what'd you do? And then send us videos and photos. I'd say we get at least 90% success rate in getting these surveys, which is incredible. We have a QR code that's up there that they can scan and immediately fill out that survey because a lot of the times the pictures are on their phone. So we want to make it easy for them to just be able to upload. Then once those are done, we get email alerts. So the email alerts go to on our end. They come to myself. They come to our marketing team. They go to the foster team. They go to our rescue coordinator as well. And then they go to our director of canine operations. So we get all those email alerts with the information that we receive the photos and the videos. And then it also goes straight into a Trello board that is monitored by our marketing team, as well as volunteers who help us with bio writing. And on that board, we're getting the dog day out surveys, but we're also getting pet marketing surveys that are just generally submitted by staff and volunteers. But when we get dog day out surveys, we can go back and add more information into their bios that they may have already written because we're getting so much more great content about their true personality once they got out of the shelter. The information that we're getting is not only helpful for us with learning more about the dog that they've taken out for the day, but it's also incredibly helpful for me because I have a wonderful marketing opportunity to get these dogs shared online, on our social media pages, and then it helps us write a little bit more descriptive bios because we've learned more about their personality while they've been out on their dog day out.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

One of the things I don't think we're doing enough of is letting like direct marketing and then letting people contact the fosters. Like I don't, and I actually don't know the answer to this, but it seems like the shelter is this intermediary when they don't necessarily need to be. Like, could you market, could you have the pets listed and say like, you can contact the foster caregiver if you're interested? Does anybody do that? Yeah. What's interesting is in the organizations that have people contact the the shelter or the rescue organization, it turns into a bit of a bottleneck sometimes, or most of the time actually, because people are writing in and then the person who is, you know, they have to wait until someone gets that email and forwards it to the foster. And sometimes that can be a couple of days and you've lost that person then. Other organizations who are putting foster emails in the dog's or cat's bio, so that people can contact them directly. That can be a lot easier and really, really helps with the bottleneck. Fosters don't have to necessarily have their first and last name in their email. They can come up with a private type email that doesn't give away any private information. So I do a lot of like promotion of pets that when I'm at shelters, I'll pull an animal, I'll bring it home and then I'll get it adopted myself through like Rehome or another one of those platforms. And I do the marketing and I get contacted by so many people, even though a lot of the pets I bring home aren't necessarily like what someone would consider easy adoption candidates. I get contacted by so many people. It's quicker for me to feel the inquiries, to talk with folks, set up the meet and greets. Shelters in general, one of the key takeaways of this podcast is like we have to get out of our own way and we have to stop micromanaging. Foster is about empowering the public health, like a lot of shelters still aren't letting foster even get their own pets adopted. And like in in the world, we'd like to see in many shelters do this, like fosters can complete the adoption process, they can do the entire thing. So the pet never has to come back unless of course, it needs to be spayed or neutered or get medical care. But like, When it comes to marketing pets from foster, like reducing the complexity, reducing the number of people that need to handle the pet and then automating like the services, like having the dates for spay, neuter, pre-determined, all of that just seems to simplify it, speed it up so that fosters can then take another animal and become ongoing fosters rather than just having one animal in care forever and ever. Absolutely. And there's a lot of research behind this too. Pets who have been in foster are returned significantly less often than pets who have not. When a foster helps with the adoption counseling, it can save the organization a ton of time. So ideally we're setting people up from the beginning to help them market their own pets. And we are also helping post whatever they're sharing One of the things that I see in a lot of cases though, is the foster coordinator and the organization's communications department need to really be in alignment. If the communications department is doing something different, the foster coordinator only really has the platform to their foster base. Can I stop you one second? Because this is important. If you're a shelter that's like, I don't know who you're talking about. I don't have a communications department or a foster coordinator. The other way to say this is like the person that is doing your social media is whether it's a volunteer staff and a person that is finding foster, right? Like it can be any size of organization, but this point is so critical. So go on. If they're not aligned, the public communications for the organization are not recruiting fosters. And the top of the funnel there, the sales funnel is cut off. They aren't able to recruit new fosters in a lot of the easiest ways. One thing I recommend is that the person who's coordinating foster and the person who is doing social media and other communications like newsletters and things, they need to be talking all the time, at least once a week, to just touch base and say, we're really, really low on neonatal kitten fosters. Can you put up a note? Or, hey, do you have any foster stories I can put on social media? The more communication there is between those two, the better it tends to be. And having a process where it's really easy for foster marketing material to get to that person who does the communications is also very, very helpful. To see a great example of an organization that's working foster into a variety of posts, check out Louisville Metro Animal Services. Their public information officer, Stephanie Jackson, knows how important this is because she started out as our foster coordinator. They have a private Facebook group for staff, fosters, and volunteers that has really high engagement, and she pulls a lot of the marketing material from there. Here's Stephanie telling us how she works foster into her posts.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

If you center what you're doing around fostering, it would be really easy because every dog or cat you post about, you could say, And this dog or cat would love to go to foster or and is looking for a foster or adoptive home. You obviously would want to share what your fosters are sharing with you and the field trip stuff. It's super easy to include encouraging people to want to foster by sharing other people's experiences and showing them that any person can foster. So we encourage fosters and volunteers to post pictures of everything, all their field trips, all the pictures and videos from their field trips. We want to Communications

SPEAKER_03 24:01

folks, depending on the kind of organization, they can be tasked with a lot. But what they need to know is 30% of the social media posts and the same number of the same percentage of news releases, etc, need to talk about fostering, and they need help to do that. If we just say, you can foster at the back of every news release, we're not really promoting foster. So that's where the testimonials come in, the stories of people who have fostered, the success stories, making specific asks. Thank you so much for listening. This is our last podcast for the Foster 50 Challenge series, but you can find lots of great resources in the show notes and on the Challenge's website. Good luck, everyone.