Shelters to the Rescue

Starting a no-kill animal shelter, or another non-profit animal organization, is not an easy task. Luckily, Best Friends is here to help.

The Best Friends organization has put together this manual to help communities come together to for the animals. There is more to creating a new organization than just wanting to protect and provide a future to homeless animals, although that is the most important quality. To achieve these goals, it is crucial to spend ample time and resources into planning, management, and fundraising. Running the administrative aspects of the organization is the more difficult part, but will lead to a successful organization. Here is a simple layout of their process:

• Do research and preliminary planning
  • Know the basics
  • Be informed about the issues
• Write your mission statement
• Set your goals
• Establish your board of directors
  • What is the role of the board?
  • Who should be on the board?
  • How do we prevent problems before they start?
  • How many is too many?
  • Factors to consider when selecting board members
• Make it all legal
  • What to do first
  • Where to call
  • Why bylaws are needed
  • What’s in a name?
• Use dollars and sense
  • What do we do first?
  • Why go through all this?
• Define policies and standards
  • Aren’t policies and bylaws the same thing?
• Take it to the public: Cultivate support in the community
  • Hold a public meeting
  • Start your mailing list
  • Create a meeting notice
  • Put up posters
  • Contact the media
  • Creating publicity materials that work
    • Appearance matters
    • Accuracy counts
    • Style and tone
• Hold a productive first meeting
  • Be aware of the goal of the first meeting
  • Provide written materials
  • Organizing a successful meeting
• Recruit and develop people
  • Carefully select key volunteer staff
  • Recruit capable people
  • Train people
  • Address problems
• Provide quality services
• Assess your progress and make changes
  • A labor of love