Early in my time as Pets blogger at families.com I listed a variety of volunteering options available to those who love animals but for whatever reason aren’t able to own them. The possibilities I provided all involved volunteering with animal shelters or rescues, but I limited my suggestions to those with high levels of animal interaction.
However, if you just want to share your passion for pets with those pets that don’t have any homes, shelters/rescues have several volunteering opportunities that extend beyond what I mentioned before. Specific needs obviously depend upon the particular shelter or rescue in question, but there are often common needs.
In addition to high animal-interaction jobs like socialization, handling the animals during adoption events, and fostering, shelters need people to work with the public. If you’re good with people, shelters could definitely use your skills.
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Just as important as the pets at adoption events are the guests who come to learn more about them. Shelters need people knowledgeable about their available animals to discuss with guests what pets might be best suited for them, or really just introduce guests to the animals and help them with any questions.
Being good with people can have other benefits for shelter volunteers as well. Even many government-funded shelters (and all nonprofit shelters) rely on donations from individuals and companies to keep running. If you know a lot of people in your community, you can try to drum up support for your shelter.
Or you could also put your skills to use when it comes time to show appreciation to shelter donors. You can use your contacts to procure gift cards to send as thank you’s to donors and volunteers (sometimes coffee shops or even grocery stores will donate gift cards to nonprofits), or you can organize a group of people to put together a gift basket or cookie platter to send out as thank you gifts.
If party/event planning is more your strength, shelters have plenty of use for you too. Because shelters and especially rescues are nearly always nonprofits, the majority of their money comes from fundraising. If you’re full of unique ideas for a fundraising event, or are just great at pulling parties together, your help would be much appreciated.
Related to fundraising, shelters could also use writers to apply their skills to grant writing. Word smiths can also help shelters by organizing or contributing to a newsletter, helping to further spread the word about animals in need.
I’ve just listed here a few of the general volunteer needs most shelters have. Even if you just have a small amount of extra time, shelters and rescues could really use your help. No matter what talents you have, you can find a way to put them to use to help homeless pets.
Related Articles:
Helping Animal Shelters During a Recession
Diary of a Cat Care B&B: Abandoned!
*(This image by sayheypatrick is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
