Brand-new foster caregiver Rachel Jones had her work cut out for her when she took her first dog home from the Ventura County Animal Shelter. A depressed, senior pit bull-type dog, Louie, had been awaiting adoption for a year and a half.
“He slept for two days and then woke up the happiest ham who ever lived,” Jones tells us. Although she had no formal training in marketing, she took pictures, told stories about him and did her best to market him for adoption. Louie was adopted within 3 weeks!
A year later, she’d helped so many long-stay dogs find homes through foster-based marketing that she was excited to help others do the same. She created a short guide to help foster caregivers market their own pets.
Using Jones’ guide as our inspiration, we created The Foster Caregiver Marketing Guide: Getting Pets Adopted Directly from Foster Homes. Inside, you’ll find examples of great foster-based marketing, incorporating work from some of our favorite photographers and foster caregivers including Jones herself (see photos of Louie on page 16!).
Developed in order to help caregivers market their foster pets for adoption, our comprehensive guide details everything from how to take great pictures to where to market foster pets online. Not sure where to start? This guide outlines steps to marketing your foster pet. It provides real-life examples of great biographies, memes and other marketing tools created by foster caregivers and volunteers just like you.
“It’s very easy,” says Stefanie Sacripante-Hives, whose Facebook page NoVa Cats, is featured in our guide. Over the last 4 years, NoVa Cats (now a nonprofit) has found adopters for over 65 difficult-to-place cats including 15 of Sacripante-Hives’ own fosters. With no formal training in marketing, she writes most of the text herself and uses apps such as PicMonkey to create collages and graphics. “I get some good pictures, write some text, add some rudimentary graphics, and voila!”
“Fostering animals should be synonymous with marketing them,” says Lorian Epstein, Maddie’s® Adult Dog Foster Coordinator at Austin Animal Center, whose marketing checklist for foster caregivers is included in the guide. “It should just be a package deal like sunscreen at the beach or soy sauce with sushi. It’s part of the fun of providing a temporary home to a shelter pet while they wait to meet their forever family. Foster caregivers who market their pets can make all the difference. So give them a hand and make sure they get noticed!”
“Foster caregivers are their foster’s most powerful ally and advocate,” says Jones. “Their knowledge, photos, videos, experiences and insight are crucial to finding a home! They are far and away the most qualified people to market their foster. Wouldn’t you want your biggest fan to be the one talking about you?”
Get your copy of the free guide now!