This is a guest post written by Human Animal Support Services and HeARTs Speak.

When you share your organization’s support for keeping people and pets together, it helps spread awareness of new kinds of safety net support available to members of your community—while also helping to redefine the role of animal services and reduce judgment of families in crisis.

But getting the word out about community-focused sheltering isn’t always easy, especially for organizations with small (or even nonexistent) marketing and communications teams. Without dedicated staffing, who has time to create custom graphics, or draft a media pitch, when there’s another fire to put out?

That’s why Human Animal Support Services and HeARTs Speak have joined up to create a series of communications kits to help you talk to your community about these critical ways that you are supporting people and pets, and how anyone can be a part of it—whether it’s someone in need of resources to care for their pet, or a person looking to pitch in by fostering or in some other way.

Each kit contains an introduction to the topic, fully customizable graphics, media pitches, talking points, sample social media posts, and much more. It’s all completely free to use, and can be easily tailored to your organization’s and community’s needs.

Six kits have been published so far:

• Introduction To Community-Focused Animal Services
• Keeping Families Together
• Cats And Kittens
• Fostering Programs
• Space Crisis
• Lost Pet Reunification

Through the rest of 2022, new kits will be released on the first Thursday of every month. These kits will address more of the most urgent issues that shelters are facing all across the country. 

Our hope is that with these kits, getting the word out about the critical work you’re doing for people and pets will be easier—leading to more families staying together, and more lives saved.