No More Homeless Pets Forum January 31, 2005 Making Your Dream a Reality

Setting goals and creating a plan are key to fulfilling your dreams. But where do you start? And how can you put your plan into action? Caryn Ginsberg of Priority Ventures Group will help you create a blueprint for success.

Introduction Caryn Ginsberg:

Non-profit professionals are faced with an increasingly competitive environment.... Sound strategy is essential to an organization's survival and prosperity.
- Stanford Graduate School of Business

You work in animal welfare because you care about advancing meaningful change. But are you getting the best results possible? With seemingly endless problems to address, animal welfare groups are pulled in numerous directions, often diluting their impact.

Savvy leaders are adapting proven business approaches to strategy to get more done with available resources. Strategic planning based on a thorough analysis of your environment and your organization can help you capitalize on your best opportunities, take advantage of your strengths, and achieve more with your resources.

Please go to http://www.bestfriends.org/archives/forums/013105pvgstrategy.pdf to download an introductory article on how to understand your position, set direction, make choices and assess results. Then join us in this forum to address questions on how to make your dreams come true!

Questions

Does everyone need to be involved in strategic planning?
When do we stop planning and start doing?
Would a shelter without walls be better?
Planning on a tight budget
How to plan when serving multiple counties
Strategic Planning 101: Understanding the lingo
Planning to supplement adoption efforts

Does everyone need to be involved in strategic planning?

Question from Trey:

Wow! I have to admit I'm a little intimidated by the whole concept of strategic planning. I just want to rescue animals and find them forever homes! Does everyone at our shelter need to be involved in strategic planning, or can it be delegated to the administrative types? If planning can be the work of a committee or something, who should make up that committee?

Response from Caryn:

Well, I'd be equally intimidated if someone asked me to be involved in hands-on animal care! Thanks for being honest. This is a very common reaction to planning, and if it's not one you have, other members of your organization likely will. It's natural to have reservations about being asked to participate in processes and activities in which we have little experience or demonstrated skills.

To determine why your participation in the planning process matters, consider the following two questions:
- How will the planning activities help me get better results for animals?
- How will the time I spend on this planning help me save time (and money) in my efforts?

You can have administrative staff or a committee take on a bigger role. For example, a smaller group can help define the planning process initially, gather data, develop preliminary insights and recommendations, document findings, etc. You'll want to make sure that the larger group is included to give insight and perspective, as well as to formulate conclusions. Everyone likes to have his/her opinion considered and few people like having actions imposed on them, especially if they don't understand why! Also, front line people dealing with the public and the animals have critical knowledge that must be incorporated if your plan is to be based in reality.

My personal preference is to keep groups in a planning meeting to 13 or fewer to be effective. In a small organization, that could mean the whole team. If you are part of a larger organization, your larger planning team might be the Executive Director with her or his direct reports, with each direct report responsible for getting input from and communicating to other staff.

If you want to use a subgroup or committee to drive the process, think about what you want to have the subgroup do and who will need to be represented to be effective. Each person on the group should have a clear purpose in being there (this is a good general rule for inviting people to meetings too!). What capabilities do you need in the working group vs. where can the subgroup members interview people outside the committee individually or bring information to the whole larger group? You can also use an individual rather than a group to take a lead role. That can be someone internal or external to the organization.

For more on whom to include in a planning subcommittee for organizational strategy, including discussion on the role of the Board, please visit
http://www.managementhelp.org/plan_dec/str_plan/str_plan.htm#anchor4293669732 and scroll to "Who Should Be Involved in Planning?" Note that the role of the Board differs with the scope of the project. An organizational strategy project requires Board participation, but a minor campaign probably does not. Smaller organizations may have more Board involvement in planning than would large organizations that might do more limited review and oversight. The Board role in planning is a bit of a gray area, so your organization's culture and experience may also be factors.

If you want more input on the role of Boards in organizational planning, there is a publication available for purchase from BoardSource called "The Non-profit Board's Role in Planning and Evaluation" ($20) at
http://www.boardsource.org/ViewBookstoreItem.asp?ID=118. Your library or state non-profit association may have other free or inexpensive materials available.

Ultimately, however, any good planning effort requires one member of your organization to be accountable for making sure everything comes together. This needs to be someone with sufficiently broad perspective and the ability to enlist others to support the planning effort. In a smaller organization, it is usually the Executive Director on an organizational plan or major campaign. In a larger organization, or for a smaller project, it could be a program manager or project leader. Although this person does not need to do all the work, he or she must be sufficiently involved to oversee the process to ensure that it's providing the desired results.

I hope you'll see that the planning process is a way to add to, not distract from, your important work for animals! Be patient with yourself and your organization in this new endeavor and you can be producing even better results before long.

When do we stop planning and start doing?

Question from Gwen:

Is there an industry guideline on what percentage of a project's total time, labor and resources should be put into the planning process? How do we know when to stop planning and start doing?"

Response from Caryn:

Benchmarking, by looking at the experience of organizations to anticipate what practices you might adopt or what results you may achieve, can be a very valuable part of your planning. This question is an excellent example of trying to use benchmarking to gauge what to expect on the planning process.

No Easy Answer.
Unfortunately, I've not seen such benchmarks, in part because there are too many variables for there to be a meaningful answer. The first variable is which planning components you need to complete. Examples include: situations analysis (looking at your environment and your organization), priorities, quantifiable goals and/or action plans.

The second variable relates to the situation and project – how experienced in planning is your team, how knowledgeable are they in the issue at hand?

So what do you do?
Define your objectives for the plan. What do you need to achieve in the process? Examples might include:
- Clarify what we are trying to achieve with the project
- Understand our audiences to make sure the strategies we define will be effective
- Determine what competition may work against us (including inertia of the people we are trying to affect) and how we can counter these forces
- Assess how our organization can best contribute on this issue
- Determine the most important initiatives to pursue
- Detail activities to achieve each initiative
- Establish a basis to monitor our progress

Lay out a high level approach to your planning. A plan for a plan may sound excessive, but this brief overview can help you think about how much time you will need and give all the participants a clear path of how you will move through the planning phase and move to action. Think about dividing the project into chunks based on your objectives, meetings, preparation and follow-up.

Good Preparation Leads to Good Planning
In order to make the best use of team meeting time, I recommend having individuals pull together information in advance that might assist with analysis and decision-making. For example, if you're planning a campaign to reduce dog bites of children, what data do you have on this problem? Can you identify specific situations, ages of the children, parts of town of other factors that will inform how you design your campaign? Someone may just spend a few hours compiling data you have in hand or you might need a more extensive research effort that could span 4 to 6 weeks to interview people regarding their experiences and attitudes.

How Much is Too Much?
My experience in the animal protection field is that we are generally doing way too little planning rather than too much, but this is a valid concern. At every phase, be sure to ask yourself whether information you are seeking or planning you are doing is a "nice to have" or a "need to have." What are the most important questions you want to address to be confident in your planning? Are you moving ahead making key assumptions that you've not validated? How much are you risking by not getting the information you need? Also, you may have heard of the "80:20 rule" where you can get 80% of the benefit from 20% of the work, but the last 20% of the benefit is much harder to get and requires the other 80%. Keep this in mind and see if you can sense when you're getting to a level of detail that's not providing enough benefit to justify the cost of your time.

Sample Plans
With the strong caveats that every project is different, let me at least try to give some sample planning scopes from some projects I have done. Don't be intimidated by the hours! If you have a fairly straightforward campaign, a few hours for your team to meet and identify key issues, then follow-up on major information needs and action planning could provide a lot of value very quickly!

1. Campaign Analysis and Priorities (no action plans, quantifiable goals or financial analysis)
Based on experience on two major efforts for organizations with budgets greater than 5 million: Three meetings of 2 to 3 hours each with team to discuss and modify findings and recommendations.

60-70 hours for gathering existing research data from magazine articles and other sources, analyzing data, developing recommendations, structuring meetings, conducting meetings and phone updates, documenting findings and outcomes.

These projects relied a lot on me, as the consultant, to do the analysis, develop recommendations and present them to the team for input, ideas and decisions, rather than a team developing all the analysis and recommendations. This is a model you can use if you have someone internal to lead the effort; it doesn't have to be someone outside the organization.

2. Organizational Strategy including situation analysis based on data available in-house, with assessment for 10 individual programs, priorities identified and action plans developed.
Based on experience with two organizations with budgets less than 1 million:

Each program manager put in about 3-5 hours to prepare a program analysis, and another 5 to 10 to make revisions and develop action plans.

Three 4 to 6 hour meetings to discuss key issues.

80-110 hours to develop planning framework; review analyses by the program managers; plan, conduct and document meetings; assist management with how to use plans for ongoing management.

For an example of potential meetings for an organizational planning process, please visit http://www.mapnp.org/library/plan_dec/str_plan/str_plan.htm and scroll down to "How Many Planning Meetings Will We Need?" This link is part of the free management library at the MAP for Non-profits site, http://mapnp.non-profitoffice.com, an excellent source of information on planning, marketing and other aspects of running a non-profit.

As you're considering how much time you can invest in planning, always keep these two thoughts in mind (you'll hear this from me more than once):
- How will the planning activities help me get better results for animals?
- How will the time I spend on this planning help me save time (and money) in my efforts?

For a campaign, even some planning can save you from wasting scarce time, dollars and energy that could have done more to help the animals you love. For an organization, planning can help you identify the very best opportunities to apply the time and resources available to do even more good!

Would a shelter without walls be better?

Question from Toni:

We live in a poor, isolated, agricultural county with about 25,000 people. Low cost spay/neuter is virtually inaccessible; we have to shuttle patients to the next county for halfway affordable prices.

A local veterinary clinic used to act as the only 'shelter' and had a contract with the county to hold, and then euthanize, strays. That vet recently refused to continue providing this heartbreaking service, and now a group of us are trying to raise money to build the first-ever shelter in the area. We estimate building costs at $200,000 and so far we have raised about 10% of that. With the money coming in so slowly, and homeless animals coming out of our ears, we're starting to wonder if a 'shelter without walls' community would be better. How do we determine if active foster, spay/neuter, and education program would do the trick in place of a traditional shelter?"

Response from Caryn:

Although planning may seem like a very analytical, methodical process at times, creativity is a hallmark of successful planning. You're wise to think about "shelter without walls" (providing services without a single physical location,) mobile units, partnerships with businesses or other non-profits and other ways to reach the public and help animals.

Sites such as the No More Homeless Pets Resource Library (http://www.bestfriends.org/nomorehomelesspets/resourcelibrary/),
the ASPCA's Imagine Humane Innovation Bank (http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ih_pro_innovationbank) and
Humane Society of the United State's Sheltering Library (http://www.hsus2.org/sheltering/library/shelter_library.html)
all give examples of new approaches to our most common problems. Read up and see what might work in your community. Also, use a brainstorming session where people can offer ideas freely, initially just to go on a list without debate. Consider inviting members of the public, business people or community leaders who might bring a different perspective to such a session.

To evaluate the options you've identified, make a list of the key objectives you want to achieve and criteria you need to assess. For example, if increasing spay/ neuter is a key objective, criteria might include:
- Distance that people with animals must travel
- Hours that services, including pickup, are available
- Environment of the service delivery area
- Cost to the customer
- Start-up costs for your organization
- Ongoing costs for your organization

Evaluate each option – for example, the full-service shelter, a mobile unit, partnering on a mobile unit with another community, vouchers for vet services, etc. – against each of these criteria. You can create a write-up for each option discussing the criteria sequentially.

Visit http://www.bestfriends.org/nomorehomelesspets/resourcelibrary/snindex.cfm and download "Nine Model Programs for Highly Successful Spay Neuter" not only to see information that roughly follows this format, but also for some great information! You might instead use a matrix (chart) with the options as column headers and the criteria as rows as follows for a nice summary:

Options:
Full Shelter
Mobile Shared
Mobile Vouchers

Criteria:
Travel distance
Hours
Environment
Customer Expense

By comparing your options on key criteria, you'll gain greater insight into which options might work best for your community. Remember that the processes and information described help you make your decision; they don't give you the answer. Your judgment and that of your management team will be critical in choosing the best path once you've creatively identified possibilities and analyzed the implications.

Comment from Wendy:

I don't know if it is better to save animals without a shelter, but it can be done. Our humane society serves a mountain community of approximately 36,000 people, and we don't have a physical shelter. We also don't take any of our animals to the county animal shelters. We do accept owner turn-ins and lost/found animals. How do we do this? We have a member who runs a small dog kennel business that lets us keep some of our dogs there until adopted. We have a member who runs a pet pampering business that keeps a dog for us until the dog is adopted. We have a groomer that takes in dogs/cats and cares for them, as space is available. We also have a local pet lodge, operated by the vet hospital, that keeps one cat and one dog available to the public for adoption during their normal business hours. The pet lodge doesn't charge us any fees and gives us the adoption fees (which don't normally cover all of our costs). We have a cat foster mom/dad and a dog foster mom/dad who foster dogs/cats and keep track of animals available for adoption or in need of homes. We don't have very many foster homes, but we hope to change that.

We have monthly shot clinics/micro chipping/licensing, and we are improving/expanding our spay/neuter programs, which includes feral cats. Our Board of Directors (all volunteer) run the daily activities, with the help of other volunteer leads. Most of our Board members and volunteers work other full-time (paid) jobs. We have a small group of volunteers; these seem to always be the same caring, wonderful people. We also have a teen group that meets at least once a month to train and socialize our dogs available for adoption. The teen program is managed by an adult volunteer. We used to have a monthly adoption day, but no longer need to do that (for right now anyway).

The down side is that we sometimes have to turn away people/animals from areas outside of our community because we simply don't have the space or resources. We do have good relationships with other rescues/organizations, and we can almost always refer someone to another resource that may be able to help.

I believe that there is no point in building a shelter until we have a bigger spay and neuter program in place, as well as a stronger/larger volunteer force and foster program. We aren't there yet, but we sure are trying. Funding is always a worry, as well as availability of local vets to do spays/neuters for feral cats. We have lots of bake/craft sales to raise funds as well as a yearly rummage sale that is always a success. We couldn't do what we do without the support of the community.

Comment from Merritt:

What you really need to work on is keeping animals out of the shelter, through sterilization, improving the lost-and-found network, fostering, adoption, and training to ensure that animals stay in new homes after they are placed.

Focusing on building or improving a shelter just perpetuates the illusion that shelters solve pet overpopulation. They don't. They just buy some animals an extra few days or weeks to wait in jail, hoping someone shows up to bail them out. Shelters are at best a back up when all other systems have failed.

Concentrate on making all other systems work, and as the community standard of animal care and concern rises, the quality of the shelter will come along with it.

Response from Caryn:

Thanks to Wendy and Merritt for sharing their thoughts! Wendy's description of her experience, in particular, is a great example of benchmarking and how we can rapidly accelerate our learning by talking to others. Of course, as a No More Homeless Pets Forum member, you're already making an important effort to understand and evaluate exciting new ways to do more for animals!

Planning on a tight budget

Question from Janine:

As a non-profit, we are accountable to the public and our Board of Directors as to how we spend our money. And grant makers are also usually reluctant to fund planning initiatives. Does it always take money to carry out strategic planning? And if it does, how do we 'sell' our supporters on spending that money?

Response from Caryn:

There are numerous free and inexpensive resources that can help you define a planning process and gather information useful to your decision-making. Let's look at what you can do for free or low-cost and then we'll turn to how to get support for more extensive or expensive efforts.

Defining your process:
- You may have members with planning expertise who would volunteer to assist, or use volunteer web sites like www.volunteermatch.org to request assistance
- Local graduate students or professors in business or non-profit management may take on projects
- Marketing firms that offer strategy assistance, not just communications, might undertake
pro bono or reduced cost projects
- "Community Assessment and Planning for the Humane Movement" from Best Friends Animal Society is a wonderful guide, http://www.bestfriends.org/nomorehomelesspets/pdf/Assessment.pdf.
- "Making Plans to Make a Difference: Business Planning for Shelters to Inspire, Mobilize and Sustain Change," available for $20 from the ASPCA at http://store.yahoo.com/aspca/mapltomadibu.html
walks you through planning in steps, with tips, templates, resources and more.
- Humane Society University, http://www.hsuonline.org, offers a course on Strategic Planning, as well as classes in related areas such as Social Marketing, Program Measurement, and Statistics, Surveys and Scorecards.

If you are able to obtain volunteer or pro bono assistance, you should still have a written agreement to define the project's objectives, timeframes and responsibilities to ensure that everyone is clear on expectations.

Gathering Useful Data
Here are a few of the free data sources listed in "Making Plans to Make a Difference:"
- Foundation for Interdisciplinary Research and Education Promoting Animal Welfare publishes research articles on over-population and related topics, http://www.firepaw.org/research.html
- The State of the Animals 2001 is Humane Society of the United States' compilation of data and analysis across the spectrum of animal issues. Chapters downloadable at no charge at
http://www.hsus.org/press_and_publications/humane_bookshelf/the_state_of_the_animals_2001.html
- US Census Bureau is a great source for population, housing economic and geographic data for your community, http://www.factfinder.census.gov

Garnering Support for Planning:
- Search for foundations that fund "capacity building" for animal protection organizations. They might support your planning effort.
- Many foundations do fund program evaluation as part of a program grant. Activities to set objectives, measure the attitudes and behaviors of stakeholders (program participants, community leaders, etc) and determine how to best improve the program moving forward are both evaluation for the work you've done and planning for where to go from here.
- If you are seeking funds for a planning effort, be as clear as you can on the benefit the process will provide to your work. For example, instead of saying you want to analyze your community for your spay-neuter campaign, note that you want to identify which neighborhoods have the highest incidence of unaltered animals and understand the attitudes of residents with animals there, so that your campaign messages will be more effective and you will deliver them in a way that achieves more people choosing to spay and neuter for the dollars invested in the campaign.
- In an earlier response to a question about who should participate in planning, I touched on the Board's responsibility for strategic planning and cited some resources if you need help convincing the Board to undertake this activity and devote the appropriate resources. If you're seeking approval for campaign planning, in addition to being clear on the benefits of the planning, you might want to revisit a campaign that was less successful in the past and highlight how good planning could have made a meaningful difference.

Remember that planning is an investment that if done well provides an important return as measured by better results for your organization and the animals. Using free and low-cost sources, allocating resources internally, cultivating Board support and pursuing grants can all pay-off as you improve more animals' lives.

How to plan when serving multiple counties

Question from Michelle:

We created an organization about a year ago around a geographic area that made sense, but it is big and includes 10 counties. At first, we included three more counties, but a group stepped forward that was interested in taking on the three counties, which were somewhat remote from our center point. So we were happy to make our serving area smaller. We might again be willing to do something like this in three more of our counties should another group want to take this on.

Our mission is to encourage shelters and rescue organizations to form more life-saving partnerships to end companion animal overpopulation in this area. As we have been keeping the goals of our organization in mind, I have seen a couple of opportunities in specific counties in which the shelter leadership seems more willing to work with rescue organizations to really decrease the number of animals euthanized. Since we serve such a large area, but one that makes sense in our region, should we plan strategically around these windows of opportunity that are created by shelter leadership that is willing to work with us? Does it make sense to have a "phased" approach by choosing a county that might be in Phase 1 and then others that would follow in subsequent phases? Would this be the correct way to prioritize our short-term goals and make the area we serve more manageable?

Response from Caryn:

Bravo! Your inclination to adapt your approach based on changing circumstances is planning at its best. A plan is not carved in stone or an annual document to sit on the shelf. Rather, thinking about strategic issues such as audiences (or stakeholders or customers), distinctiveness and priorities should be part of your ongoing strategic management. You'll improve your ability to determine which new opportunities can advance your mission more effectively and which are distractions. Let's look at how you're right on track with some key elements of planning.

Distinctiveness.
By focusing your efforts on counties where there isn't another qualified group offering similar services, you avoid needless duplication or competition. Your resources can instead be concentrated in those counties that have no other sources of assistance. Because you're not competing, you and the other group may be more likely to share ideas and lessons learned to accelerate progress in any county working with either group.

Stakeholders.
Whether you think of the people and animals you serve as stakeholders, audience or customers, understanding and meeting their needs is key to your success. In your case, you not only have the counties and the animals as customers, but the leaders at the shelter partners. By identifying those who are most receptive to your initiatives, you can spend more time implementing and less time convincing. These people are also likely to achieve success more quickly for animals and provide more satisfaction to you and your team.

Priorities.
One of the biggest problems I see in the non-profit sector is taking on too many programs or initiatives. Yes, each one may be a good thing to do for animals, but by spreading resources too thin, less is accomplished than if fewer programs were undertaken with more depth. Your phased approach to choose just one or two partners most ready to move ahead can allow you to have impact and demonstrate the value of what you offer much faster.

By establishing a track record, you can better attract other participants and funders. You'll also gain lessons learned that can help you do even better with the next county. Think about how to keep the other counties engaged as you focus on just one or two. Maybe you can distribute updates or invite people from the other counties to occasional events to get their input and discuss your progress.

A phased or pilot approach can be a great way to improve your results from a program. By testing the program in a more limited way and carefully evaluating your impact, you can make adjustments to increase your effectiveness elsewhere or on a larger scale. For example, in my work with the Certified Humane Raised & Handling labeling program for meat, egg and dairy products from animals raised to humane care standards, we conducted a marketing pilot in the Washington, D.C. area to assess different forms of promotion. Based on what seemed to draw the greatest response, we will be launching an initiative in New York that allocates resources to what worked well and drops approaches that weren't successful. We should therefore achieve more than we would have had we launched the same promotion in both markets initially.

Focusing on what you do best, understanding opportunities in the audiences (stakeholders, customers) you serve and defining priorities are among the hallmarks of good planning. Best wishes for success in your efforts!

Strategic Planning 101: Understanding the lingo

Question from Faye:

There are some words and concepts in this forum week that I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around. Can you please walk me through 'Strategic Planning 101' so I can have a baseline of knowledge from which to work? For starters, what are capacity building grants, planning components, benchmarks, and high level approaches?

Response from Caryn Ginsberg:

Thanks for requesting clarification. One of the biggest challenges in defining strategy or any new area is understanding new terminology and making sure that everyone involved shares the same understanding! Let's see if we can address some areas of confusion.

"Capacity building" grants are grants given to organizations to improve their capability to be effective. Examples might be for strategic planning, staff training, Board development or other areas that aren't about delivering a specific program, but that enhance your organization's skills.

"Planning components" just refers to different elements of planning like understanding your audiences, defining your distinctiveness, setting goals, drafting or editing your mission, etc. They're parts of the planning process, not all of which you'll need in every situation. For more on these components or elements, please visit http://www.bestfriends.org/archives/forums/013105pvgstrategy.pdf to download the introductory article, if you've not done so already.

"Benchmarks" are indicators or practices that you obtain from other organizations in order to compare your performance or activities. For example, you might benchmark your euthanasia rate per thousand by looking at the results in communities of similar size and make-up. You might benchmark the practices of your spay/neuter clinic by identifying which clinics are viewed as leaders nationwide and seeing how they do things. Your intent is to compare to learn what may be possible and how you can do better... or you might find that you're already doing a great job and achieving very high results yourself!

The "high level approach" came up in regards to laying out a high level approach for your planning. This isn't special planning terminology, just a suggestion that you might define and write up key elements of your planning process like this:

Task Who? When?
Conduct analysis Jean February 28
Meeting 1, analyze environment, define niche All March 1
Meeting 2, set priorities All March 8
Draft action plans for each priority Program managers March 22

These milestones with dates and participants don't really give you every detail on the planning. You'll ultimately need to define meeting agendas, summarize key findings, review the action plans and more, but this "high level approach" to the planning process should help people
get a picture of how the effort will unfold. You could, of course, create a much more detailed list of steps for the planning process if that would help you be confident that you've considered everything you want to do and that you'll stay on track.

As animal advocates, we're aware of the power of language and how it both reflects and influences people's attitudes. I appreciate the opportunity to explain some of the terms that may have been interfering with your understanding of or enthusiasm for planning!

Planning to supplement adoption efforts

Question from May:

Our shelter and foster program has had great response from adopters, but we still can't adopt out as quickly as more come in (particularly during the summer kitten season). Are there any steps we can take to get ahead? We're weighing the pros and cons of free or inexpensive behavior classes, a low-cost, on-site spay/neuter clinic, and working more with other groups to make sure we have our community's bases covered.

Response from Caryn:

Congratulations on your successful adoption efforts! It sounds like you're ready to evaluate other options and your preliminary listing of pros and cons is a great way to begin. Here are three steps I'd recommend to help you decide where to head next:

1. Analyze your data – Take a look at your admissions data to see how many of your incoming and euthanized animals are puppies and kittens, relinquishments for behavior problems, ferals, etc. This information will help you evaluate how much each new program could affect the number of unwanted animals you're not able to adopt out. For example, a West Coast shelter saw that ferals represented an increasing portion of their euthanasias and was able to work with a coalition of local groups to spay/neuter ferals, reduce overpopulation and decrease euthanasias.

2. Check your options – We've mentioned benchmarking - looking at other organizations' practices and experiences as a great shortcut in your planning. Review different models for providing spay/neuter services, learn about the impact of behavioral training, find out about approaches to reducing the feral population and more with great resources such as the No More Homeless Pets Resource Library (http://www.bestfriends.org/nomorehomelesspets/resourcelibrary/),
the ASPCA's Imagine Humane Innovation Bank (http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ih_pro_innovationbank)
and the Humane Society of the United State's Sheltering Library
(http://www.bestfriends.org/archives/forums/013105pvgwhystrategy.pdf.

Note from forum moderator:

Thank you to the many members who sent in questions for this week's Forum!

Transcripts from this and all other weeks of the No More Homeless Pets Forum are archived for easy reference and are made available to all at http://www.bestfriends.com/nomorehomelesspets/weeklyforum/forumarchives.cfm.

For more information and advice related to Strategic Planning, please visit the No More Homeless Pets forum archives (see link above), and scroll down to "Management & Policies". There you'll find forum archives on Reaching Your Dreams, What Statistics Can Do For You, Planning an Animal Shelter and Making the Most of Your Resources.

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