Some Great Ideas for Promoting Adoptable Cats (will work for dogs too!)

Animal shelter staff are perpetually thinking of creative ways to promote animals, especially cats, that are looking for good homes. As we have discussed previously, a strong adoption program is an essential component of a healthy animal shelter, and it seems that shelters across the country struggle at one time or another to maintain steady adoption numbers for cats. Recently, a colleague shared an interesting article that put forward some unique ideas for cat adoption promotions. Some of the items on this list I have not heard of before, so I thought they are worth sharing and expanding on:

1. If you have cages, pair up the kitties. The article explains that some people might be reluctant to separate cats housed together, especially the young kittens, so pair up your cats! It would be beneficial to test this theory if you have good data: look at the average length of stay for adopted pairs housed together compared to other cats of similar age that are not housed together. For example, average length of stay for paired kittens adopted together versus kittens adopted as singles. Additionally, investigate the time to adoption for both cohorts once officially made available for adoption. If pairing seems to be beneficial to your adoption numbers, you might want to create a campaign around double adoptions: “Two for the price of one, “Adopt a kitten and get a free companion”, or “BOGO” (Buy one, get one). I would count this idea as a cat kennel enrichment technique as well! Having a playmate is a great socialization and entertainment tool for the cats. 
2. Make business cards for the cats. This is brilliant! I have seen many people come in to the shelter with profiles printed from the shelter website of animals they wanted to visit. In a similar practice, when potential adopters are undecided after spending time with a few animals, I have seen people grab the shelter business cards from the front desk and record animals they are interested in. Having a small “business card” that profiles the cat is a great take-away for those not quite ready to make a decision. And, as the article states, some people might even pass the card along to others in the hopes of advocating for one of the cats they visited. You can get even more creative with this idea and mirror the business cards after real business cards. The “jobs/positions” of the cats can be their strengths: sell the lap cat as a “Personal Therapist” or advertise the playful kitten as a “Entertainment Specialist”. Make sure to attach your adoption hours and requirements so they are prepared when they come in next time. If you can, I would recommend tracking statistics on the adoption rates and time to adoption for cats that have their own business cards.
   
   
   
3. Make your voicemail from a cat. Each staff member with separate voicemail can record a message from a different adoptable cat. Is there a local fine arts or acting school in your neighborhood? Why don’t you call them up and ask if there are any talented voice students that would be willing to record your voicemails.

Although the article focuses on ideas for cat adoption promotion, you can certainly apply the ideas to your dog (or any other animal) adoptions as well. 

Have you tried any of the ideas mentioned in the full article? If so, what was your experience? Take the time to read through the comments…some good ideas are hidden in there too.

Open Adoptions - A Call to Action for All Animal Shelters

There is a concept in animal sheltering that is slow in moving through our community, and in my opinion it is the next turning point in making a significant impact on placement statistics for shelters.  Open Adoptions is the practice of opening your adoption criteria to include a larger number of potential adopters. 

To begin, it might be a little easier to explain what Open Adoptions is not.  Open Adoptions is not punishing a person because they had to give up a pet 10 years ago; Open Adoptions is not turning away an adopter because they don’t have all the answers about how to train a dog; Open Adoptions is not penalizing a person because they chose to not vaccinate their indoor house cat last year; Open Adoptions is not sending home empty handed an adopter wanting to bring a new pet home for his/her significant other.  And on the same token, Open Adoptions is not giving a pet away to any person that walks into your shelter.  Rather, Open Adoptions is shifting the approach of adoption counseling to utilize the process as an educational tool and in doing so, ensuring the best possible match of person and pet is made.   

Open Adoptions asks us to rethink our adoption criteria and rather than create barriers for an adopter, aims to set up building blocks that become the foundation of a long-lasting relationship between pet, adopter, and your organization.   The main focus in Open Adoptions is meeting the needs of adopters and their new pets during the adoption process and after adoption.  This is achieved when animal shelters commit to an inviting and non-judgmental adoption process culture and think first about how they can facilitate a conversation with adopters and educate them about pet care and animal needs.  It is time to abandon the inflexible adoption guidelines of the past and move forward toward a friendly and conversational approach to adoptions.  In doing so, shelters and rescues stand to increase their adoption numbers, increase their influence on adopters, and also gain community support.

On the opposite end of Open Adoptions is the process of maintaining communications with new adopters, ensuring the bonding and acclimation periods are going well.  Again, this is a necessary shift of resources for many organizations; many groups adopt pets and then send them home with their new family usually never to have contact again.  With an Open Adoptions culture, it is essential to maintain contact with new adopters (and even ‘old’ adopters for that matter) to provide them with support, advise, and resources should they need help. 

  

There are a multitude of ways an Open Adoptions culture can be achieved, and the roadmap to achieving this at your shelter will look a little different for everyone.  Here are some ideas to get started:

1.     Institute a pet match program at your shelter.  Meet your Match from the ASPCA is probably the most well known, but a homegrown version will work just as well. 

2.     Consider prescreening applicants and approving their application even if they have not yet found a suitable animal in your shelter.  Make the application approval good for 60 days (or whatever time frame makes sense for your organization) and they can come back to your shelter within that time and select an animal.     

3.     In the same spirit, maintain a request list for adopters.  If they are looking for something very specific (eg: neutered, all-white, front declaw, 4 year old cat), give them a call when you get an animal that fits their description.

4.      Send all adopters home with a resource packet, both in print and electronic.  This will give your adopters a point of reference for any questions they may have post adoption.  Even if your organization cannot provide for all their post adoption needs, give them resources for other organizations or businesses who do.

5.     Hire staff or volunteers to make follow-up calls/checks on adopters at various points post adoption.  This will remind the adopters you are committed to the success of their placement and the resources available to them.  As an added bonus, it will widen your circle of supporters, probably increasing donations and return adoptions when adding to the family.

6.     Speaking of return adoptions, go ahead and give return adopters a “Go Directly to the Front of the Line” pass.  You already have their information and know they have successfully adopted from you in the past, so make the process even easier for them the second (and third, forth, fifth, etc!) time around.   

Open Adoptions can increase your live release rate

*Photo courtesy of Chris Tanaka

I challenge all readers of this blog to do an internal examination of their adoption process and start implementing some of the ideas presented above.  It will be worth your time to take a look at your recent adoption applications and do a mini-analysis of the percentage of applications you turn down and for what reason.  Based on this data, decide how you can make the process easier for adopters and guide them through the process rather than turn them away and risk losing their support now and in the future.  Of course, in the animal sheltering business we want to do what is best for the animals in our care, and it is very difficult to decide if someone would be a good fit for an animal in just a few hours.  Therefore, utilize these Open Adoptions concepts and create a long-lasting relationship with adopters in which your organization continues to be instrumental in the connection between the adopters and their pets thus ensuring the animals are well cared for long after they leave your doors.   

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Shelters (Statistical Version)

Ah yes, another take on the infamous “7 Habits…”!  Below are some thoughts on why statistics are just as important as good husbandry techniques for adequately managing a shelter population.  Statistics are more than just an afterthought, or “I’ll get to them as some point” kind of mentality, and need to be added to the forefront of shelter operations.  Capturing good data and then using that data to plan and adjust to changes in your population will help your shelter go the extra mile in every aspect of shelter management possible.  Admittedly, the following is geared towards brick and mortar animal sheltering facilities, but I think any type of rescue organization can relate to these ideas.  Read on to explore the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Shelters (the Statistics Version):

1.  Garbage In-Garbage Out.  The single most important factor in using statistics to your advantage is to gather good data in the first place.  Don’t wait until later to record an intake, medical exam, outcome, behavior test, etc.  Do it now, and do it correctly.  You have no hopes of your software producing good reports if the data going in are incorrect or missing.  Shelters are so dependent on measuring time and making sure that animals move through quickly and efficiently, therefore it is vital to record events and observations AS THEY HAPPEN.  You are dead in the water if you are not recording data as events occur.
2. You have to do a regular head count.  Depending on the capacity of your shelter, this might mean every day.  This can be accomplished when shelter managers/veterinarians are doing rounds, or when staff are going through the rooms each morning for first feedings, or this can be one person’s job to do each and every time.  I have even heard of shelters using bar codes and scanners to take inventory counts!  Whatever works best, just make sure it happens.  There is no way you can produce good statistics, if you are not 100% certain of the animals in your population and where they reside at every point in time within your facility.  As an added benefit, this will also help to reduce ‘lost” or “missing” animals. 
3.  Know your carrying capacity and its limits.  By this I don’t mean know how many cages you have; carrying capacity is more than just number of cages.  Carrying capacity means calculating your intake “comfort zone” based on your usual “outcome activity”, rather than the other way around.  It means adjusting to unusual intake patterns such as kitten season or puppy mill raids to account for the needier (ie, resource draining) events/populations.  It means having an action plan in place for when you are reaching that carrying capacity—watching statistics on a weekly or monthly basis will allow you to be proactive and notice even subtle trends/changes in your data.  Managed/limited admissions facilities will find this task slightly easier to accomplish than open admissions shelters, but that just means those shelters will have to be a little more creative and flex a little more mental muscle.
4. Set benchmarks. Once you are consistently gathering quality data, go ahead and set benchmarks (ie, goals) for the statistics that you most closely watch.  This will give you even further insight into the health and well-being of your shelter.  Are you consistently meeting your benchmarks?  If you are not, what action items will be put in place to adjust for the discrepancies?  Increasing the benchmarks themselves does not count!  Benchmarks will also provide direction for staff and hopefully increase productivity if they have in mind what goal they are working to achieve.
5. Share your stats with staff.  This is important for a couple reasons.  First, it’s always good practice to have many eyes looking at the data to notice any discrepancies, errors, and to make observations/interpretations.  But in addition, this is a great way to give all shelter staff an appreciation for their work beyond direct contact with the animals—in other words, this will give them a glimpse at more of the “big picture”.
6. Talk with your shelter management software company, and often—you do have a specific animal shelter management software company, right? (We need to talk, if you don’t, this is an integral part of keeping good data)! Tell them what you need and why.  Maintaining an open line of communication with this group will ensure that your data management becomes a fluid, efficiency creator for your daily operations.  Furthermore, it has been my experience that many of the developers of these types of software are computer people and not “animal people” or “helter people”.  So, from their perspective, the software is performing just perfectly, but from your perspective—someone in the trenches daily—you might think the software needs a little tweaking.  Go ahead and speak up!
7. Collect basics statistics and report on a regular schedule (weekly or monthly is preferred).  Every shelter regardless of size should at least be collecting the following, and be able to report it by variables including animal type, animal age category, etc: a. Intake numbers, b. Outcome numbers, and c. Length of Stay/Animal Care Days.  Basically, you need to know what is coming in, what is leaving, and how long they are staying.  I would guess that about 80% of all meaningful shelter statistical analysis would in some way include these three stats in the respective calculations, so make sure you start with these.
   
   

Tracking Animal Transfer Placements

One of the many benefits that has emerged from the growing cooperation of humane societies and animal welfare organizations in the past decade is the concept of transferring animals from one organization to another.  Many open admissions and municipal facilities depend on transfer programs to increase live release rates, and most smaller rescue and limited admissions shelters only pull animals from other facilities.  For everyone involved—large and small organizations, municipal shelters, rescue organizations, and of course, the animals—it is a win-win situation.  Additionally, a transfer program also addresses pet distribution inequities.  In Chicago, we are lucky to have a network of hundreds of breed and specialty rescue organizations all working to save more lives; if an adopter is unable find what they are looking for at one shelter, they can readily open the latest addition of Chicagoland Tails to browse the vast rescue list and check out other organizations to find their new family member.  Some shelters have relationships with organizations in other states and even other countries.  Click here to read about a creative transfer program to get island pets to the mainland.   

Photo from Boggs Mountain Humane Shelter: boggshumaneshelter.com

Now that the transfer concept is established and working well in most communities, it is time to add sophistication to the data analysis for transfer programs.  Most shelters will calculate transfers as a variable in their live release data—which is good, but at this point, not enough.  How does a shelter know what actually happens to the animal once it is transferred?  From personal experience and anecdotal data, I know that many shelters keep in touch with their transfer partners and share photos and updates on the animal, but so far, not many have been recording actual data on placement rates, lengths of stay, or any other information.  I know, I know, one more thing to add to the shelter’s ever growing list of important things to do.  Here are a few suggestions:

1. This could be a great volunteer job—from your shelter software, print out the current list of transfers to other organizations, give the lucky volunteer a telephone, and let the calling begin.   
2. Be proactive about the process—add a clause in your transfer contract that puts the responsibility on the end of the transfer-receiving group to notify you when an animal is dispositioned. 
3. Of course, use your already existing shelter software to manage the data—if there is not a field or page in the software to add details to outcomed animals, talk to your software administrator to work on a solution to make this easy for you!  (You can even point them to this post to convince them of its necessity!)

And, here is a list of possible data to track:

1. Length of stay at transfer receiving organization—like length of stay within your own organization, this will give you a good overview of that organization’s overall health and adequacy at placing animals. 
2.  Final outcome percentages—are all animals adopted?  Some may be transferred yet again, some may be euthanized, some may become permanent residents of the receiving organization (sanctuary-type situations). 
3. Disease rates—did said animal get sick?  On what date of care did it break with symptoms?  What are the symptoms/diagnosis?  This will be helpful in determining your own shelter’s disease rates—if the animal broke with symptoms within the first few days of transfer, you can make the assumption it contracted disease while in your care and subsequently, you can add the data to your own disease calculations.  If it broke with symptoms well after transfer, then the disease transmission likely occurred while in the receiving transfer organization’s care.
4. Behavior Notes—was there unexpected behavior training/modification necessary?  If so, of what nature?  Did the behavior issues prohibit or increase the time to adoption? 

Following these numbers will give your organization a better understanding of its transfer program, and also strengthen the relationship with your transfer partners.  After all, in its broadest scope, the goal of a transfer program is to initiate more and more appropriate animal placements, so knowing your data (ie, your transfer partner relationships) more intimately will assist in successfully arriving at this goal.  You will have a clearer understanding of which animals to place with which groups, which groups to work with on a regular basis and those to work with on an episodic time frame, and you can also justify pulling away from certain groups if the data does not support the relationship any longer.  Further, if you notice lengths of stay increasing for one group or all transfer partners, you may look more closely at your own data to find out what is causing the swell.  Perhaps, your husbandry practices are slipping, and the animals transferred out are requiring unexpected or additional medical interventions thus increasing lengths of stay at the receiving transfer organization.  Or, maybe the issue is not with your group, but with the receiving transfer organization, and you may then consider advertising those animals on your own shelter’s website to boost exposure to potential adopters.  (Word of caution: *so as to not confuse or frustrate adopters, clearly label transferred animals as not being in residence at your shelter).  Whatever you decide to do with your transfer program data, I encourage all shelters to take this next step in enhancing the animal transfer concept and overall adding to the benefits for the animals.  Hats off to The ASPCA, whom in their $100K Shelter Challenge began requiring transfer affidavits in order for any transferred animals to count as a successful live release during the challenge period!  Click here to read their transfer rules (scroll down to “Challenge Rules” heading, point #9).    

What Happens Between Intake and Outcome? Explaining Animal Care Days

While important to know, tracking and reporting absolute animal intake and outcome numbers for a defined period of time (weekly, monthly, annually) is only useful to a point.  Certainly, when composing direct mail campaigns to raise awareness and money for your organization it is relevant to report total intake and disposition numbers as a measure of the impact you have on the community, and additionally, if your organization is a member of a coalition, or at the least, aiming to achieve transparency with your data, then indeed absolute numbers will again be useful.  It’s easy to report the intake numbers, and similarly, the outcome numbers (adoptions, transfers, spay/neuter surgeries, euthanasias) but how can we talk about what happens in between intake and outcome?  Enter: the Animal Care Days (ACD) statistic!

In its most elementary form, the Animal Care Day equals how many days an animal spends in your organization’s care. 

Table #1: Animal Care Days

Animal #	Intake Date	Outcome Date	Animal Care Days (d)
001	1/1/11	1/31/11	30
002	1/5/11	1/15/11	10
003	1/6/11	1/10/11	4
004	1/11/11	1/31/11	20
005	1/15/11	1/30/11	15
006	1/16/11	1/25/11	9
007	1/20/11	1/29/11	9
008	1/21/11	1/23/11	2
009	1/22/11	2/21/11	29
010	1/30/11	2/4/11	4
		Total ACD:	132

From the table above, we can see that this shelter took in 10 animals in January, but the total time these 10 animals spent in this shelter’s care was 132 days.  Big difference between those two stats!  To get a better understanding of the population, it is imperative for staff to track ACD.  Looking more closely at the data, shelter staff can begin to analyze differences between the animals and ask itself questions such as: why was Animal #008 outcomed so quickly whereas Animal #001 took 30 days until outcome?

From this data, we can also calculate an Average Length of Stay: number of days an average animal contributes to the total animal care days.  From the data above:

Average Length of Stay = (Total Animal Care Days) / (Total Animals)

                                         = (132) / (10)

                                         = 13.2 d: meaning the average animal at this shelter stayed 13.2 days before finding a disposition.

Animal Care Days are also important when requesting funding or determining an operating budget.  From the data above, if the shelter knows that it costs $25 to care for an animal each day (housing, food, medical expenses, staffing, etc), then it can add the following column to the table:

Table #2: Determining Costs 

Animal #	Intake Date	Outcome Date	Animal Care Days (d)	Cost per Animal ($)
001	1/1/11	1/31/11	30	750
002	1/5/11	1/15/11	10	250
003	1/6/11	1/10/11	4	100
004	1/11/11	1/31/11	20	500
005	1/15/11	1/30/11	15	375
006	1/16/11	1/25/11	9	225
007	1/20/11	1/29/11	9	225
008	1/21/11	1/23/11	2	50
009	1/22/11	2/21/11	29	725
010	1/30/11	2/4/11	4	100
		Total:	132 d	$3,300

From the data above, the shelter calculates it costs $3300 to care for the animals that come in January.  The average cost per animal is: $330.  Obviously, the longer an animal stays, the more investment a shelter puts into it whereas the shorter the length of stay, the less investment necessary.  Moving forward, the shelter can look more closely at animal cohorts (kittens, puppies, adults, black cats versus other colors, pit bulls versus other dog breeds, etc) to identify patterns, recognize strains on resources, and appropriately manage the animal population.  Managed and limited intake facilities can use historical ACD data to more effectively plan their intakes, and all types of shelters can use this data to promote transfers of certain types of animals that may have more ACD or longer lengths of stay.  Additionally, shelters can use ACD data to ensure that euthanasias are happening in a timely fashion.  By analyzing the ACD for the average euthanized outcome, shelter managers can make certain that inevitable outcomes are decided early rather than late. 

For calculations in Excel, use function DAYS360, click here to see the full Excel tutorial to make ACD calculations easy!

Maintaining a Sustainable Volunteer Program

I have spent most of my animal welfare career managing a volunteer department, and I still remember the comment that was said to me by a board member on the first day I took over the program at the shelter I was working.  When my boss introduced me as the new volunteer coordinator, the board member said, “Oh, you have a tough job, we can’t live with volunteers and we can’t live without them.”  At the time, I had no clue what she was referring to, but in reflection the statement makes sense to me now—a healthy, functioning volunteer program can be a shelter’s greatest asset whereas an ailing, nonfunctioning program can be its worst enemy. 

Regardless of the size and “shape” of an animal shelter, everyone needs a volunteer program.  In some shelters, volunteers add the finishing touches to daily routines, in others they participate in vital operations including cleaning and feeding animals, while in other shelters completely volunteers run the show.   Whatever the case may be at your shelter, the mark of a great volunteer program is the quality of its infrastructure.  In other words, to end up on the “our-volunteer-program-is-one-of-our-greatest-assets” side of the coin, a shelter must provide a solid infrastructure to support a productive volunteer program.    

Ensuring a solid infrastructure is in place

Consider a volunteer’s tenure from beginning to end.  Ideally, you want to have a well oriented and prepared volunteer reporting for duty on day one, so you need to invest in the volunteer as a resource before they ever begin paying out.  I have found the following orientation training model to work well:

Step 1: Attend General New Volunteer Orientation

·      Background/history of organization

·      Current organizational structure including services offered to the public/animals in need

·      Statistics (unfortunately, I have seen a few eyes glaze over while I talk about shelter stats, but in staying true to industry standards of transparency, I still think presenting basic stats is a good idea!)

·      Specific volunteer programs/jobs—present in detail the various volunteer opportunities

·      Tour of facility (if you have one)

·      Animal handling and animal body language presentation—general concepts.  There are many free online sources for this, but if you are lucky enough to have a behavior department or CPDT (or the like), get them involved in the presentation

Step 2: In-Shelter Small Group Training

·      Once a volunteer is assigned (or chooses) a program he or she would like to work in, connect them with a trained and experienced volunteer to show them the details of the program

·      Detailed training in animal handling and body language

Step 3: Volunteering with a Mentor

·      Volunteer is on his or her own, but scheduled at the same time as an experienced volunteer.  This allows for an easy question/answer flow when things come up and also a confidence booster for the new volunteer.

Once a volunteer is working within your organization, the next challenge is to keep them working within your organization.  There is a certain percentage of volunteers that will be a revolving door no matter how fantastic your program is: people will always move, get a job, have a baby, etc (In fact, the average national volunteer retention rate is 64.5%).  The contest now becomes engaging your volunteers to keep coming back.  Here are some key ideas to achieve this:

1.     Define a commitment for the volunteers: ten hours of volunteering each month, five community events each year, foster 8 animals in a year, etc.

2.     Provide periodic continuing education and training refresher courses—especially helpful for volunteers that lapse in their commitment and then return to duty.

3.     Offer multiple volunteer programs or opportunities to appeal to a wider range of people and levels of commitment.

4.     Define a volunteer coordinator and make this one person the volunteer’s point of contact for everything. 

5.     Host regular volunteer meetings to allow for volunteer ideas and concerns to be addressed.  Volunteers are important stakeholders, so make them feel as such.   

6.     Recognize volunteering milestones—these can be defined to suit your organization, but it is important to acknowledge a volunteer’s anniversary, consistency, job well done, continued commitment, etc. 

Let’s Roll With It: Calculating Live Release Rates

The live release rate is a very telling metric in measuring a shelter’s progress towards improving dispositions for the animals in its care.  Literally translated, a live release is any animal that leaves your shelter alive.  Options for live release include:

(1)  adoptions

(2)  return to owner (RTO)

(3)  transfers

(4)  TNR—or feral colony placement

Simply calculated, the Live Release Rate (LRR) is the sum of all the live outcomes for a period of time divided by the total intake numbers for that same period of time. 

Let us consider some faux data from Shelter XYZ:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
Total Adoptions	97	88	99	100	78	84	94	99	102	87	85	105
Total  Transfers	12	13	8	5	11	10	12	9	4	11	5	6
Total RTO	5	19	3	10	2	4	2	15	18	1	11	2
Total Intake	250	249	234	112	276	270	265	245	235	241	223	256

Calculating the LRR for January: (97+12+5)/(250) = 45.6%

LRR for February: (88+13+19)/(249) = 48.1%

LRR for March: (99+8+3)/234 = 47%

The astute reader will wonder what is going to happen with April’s calculation?  Well, let’s see:

LRR for April: (100+5+10)/(112)= 100.2%

What?!?!  How is it possible to have more animals leave the building alive than what we took in that month?  The math does not make sense.  Enter the Rolling Live Release Rate (RLRR).  The RLRR allows the user to adjust for a holding or starting population of animals that carry over from month to month. 

Let’s consider our data from above with additional rows of information:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
Total Adoptions	97	88	99	100	78	84	94	99	102	87	85	105
Total  Transfers	12	13	8	5	11	10	12	9	4	11	5	6
Total RTO	5	19	3	10	2	4	2	15	18	1	11	2
Total Holding	45	30	42	32	29	28	29	25	46	44	41	39
Total Intake	250	249	234	112	276	270	265	245	235	241	223	256

Now, calculating a RLRR for January: (97+12+5)/(45+250) = 38.6%

RLRR for February: (88+13+19)/(30+249) = 43%

RLRR for March: (99+8+3)/(42+234) = 39.8%

Now, let’s examine the calculation for the odd month of April:

RLRR for April: (110+5+10)/(32+112) = 79.8%

Here is how the numbers compare:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr
Live Release Rate	45.6%	48.1%	47.0%	100.2%
Rolling Live Release Rate	38.6%	43.0%	39.8%	79.8%

Why would I want to produce RLRR when they make my data look worse?  Because you must account for the carry over population for each time point (monthly, annual data, etc).  I have yet to encounter a shelter or rescue that can disposition all of its animals immediately; inevitably there is some carry over population of animals no matter how talented and speedy the shelter is in live release placements.  In a rolling live release the denominator is the sum of all animals that have the potential to be outcomed, so one must incorporate the holding population in the computation.  And, as is the general rule for most statistical markers, it’s the trend that matters, not the absolute numbers themselves.

RLRR can also be calculated for subpopulations within your shelter: cats and dogs, puppies/kittens and adults, male and female, and so on.  In these calculations, you would only sum the total live outcomes for the subgroup under investigation (puppies, kittens, etc) divided by the total potential for outcome in that subgroup.  In order to not underestimate the RLRR, always remember to divide by the subgroup, not total intake—in this example, all dogs and cats, etc).