Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, but it’s not too late to put together a swoon-worthy promotion that will bring your community to your shelter.
Here are three great ideas to get people to go gaga over the dogs in your care:
1. Take a Dog Out for Dinner
Every holiday is a great time to promote temporary foster programs. Having someone take a dog out of the shelter for a few hours can improve their mood (both the person’s and the dogs!) and help with socialization. Plus, it’s a chance to get your dogs out in the community. Put an “adopt me” vest on the dog so that people know he’s looking for a home.
Whip up a quick social media post telling people about your temporary foster program, or circulate an email to your current foster families and volunteers. Because this is Valentine’s Day, bring a little bit of cheekiness into it. Make a reference to how taking a dog out for a date is better than Tinder or getting set up on a blind date! Have fun with the promotion.
2. Invite People Over for a Night of Cuddles and Pizza
For those who want to get out of the house and spread the love to more than one dog, set up a pizza party at your shelter! It’s what Austin Animal Center s doing this Valentine’s Day.
They got their message across in the cutest of ways:
While this doesn’t get the animals in your care out of the shelter, it does give them socialization time and it gives people a solid amount of time to get to know their potential new best friends.
Plus, who doesn’t like free pizza?
3. Puppygrams!
This is possibly the most fun you can have with a Valentine’s Day promotion. It would work for any holiday, too. We got the idea from Unleashed Pet Rescue and Adoption.
Here’s how it works:
People make a donation to your shelter of $50 (or any amount you chose) and a volunteer will bring a dog to your sweetheart for 20 minutes of cuddles. The puppygram also comes with chocolates and a special message for the special person in your life.
The idea is to promote the dogs in your care and raise awareness within your community about the work that you do. Make it clear to people that the dogs are available for adoption. Encourage people to stop by your shelter to get to know the pups.
Besides encouraging adoption, all of these ideas bring joy to your community. In doing so, they bust the stereotype that all shelter dogs are sad and/or damaged. People will see that the dogs in your care will make great BFFs to the right match.
And hopefully, these promotions will help you play matchmaker for a lot of the dogs in your care and you can fill people’s Facebook feeds with tons of pictures of dogs and their new families – which is way better than all of the engagement photos everyone will be seeing on February 15th!
