Reduced Adoption Fees Help Save Lives.

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It’s official.
Reduced-fee and no-fee adoptions help save lives.
Reduced adoption prices can help shelters quickly find homes for more animals, find homes for harder-to-place animals (like seniors, animals with special needs, black animals and more), increase save rates at shelters with open-admissions, and attract new adopters and allow previous adopters to adopt pets at a lower cost.

Studies and reports show that low-fee adoptions work. 

Maddie’s Fund did a post-adoption survey of its sponsored adoption event in San Francisco in 2011, which offered free adoption fees.
The results? Six to 12 months after the event, 95% of dogs and 93% of cats were still in their original forever homes. That means the return rate was actually less than average for most shelters and rescue groups. To see other results from the study, please see the summary of the the Maddie’s Fund study here.

With a good, conversation-based adoption process in place, along with a short application, people who want animals for less-than-honorable purposes are not likely to try and adopt because they don’t want their actions to be documented by virtual or paper trails.
With every Dorchester Paws adoption, a conversation with an adoption counselor and an application is required.
That means, no matter what the adoption fee, as long as you have an effective adoption process, you can attract quality adopters.

The ability of adopters to pay high adoption fees does not guarantee the quality of their homes or their future ability to support adopted pets. It also doesn’t ensure that pets will not be returned or given to another person. Everyone loves a deal, regardless of income.

According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, people who adopted cats with waived fees had the same degree of attachment as those who paid fees. Additionally, the study found that eliminating fees did not devalue the cats in the eyes of the adopters.

The longer animals stay in a shelter, the more likely it is that they may develop health and behavioral problems, which costs money to treat. That means reduced and no-fee adoptions may save your organization money because, the faster you find pets homes, the less you will spend on their care. Plus, the faster you help animals find homes, the happier and healthier they’ll be and the more lives you’ll be able to save.

Right now, Dorchester Paws is getting ready for another event with BISSELL Pet Foundation to Empty the Shelter and we’re excited to say that we’ll be able to offer $25 adoptions, with exclusions applying.