Shelter Partnerships can create new clients while helping animals in need.

At Best Friends Pet Care, we actively encourage our managers to reach out and build partnerships with the local rescue and shelter community near their pet care center. We believe these relationships are mutually beneficial and have seen their value over many years. Done well, they can yield new clients for the business and strengthen the loyalty of existing ones.

The key to success is engagement. The relationship must connect your business with the nonprofit in a way that makes its employees or volunteers want to help you thrive. This means going beyond traditional community outreach activities like donating food at the holidays or buying a table at its annual event. While such donations are important, they aren't enough to create the level of engagement needed to elevate the relationship to a partnership.

To single your business out from the rest of the pack, it's important to find out what challenges the organization faces and offer to help find a solution. There are many different ways to do this. Across our 42 locations, Best Friends has a wide range of different initiatives that have evolved into true, long-term partnerships. Let me share two.

IN CONNECTICUT: FINDING A WAY TO INCREASE VISIBILITY
For the past six years, the team at our pet care center in Avon, Connecticut, has hosted an annual adoption event/fundraiser for local rescues. What started small has grown into a much anticipated annual dog festival that has raised Best Friends' visibility in the community and brought many new clients through our doors.

The idea developed as manager Jen Tobias chatted with volunteers from several small rescue groups. These organizations fostered pets in the homes of volunteers; they needed a place where prospective adopters could meet with several pets at once. Because the groups were small, none had enough pets at any time to host an event. Jen realized that a multi-group adoption day to showcase pets from several groups was the perfect solution and decided to host the event.

Year one was fairly simple: tables were set up outdoors for each of the four rescue groups that participated. A local vet was invited to offer health information, and a trainer was on hand to answer behavior questions. Best Friends staff offered tours of the facility and coupons for discounts on services. The event was small but satisfactory to all involved.

As the relationships grew, Jen decided to add a silent auction to the event. Donations were solicited from local business; all auction proceeds went to the rescues for the care of the homeless pets.

Over time, the event gained traction, and others asked to participate. Last year, there were eight adoption tables supplemented by a long bank of vendor tables and lots of fun activities for people and their pets. Our staff loves it as much as the pet owners who attend; they have fun, and it makes them feel good to help animals in need.

The event also brings in business. Each year we capture new clients for boarding, grooming, and day camp - not just directly from the event itself but also throughout the year. The rescues, grateful for the partnership, eagerly recommend Best Friends to their adopters and friends in the pet community.

IN ILLINOIS: MEETING A NEED FOR SPACE
The team at our Prairie View, Illinois, center pursued a different course in its relationship with the local rescue community northwest of Chicago. Longtime center manager Kim Young, now one of our District Managers, had joined the board of Young at Heart Pet Rescue, a local group that rescues and re-homes senior dogs and cats, in 2006. Historically, Young at Heart had depended upon volunteer foster homes to care for all of its pets until they could be placed in forever homes. As is the case for many rescue groups, it was hard to find those homes without a venue where adopters could meet the available pets.

As Kim worked with the group, she saw an opportunity. Her facility had a small room that would be the perfect space for an on-site adoption center. Young at Heart could showcase up to eight cats at a time. It was right off the lobby with large glass windows, so it would be visible to lobby traffic. It was also separate from our regular cat boarding area, so our boarding guests wouldn't be disturbed by visits from prospective adopters. We provide the space free of charge, but Young at Heart volunteers come in daily to care for the cats by handling the feeding and cleaning.

Young at Heart regularly promotes the relationships to the public. Best Friends Pet Care is highlighted on the group's website and receives regular shout-outs on the organization's Facebook page and Twitter feed, as well as in "Slightly Used Pets," the column its volunteers write for local press.

The relationship, now in its sixth year, has been a success for both partners. Young at Heart is finding homes more quickly for more cats while Best Friends in Prairie View is capturing new clients who discover us through the connection with the rescue community.

TIPS FROM THE EXPERTS: GETTING STARTED
It may seem that the task of building a successful partnership requires so much time and so many resources as to be daunting. Jen, Kim, and our other managers prove that it can be done and offer the following advice for getting started:

Be strategic. Find out what the organization needs and offer to help solve that problem, whether it is boarding or grooming services for pets waiting for homes, advertising to find adopters, or space to hold an adoption day.

Start small. You don't need to run a blockbuster event or find homes for 100 pets on the first day. Launch your relationship on a scale that is comfortable, and remember that small successes will grow into bigger ones.

Give it time. Forget about overnight success. The best relationships evolve organically over time. It took several years for Kim and Jen to see substantive results from their initiatives. Recognize that this is a long-term commitment.

Do you have an interesting partnership with a rescue or shelter in your community? Why not share your experience about building partnerships with the Pet Boarding & Daycare community? Write to me, care of the magazine, with your stories, and I'll share them in a future piece on "Doing Good is Good for Business."

Joan Nieman, Vice President of Operations for Best Friends Pet Care, has more than 30 years of experience in the pet care industry. Prior to joining Best Friends in 1994, she owned and operated The Pet Resort in Oklahoma for a decade and has been active on industry associations, including serving on the board of the Pet Care Services Association.

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