DFW Pug Rescue

I will give the leaders of DFW a lot of credit for being willing to adapt and change things to make it better when needed. A lot of organizations don't, won't, or sometimes can't.

Our structure before was that we had elected officers, for 2 year terms. 1 president, several chair people (foster, adoptions, etc.), and a board of directors (the people who'd been around forever mostly).

our president was getting severely burned out. our adoption team too - they were doing adoption events every single weekend, and usually the same group of 3-4 people. the same transporters moving dogs around the area, the same foster homes over burdened. since we're useless without volunteers, they wanted a way to spread the burden of work, still get dogs adopted, and still keep the incoming dogs in the pipeline.

we've now organized into 7 Divisions:
· Foster Division
· Adoption Division
· Fund Raising Division
· Rescue Pug Take-In Division
· Finance Division
· Community Relations Division
· Publicity / Media / Dispute Resolution Division

Each division has a director, and it's that director's job to recruit volunteers, divy up the duties, etc.

And we've gone from a meet n greet every weekend, to 2 per month. Partially because it's way too hot and too hard on the pugs to have them out, and partially because it's hard on the same volunteers to do events every weekend. So we have 6 locations we're going to, and a volunteer in charge of the adoption meet n greet in every location. that way they only have 1 every other month or so.

We're also trying to do one major event every quarter vs. just Pugoween. These events are drawing huge crowds, and we need them for the vet bills.

All that said, they've admitted that there's no perfect answer, and there may be more changes if we see this doesn't work. I think that's more than fair.

I'd be happy to answer any questions. Sharing info just helps the pugs.

DFW is the biggest Pug rescue in the country, isn't it? Amazing how you guys run this without throwing in the towel completely - thank you. Glad you've gotten things organised.

Aussie Witch wrote:DFW is the biggest Pug rescue in the country, isn't it? Amazing how you guys run this without throwing in the towel completely - thank you. Glad you've gotten things organised.

I agree, Val and I have often discussed you guys! And we usually follow it up with "and if we get that many, that's when we quit!"

That's a really interesting structure, thanks for sharing Allie. That way seems to solve the problem of burn out too.

How do you get volunteers?

Aussie Witch wrote:DFW is the biggest Pug rescue in the country, isn't it? Amazing how you guys run this without throwing in the towel completely - thank you. Glad you've gotten things organised.

Rona, yes, but certainly not by choice! We are consistently around 100 dogs in foster care, including hospice. We take pugs from all over Texas, many from OK (other rescues are often full and unable to take any pugs), Louisiana (no rescue there), and even Arkansas.

And I take no credit. None at all. I'm a small cog in the huge wheel. Officially I'm now part of the finance team (got traded from foster to finance!), but am trying to find more efficient ways of record keeping for the pugs. And I'm also taking on one of the meet n greets that's about 5 miles from my house. We'll see how that goes.

Saira wrote:

Aussie Witch wrote:DFW is the biggest Pug rescue in the country, isn't it? Amazing how you guys run this without throwing in the towel completely - thank you. Glad you've gotten things organised.

I agree, Val and I have often discussed you guys! And we usually follow it up with "and if we get that many, that's when we quit!"

That's a really interesting structure, thanks for sharing Allie. That way seems to solve the problem of burn out too.

How do you get volunteers?

begging and pleading mostly.

we ask people who've adopted from us, advertise on FB, etc.

TxAllieGrl wrote:
but am trying to find more efficient ways of record keeping for the pugs. And I'm also taking on one of the meet n greets that's about 5 miles from my house. We'll see how that goes.

We are on a WAY WAY smaller scale, but we set up a yahoo group and use the database feature to keep track of rescues. It is simple, but able to be updated in real time and viewable by anyone that is a member of the group (only board members).

I like the idea of having divisions. I hope it works out for DFW and makes every thing more efficient. I think burnout really is the hardest part of rescue. Having the same people do events week after week is frustrating. And, finding volunteers seems to be our hardest task too.

I am in charge of finances and I prepare the tax return / financial statements for us. I'll admit, I'm not really happy with how it is going. We use excel mostly, but it doesn't make tracking the dogs and the related vet bills easy. I really want to convert us to QB, but we don't have the available $300 to spend on the software right now.