What about more volunteers, prisoners and community service staff?
We have always taken community service workers assigned by the courts and we also have people from the Community Work Experience Program (CWEP), but the areas where they can help are limited due to a number of reasons (rabies, security, pre immunization, animal handling, etc.) so we can only take so many.

Shelters run best when staffed by trained and accountable staff. Volunteers by the nature of volunteering often want to do what they think is best. It does not work as well as one may expect unless there is an extraordinarily tight volunteer system with extensive training and clear limits set on what people can get involved in, or areas they can enter, and they readily accept policy and protocol. We typically direct individual persons who call about volunteering to an already existing rescue or animal advocacy group. Such groups already know the operations of the animal shelter and working with an existing and dedicated group is much more productive than trying to go it alone. It's similar to the effectiveness of a volunteer handing out band aids at a disaster site or joining the American Red Cross as a team.

Lastly, working with animals of unknown vaccine status for rabies would be a liability issue BCAS could not accept. It's not the fact that volunteers are not needed because they are, but they need to be working and managed in areas most useful to the shelter and it's limitations on being able to work with animals.

Show All Answers

1. Can I donate to the animal shelter?
2. Can I foster an animal?
3. How can I help the shelter by volunteering?
4. How can rescue organizations help?
5. What about more volunteers, prisoners and community service staff?
6. Where and when can shelter supplies donations be dropped off?