There is a difference between advocacy and adoptions, and understanding this key to an effective message.
If a person is considering adopting a pet, what they need is support, encouragement and praise for their decision (positive) Yet, often when people come to rescue to adopt, via our websites or facebook pages, we present them with the evils of pet shops, puppy farms, animal abuse and abandonment (negative).
Neither advocacy or adoptions are more important than the other, but they are drives that need to separated so as not to overwhelm the regular, off-the-street pet owning family.
You need to decide what your core mission is; is it advocacy or adoptions? Design everything you do to support that mission.
Then, when considering every message or action ask yourself; does this support our adoptions (advocacy)?
Hi,
This is so true, as one who was relatively new to the world of animal rescue a year ago, I agree. I adopted both my current dogs from a rescue organization & subsequently ended up volunteering (fostering, transport, events etc) with them for a short period, earlier this year. When I first became involved their Facebook page was an Uplifting, positive place where you could read stories of adopted dogs new lives etc. It really encouraged you to consider adopting from them, rather than buying. However some publicity resulted in the tone of the page turning more to advocating against bad breeders & puppy farmers, which then became confusing, a little depressing & off putting. I understand why it changed, but to the uninitiated, or average person, it may have seemed “all too much” Happily, this has changed & they appear to have achieved a happy balance again, but as you correctly point out, Rescue Org’s need to be clear about their goals & purpose when promoting themselves.
I see Organisations such as Oscar’s Law as our advocates, & there is nothing wrong with Rescue Org’s affiliating & supporting them, in addition to their main objective.
Confronting people with negative things that they feel powerless against is completely off-putting. There needs to be a positive in there somewhere – something they can actually DO to help things get better. If “advocacy” is just negative criticism without some ideas of what people can actually do to relieve it (write to the Minister, sign a petition, attend a rally) is actually just depressing, off-putting, and pretty useless.
I just think a lot of the ‘advocacy’ that is done in rescue/animal welfare is not really advocacy, and is extremely poorly thought out.
Preaching to the converted is not advocacy. Confronting people (who usually already agree with you anyway) with horrific images to drive home a point is not advocacy. Lecturing about “defenceless animals” and evil people is not advocacy. Indeed, they have the opposite of the desired effect – not only do they usually not raise public awareness and outrage, they make the ‘true believers’ want to turn away too.
To my mind, advocacy is first and foremost about change – whether it’s policy change, social change, organisational change …
Even if you get to a broader audience than your own support base, advocacy needs to be carefully thought out. Saying ‘X amount of animals die in pounds every year’ and expecting people to be outraged is pretty meaningless – for members of the public who don’t know about ‘no kill’, the number ‘x’ might seem quite reasonable. Our measures of success aren’t necessarily the same as theirs.
I think messages need to be positive and unequivocal – and be based around ideas that people can get behind and feel good about. Public participation is critical, as is strategic media involvement. This will make the decision makers sit up and take notice.
I also agree that advocacy and rescue don’t really sit too well together. The workforce and audience is often different – I can’t count the amount of rescue volunteers I’ve met who aren’t interested in advocacy because they perceive it as being not ‘hands on’ enough. And as you point out, a regular family just looking to do the right thing may not be ready (yet!) to be drawn into becoming advocates. They just want to adopt a dog!
Also, in my experience rescue groups can often be reluctant to take bold action on advocating for change because they’re either bogged down in the operational side of rescuing and rehoming, or they’re worried about possible repercussions from councils/governments.
Great blog, btw. I’ve found lots of good food for thought here.
On a related point (wording we use for appeals), might I ask for people’s feelings about phrases such as, “We use volunteers whenever we can in order to save as many animal’s lives as possible.”
It appears that general volunteering (not animal-related) bodies absolutely hate, loathe and despise the word “use” and they don’t really care for the idea that one reason to get work done by volunteers is to eke out available funds as far as possible.
Weirdly this doesn’t apply to vets – the same people are perfectly happy to say I ought to be encouraging those to donate their services free of charge.
Does the word offend you?
I’m entirely prepared to re-word everything if it really does put off potential volunteers, but my sense is that most animal people feel like me that this is fiddling while Rome burns.