Large-scale cruelty and neglect cases rarely involve just one issue—or one agency. Properties tied to cockfighting, hoarding, unsafe housing, and criminal threats require tight coordination between animal services, law enforcement, code enforcement, prosecutors, and national organizations. This session breaks down how we pulled multiple entities together under pressure, establish clear roles, shared intelligence, managed risk, and kept animals and staff safe while avoiding mission creep and burnout. Attendees will learn how we should have prepared before the call came in and how to lead when everything is on fire.

A small budget isn't a dead end—it's an opportunity to use our brains and get creative to make ends meet. We don't need a massive endowment; we need resourceful grit. In a small town, efficiency is our greatest asset. We can provide gold-standard care on a shoestring budget by changing the way we think. We must ditch the "If Kansas City has it, we need it" mentality. Instead, ask: "If they have it, how do we make it happen here?" We think outside the box to raise those funds—trading naming rights for labor or hacking our overhead. We don't have the funds now, but with inventive thinking, we'll build it anyway.

The FIDO Foundation presents The Power of Emotional Intelligence in Inclusive Leadership, exploring how self-awareness, empathy, and relationship management strengthen trust and belonging across animal welfare spaces. Rooted in community-based pet retention work, this session highlights how EI helps leaders engage underserved communities, reduce barriers to care, and build culturally responsive programs. Participants will gain practical tools to lead with compassion, strengthen partnerships, and create inclusive systems that support both people and the pets they love.

The greatest lifesaving impact happens when rescues, shelters, and field services operate as a coordinated system. This session highlights how collaborative partnerships expand capacity, reduce shelter stress, and keep pets with families whenever possible. Attendees will explore foster networks, specialty placement, diversion programs, and community outreach models while addressing common collaboration challenges. Participants will leave with practical tools to strengthen partnerships and maximize collective impact across the animal welfare continuum.

A high-performing board is essential to nonprofit success, providing leadership, governance, and strategic oversight. But how do you recruit and retain members who truly strengthen your mission? This interactive workshop helps nonprofit leaders build engaged, diverse, and effective boards. Participants will learn how to identify needed skills and perspectives, develop thoughtful recruitment strategies, set clear expectations, and foster a culture of accountability and participation. The session also explores practical ways to keep board members motivated and meaningfully engaged over time.

Animal shelters often face difficult outcome decisions for “grey area dogs” who don't clearly fit adoptable or unadoptable categories. These dogs may show challenging behaviors, bite histories, fear, or quality-of-life concerns, making decisions inconsistent, emotional, and ethically complex without clear frameworks. This session presents a practical, team-based approach using case studies and structured tools to support objective, humane decisions. Attendees will learn to define criteria, guide collaborative discussions, and balance animal welfare, capacity, and safety, with opportunities to engage through anonymous case study polling.

Modern animal welfare success starts long before shelter intake. This session explores how community-centered field services reduce intake, improve outcomes, and strengthen public trust by shifting from reactive enforcement to proactive problem-solving. Attendees will learn practical strategies such as consultative calls, pet retention tools, neighborhood partnerships, and data-informed deployment. Real-world examples show how field officers can serve as educators and solutions-focused responders while maintaining public safety and legal compliance.

Walt Disney famously said, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” In this session we will explore the magic within guest services and how it can result in more donations, record breaking adoption numbers, increased volunteerism, and happier staff. Attendees will have an understanding of how an authentic signature guest experience can help them standout. Pet acquisition trends, guest and adopter survey feedback, and factoring in local and regional counterparts will provide a clear understanding of why this is important.

Removing unreliable breed guesses is an effective step in building trust and improving outcomes. This session reviews the science showing visual breed identification lacks accuracy and explains why genetics do not predict behavior. You will see how focusing on each dog as an individual shifts adoption results and community perception. Learn practical steps to make the change. We cover updating SOPs, training staff, and communicating with the public. Examples from shelters that removed breed labels show improvements in adoptions and community relationships. Leave with ready-to-use resources for your team.

Managed intake sparks strong emotions, public distrust, and internal tension yet it's increasingly used by shelters under strain. This session moves beyond slogans to examine whether managed intake is humane, for whom, and under what conditions. Using real data, community impacts, and ethical frameworks, we'll explore when managed intake reduces harm, when it shifts harm, and how poor implementation can undermine equity and trust. Attendees will leave with language, metrics, and decision tools to assess managed intake honestly and communicate transparently.

In animal welfare, we're driven by an urgent desire to save lives—but what if the very systems and “common sense” practices we rely on are unintentionally fueling the crises we're trying to solve? This session invites us to look inward, using systems thinking to see how every part of our work is interconnected and how today's challenges emerged from decades of policies, norms, and well-intended decisions with unintended consequences. Together, we'll examine common practices that may be increasing length of stay, straining resources, and burning out staff and volunteers.

Across the United States, communities are struggling to address growing community cat populations with limited funding and support. This session presents a replicable case study of how the Street Cats Club, a 100% volunteer-run nonprofit in Emporia, Kansas, built and scaled a high-impact Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program. Since 2019, the organization has sterilized more than 2,000 cats and is on track to fix 1,000 in 2026. Attendees will gain practical, data-driven strategies for launching, funding, marketing, and sustaining scalable TNR programs in resource-limited communities.

Ordinances can keep pets in homes, save lives, and tax dollars. Nuisance provisions that address barking, community cats can decrease your workload. New pets in housing ordinances will be discussed.

Compassion fatigue has been steadily increasing in both the veterinary and deathcare industry over the last decade, causing heavy emotional/physical exhaustion and leading people to feel burned out and making abrupt career changes on a moment's notice. Anna will gently guide people through learning kind communication, identifying compassion fatigue and burnout, and implementing helpful strategies for oneself, team, and overall company to monitor compassion fatigue.

Over the past several years, Metro East Humane Society (MEHS) in Edwardsville, IL, has built a robust low-cost spay/neuter program to serve the surrounding communities, in addition to functioning as a rescue for adoptable pets. This session will discuss the process of creating and enlarging MEHS's public surgery program, leaving you with tips to implement at your own rescue. MEHS's partnership with a local non-profit organization to strategically engage in the TNR efforts of the Metro East community will also be discussed.

At Muttville, foster guardians play a vital role in saving senior dogs. Over 20% foster four or more dogs each year, providing critical at-home care for dogs awaiting adoption—especially those with medical, mobility, or sensory challenges. These fosters are expert caregivers and advocates, enabling Muttville to help more dogs move through the adoption pipeline. This session shares how to effectively leverage fosters alongside shelter facilities and how to support them so fostering is safe, rewarding, and sustainable, leading to faster adoptions and better outcomes for dogs and people.

Don't have a 6-foot fence? You must be a bad dog owner. Don't have a full-time job? You can't afford vet care, so you can't adopt from us. Don't own your own home? There's no way you can take care of one of our pets! I have heard the above arguments many times in recent years. These barriers and biases toward adopters and foster caregivers harm the animals in our care because we end up turning away people who are trying to help make a difference. In this session, we'll identify biases toward adopters and foster caregivers and learn how to remove these barriers. Together, we can save more animals and achieve our no-kill goals.

Adoption processes often include well-intended steps that create delays, limit access, and slow placements. For shelters managing capacity, these barriers directly impact length of stay and outcomes. This interactive session explores simple, practical ways to remove unnecessary barriers and build trust with your community. Using real examples, including the Doggy Dashing program, participants will identify small changes that can reduce length of stay, lower return rates, and increase foster engagement. Attendees will leave with one actionable step they can implement right away.

This session would break down our foster program. We would look at examples of foster applications, foster onboarding, recruitment and retainment using the same low barrier philosophies used in our low barrier adoption program.

Doggy day trips are more than enrichment — they're powerful tools for placement, data collection, and community connection. This session walks through launching and scaling a day trip program that works for large dogs, shy dogs, and busy shelters. Learn how to reduce friction, expand volunteer participation, and use day trip data to drive adoptions and transfers. Attendees will leave with practical steps to move from “special program” to everyday lifesaving strategy.

Adoption and foster conversations play a critical role in creating successful matches, yet many staff and volunteers rely heavily on applications and checklists. This interactive session explores how to use conversations to better understand adopters, build trust, and support thoughtful placement decisions. Participants will learn how to ask effective questions, respond to concerns, and navigate more challenging moments with confidence. Through guided practice, attendees will leave with practical tools and language they can use right away.

This workshop will cover research that shows the many benefits of day foster and field trip programs for your dogs, your organization and your community. Then we'll walk you through starting a program at any size shelter. From getting buy-in to putting together your process, attendees will come out of the training prepared to start their own day foster program – and save even more lives.

What if volunteers weren't just helping but actively moving animals toward live outcomes? Purple Paws Pathways empowers trained volunteers to create individualized checklists for animals, guiding them through enrichment, exposure, marketing, and placement milestones. This session shares how to safely shift ownership without sacrificing consistency, staff authority, or animal welfare. Attendees will learn how to structure volunteer-led pathways that reduce length of stay, improve morale, and turn community members into true lifesaving partners.

Now more than ever we need the support and help of our community to save lives and keep pets in loving homes. But are we really connecting with ALL of our community? In the USA, 13-14% of the population speaks Spanish at home — more than one in ten. And those numbers are drastically underreported. Often misunderstood and ignored by animal welfare organizations, the Latine community has a vital culture of pet ownership and welfare — tap into it! This workshop will help animal welfare workers to connect with Latine clients and constituents by fostering trust, improving accessibility to services, and understanding cultural nuances.

In this lively session, we're digging into the people side of foster programs—because getting animals into homes starts with bringing more humans on board! We'll tackle the questions everyone's asking: How do you get more folks through the door? And how do you keep them coming back for more tail wags and happy endings? With a mix of surprising research, real-world examples, and interactive moments, you'll walk away with fresh ideas to make your program more welcoming, inclusive, and downright irresistible.

Volunteer onboarding doesn't have to be a burden. This session shares how Muttville built an accessible, engaging virtual onboarding model that empowers volunteers and fosters to get involved quickly while feeling supported and prepared. Learn practical strategies for designing remote onboarding using tools like on-demand videos, virtual mentors, and digital resource hubs. Ideal for teams with limited staff or wide service areas, this approach balances efficiency with personal connection, leading to stronger engagement, higher retention, and more effective lifesaving support.

Across the country, shelters and rescues are facing the same challenge: intake is rising while resources and space are stretched thin. Many organizations are seeking creative, community-based solutions that keep pets out of shelters and with the people who care about them most. This session will focus on one of the most impactful approaches: Finder and Owner-to-Foster programs and how these models can transform community engagement, reduce shelter crowding, and save more lives.

With every shelter stuffed to bursting, long stay pets are often the most at risk. Not only because of space crunches but also due to the effects being kenneled has on their bodies and behavior. Organizations across the country are utilizing innovative foster care programs, proactive marketing strategies and more to target pets with long shelter stays and get them into permanent homes faster. In this presentation, you'll learn techniques you can use right now to get your most difficult-to-place pets adopted, including the winning plans from Virginia shelters that have had great success with this specific population.

Volunteers are the backbone of Muttville, with more than 500 active volunteers supporting nearly every function—from dog care and vet clinics to administration, marketing, and grant writing. By tapping into volunteers' diverse skills, Muttville has expanded its impact without growing payroll. This session explores creative, often-overlooked ways to integrate volunteers into core operations, including non-traditional roles. Learn how to identify opportunities, design accessible and sustainable roles, and recruit, onboard, and retain skilled volunteers to build capacity, boost engagement, and strengthen your organization.

Many shelters struggle to manage high adoption demand with limited time. This session shares Muttville's simple, effective adoption model that ensures every adopter is supported and no animals are overlooked. By dividing responsibilities between dog managers and adopter concierges, and using data to refine processes, Muttville increased adoptions by over 13% in one year. Learn how virtual, hybrid, and in-person adoptions work together to showcase dogs and make adoption easier for people, transforming adoption programs with a few practical steps.