Why Was Charleston County Selected as an ASPCA Partner Community?
The ability of Charleston’s local animal welfare groups to respectfully collaborate with one another was an important factor in its selection. The county’s animal welfare organizations have a strong history of working together to effectively address animal overpopulation and care through collaborative disaster response efforts, low-cost spay/neuter initiatives, adoption campaigns and cruelty prevention and law enforcement.
Charleston’s community demographics, representative of most mid-sized cities around the country, are another factor. The county struggles with many of the same animal welfare issues common in other communities. These factors make Charleston’s achievements a model on which other communities can base their own growth.
What Are Some of the Challenges Faced by Charleston County?
Charleston has a high number of feral cats along with a low adoption rate. The county also struggles with limited resources for expansion of spay/neuter programs, fighting pet-overpopulation and educating people in responsible pet parenthood.
How Has the Partnership Addressed these Challenges?
Partnership funds are being used to improve adoption programs, reduce animal intake and increase the availability of low-cost spay/neuter services. The ASPCA has evaluated current community resources as well as the capacity, strengths and challenges of the three partner agencies in developing a community plan to increase the live release rate. The ASPCA team and local partners are prioritizing and targeting efforts to maximize the number of lives saved, while ensuring that these efforts are collaborative, measurable and sustainable.
What Are Charleston’s Animal Welfare Goals?
Charleston’s animal welfare agencies look forward to making an adoption guarantee for every at-risk animal not only attainable but sustainable.
Other goals are:
- Working collaboratively to develop a community plan to focus on programs, services, strategies and tactics that are targeted to reduce the population of homeless pets, increase the live release rate of adoptable animals, provide affordable and accessible spay/neuter services, promote adoption of shelter animals and create a community where all animals are treated with respect and kindness.
- Fostering a mutual respect for one another and all members of the Partnership.
What Strategies Will Be Employed to Accomplish these Goals?
Strategies and programs used to increase animal placement include:
- ASPCA Meet Your Match™ adoption program training and implementation to enhance adoptions, reduce returns and improve customer service
- SAFER screening for aggression in dogs
- Off-site adoption activities
- Transfers within community partnership
- Transports of adoptable pets to areas outside the community where there is an appropriate and legitimate demand
- Marketing campaigns to increase adoptions
Strategies used to reduce intake:
- Promote affordable microchips so that more pets can be reunited with their families
- Support Trap-Neuter-Return programs with training and assistance
- Encourage regional animal shelters to sterilize animals prior to adoption
- Work with animal control agencies to implement enhanced identification methods
Strategies used to increase spay/neuter surgeries:
- Offer affordable high-quality sterilization of animals
- Establish the Humane Alliance model in the partner clinics to optimize the number of animals sterilized
- Increase and enhance marketing campaigns to encourage people to neuter their pets
How Much Is the ASPCA Contributing to Charleston County?
The ASPCA is investing over $1 million in human and financial services in Charleston County. This includes providing substantial grants, staffing, programs and training to our three partners as well as to county and municipal government agencies, nonprofit groups and other facilities that are working to make Charleston a more humane community.