Defining an organizational mission and correctly identifying performance measures are all too often treated as complying with a bureaucratic requirement. This is unfortunate. Good measures have the potential to seriously impact the problems organizations are trying to solve for their customers. By engaging and focusing the agency’s and the community’s attention on the whole story, they are better able to do the right things that
make a difference.One case in point is Animal Services. There are few issues more likely to ignite passions and controversy in parts of a community than the euthanasia of companion animals at the local animal care and control shelter. Open-intake shelters are statutorily required to accept all comers and usually implement a range of services to reduce euthanasia through preventive programs (licensing, spay/neuter, education, feral trap-neuter-release, etc.) as well as placement/retention programs (foster, adoption, behavior training, etc.).
Strategies such as these address both the supply and the demand sides of pet overpopulation and, when successful, will ultimately lead to fewer animals euthanized in shelters. The shelter euthanasia rate, therefore, is a good, all-round reflection of shelter success at decreasing intake as well as achieving live outcomes through adoption, etc. However, when the euthanasia rate measure eclipses other important information, it not only distorts the picture but can lead to misplacement of resources and even perpetration of greater harm to animals.
So what are good measures for animal shelters? The answer is “it depends.” The particular selection of performance measures should be determined by how the agency defines its mission, what the community is concerned about, the agency’s ability to collect data, existing and potential strategies and their intent, the precise nature of local practices that encourage pet overpopulation, etc.
At a minimum, animal services organizations should consider additional performance measures that will help provide a more complete view into operations. These may include:
- Intake rate per capita
- % animals (individuals) adopted directly from the shelter, from placement partners, etc.
- % strays evaluated as adoptable
- % animals ill or injured at intake
- % sheltered animals contracting illness while in the shelter
- Average length of stay until adoption
- Return to owner rate
- % stray animals microchipped/registered
In addition to telling a richer story, each of the measures has the potential to affect staff behavior. What, for example, might be the impact on animal care staff if “% of animals contracting illness in the shelter” were a measure that was reported and discussed in monthly staff meetings? Would hygiene practices for cage cleaning be improved?
The bottom line is that shelters must choose the story that needs to be understood by staff, decision-makers and stakeholders and then create the measures that will reveal that story.
Our April 2010 webinar featured Long Beach Animal Services and their remarkable story of manaing for results to drive change in an agency in crisis. You can see the presentation materials from that webinar by clicking here.
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