Mike Arms Microchip Movement from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

Microchips are still the most reliable way to reunite lost pets with their families. Mike Arms discusses the newest microchip technology – a microchip that harnesses the power of search engines to reunite families with their pets at an even faster rate! To learn more, visit savethislife.com.

How to Recruit More Volunteers from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

Are you employees struggling with their workload? Want to recruit more volunteers to partner with your mission of saving lives? Mike Arms gives a few, easy tips on how to frame your volunteer pitches, plus generating word of mouth so your current volunteers recruit from their own circle of family and friends to help your organization.

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

Another question that came up recently was how does one recruit volunteers and where do you go?

Did you know that a lot of government agencies promote to the community to volunteer? You should be talking to your City Hall, where a list of places to volunteer is. And every opportunity that you have, when you are in front of the media, tell them that your beautiful pets need love and attention. Say, ‘We’re so busy with the cleaning and the grooming of these pets, we would love to have more people come in and take them for walks, give them the love and devotion they need. And just because they are orphaned doesn’t mean we should forget them.”

You have to promote, in front of the media, that these pets need you. You are not coming to us for the people, you’re coming to us because you want to give some of your time to the pets.

And remember to treat volunteers with the respect and dignity that they deserve. They are giving of their time, they’re not being paid to do this. They’re coming in because you are building up a good reputation about your place, that you do wonderful work for animals, and you need their help, you need their support.

You’re asking them to come for the animals. Not for you, but for the animals. “The animals need you.”

Try to work with local media, try to get in Pennysavers, things that people read and look at, that are of no cost to you. You know you can’t afford to put ads in magazines and buy ads in the newspaper. So, ASK your local media to help you; tell them it’s not you that they’re helping, it’s these orphaned animals that belong to the community, that you’re asking volunteers to come in to give some love and attention to.

One you get the volunteers, you have to have the programs in place that make them feel welcome and make them feel that the service they’re doing for your pets is valued. Treat them as valued employees! The way you treat your valued employees, that’s the way you treat these valued volunteers. You also have to recognize them for the work that they do and give them the credit they deserve because they’re giving up part of their lives, something that they will never be able to take back, something that’s very valuable, part of their life, and they’re willing to give it to you.

If you treat them with the respect and dignity that they deserve, then the word of mouth will get out there of how you treat volunteers and they’ll bring in friends to help you.

You have to do it the right way if you really want to recruit volunteers, maintain volunteers, and have the community behind you. Treat them with dignity.

Increasing Foot Traffic and Visitors to Your Facility or Event

Increasing Footsteps Increases Adoptions from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

Mike Arms shares his tips that will guarantee more pet adoptions for your animal facility or pet rescue. If you have a facility, or operate out of adoption events at other sites, these tips will increase foot traffic to your adoptable animals, thereby increasing your animal adoptions.

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

Somebody recently sent me a question about how they can increase footsteps into their facility, the same as a retailer increasing footsteps interested in purchasing their product. Well, it’s no different.

The most important thing about increasing footsteps is to get in front of the eyes of the public, the beautiful product that you have; the beautiful kittens, puppies, cats and dogs.

A lot of organizations make the mistake of taking the hard-to-place animals on TV in the hopes that they will get adopted quicker. Sometimes that works, but not often. The best thing that works is if you take the cutest, most mooshy-faced puppy or kitten on TV and let the public see these beautiful animals, that is what’s going to bring more footsteps into your facility.

Not only will that cute little kitten or puppy get adopted but you have the chance of five or six others getting adopted because you have increased the traffic flow into your facility.

Some of you do events in malls and parking lots. Let me give you some advice – if you are going to do an adoption event in a mall, start two weeks before the event takes place. Put empty cages at the mall site with pictures of the beautiful pets that you have with signs up on the marquee, “Coming in 14 days!” and keep changing the pictures with, “Coming in 10 days!” then “Coming in 5 days!” and build the excitement. Then the day that the event takes place you will have a line of people waiting to get in to save these animals and give them quality homes.

The amount of foot traffic, and the amount of people that come in to see your beautiful animals, is important. It’s important to increase the visual of all your orphaned pets. Never let quantity replace quality. Just because you have increased the footsteps into your facility doesn’t automatically mean that you decrease the quality of your adoptions. Your screening has to be in place and you have to ensure you are placing these pets into their forever homes. Down the road, I will talk about the screening process and how to politely turn down someone who is not qualified to adopt a pet. All of us go through it and we have some tips that will help you with that.

Very important: to increase the traffic into your facility you have to give more exposure to the beautiful animals that you have.

Don’t forget, work with the media. Always look for stories that the media would like to show. We just did one recently called Mardi Paws and every local network was down here. We held the event on Fat Tuesday, the different departments at the Center made floats for the adoptable pets to be in, the media came down and we had the opportunity to show the beautiful puppies, kittens, cats and dogs that we have to increase the traffic over the weekend and also increased adoptions.

Helen Woodward Animal Center is here for you. We run our ACES Conferences to teach organizations how to market, how to promote, and we want to work together. We want to work together for once specific reason: to stop the unnecessary euthanasia of these beautiful pets. We will talk spay/neuter on another video, but right now, I just wanted to answer the question on how to increase traffic into one’s facility. Remember! Work with the media, don’t be afraid, show the beautiful pets that you have, and stop the public’s perception that all we have are sick and old animals. Start showing the beautiful, young and selective animals, get more footsteps in to get the older animals more exposure, too.

I will guarantee it will increase your adoptions.

Building a Facility (Part Two) from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

Now that you have done your homework for your prospective facility, what next steps do you take? How do you engage contractors, subcontractors and architects? How do you make sure that your internal systems such as drainage and air-flow do not compromise your ability to do adoptions?

Mike spells out some quick tips on how to begin answering these important questions. Plus, he shares a building tip that has saved him “hundreds of thousands of dollars!”

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

I find this in a lot of organizations that have gone to the architect, and I have looked at their plans, architects like to build things and have it displayed in Taj Mahals. Big ceilings. Spacious areas. You have to be extremely careful of that. If you have vaulted ceilings, high ceilings, which a lot of architects like to give you, you will have to raise the funds to pay for the heat and cool all of that empty space.

When you design something, you design it for function, not for aesthetics… unless you have so much money you really don’t care, but I haven’t been to an organization of that nature yet.

I’ve found that if you’re very careful about planning and building, you can build a facility that is functional and inexpensive to run.

As you know, utility costs are going up every single year. So, be smart and be sure to build your facility so you can keep your facility costs down.

There is absolutely no question that in new facilities you have to be very, very careful about airflows to control disease. You’re going to be working with positive and negative airflows. You are going to want 18-25 airflow changes per hour – complete air changes – with heat and cool and what is that going to cost you?

Again, you have to start with the very basics. What is your goal? What are you trying to achieve? What do you want in these buildings? I am a big proponent of building things for the future and building things for revenue streams. All of these things you have to take in to account.

Also make sure that you have proper drainage systems, serious exhaust systems. One of the things that I like to recommend is where you put your exhaust. It should be knee-high in the walls because odors could be potential turn-offs to potential adopters. So if your exhaust system is, say, knee-high, and it pulls air away from the public’s nose, or to the back of the run, up and out of the roof, when people walk in they will not be dissatisfied and say, ‘Well, this place really smells!’ A lot of times facilities do have an odor, which you know, but it’s because of the air system, not because of the cleanliness, it’s more the lack of air system.

All of these things have to be taken in to account. Also, be very careful about how the architect spends your money. You have to be on top of it. You also have to be careful about your contractor and subcontractor, and also be very careful about “low bidding” and for contractors to come in and then ask for extras. A lot of times they will actually do extras without even asking you and then they bill you for them.

One thing that has helped me save hundreds of thousands of dollars is that we design, through an attorney, an addendum to everybody’s contract that if they do even one extra, without getting approval, that it is considered a donation. You’d be surprised at how many of them do extras, then try to bill us for them, and we called them in and thanked them for the donation. And it works because you have a legal, binding contract.

Please, be smart. Think things through. Think of what you are doing today, what you want to do ten years from now, twenty years from now, and are you building sufficiently for it.

You don’t have to use expensive hardware. You have to use durable hardware. Don’t let anyone talk you into doing anything differently.

Remember, the Center here has gone through a lot of these things. We are here to advise you if you need help. And the biggest benefit is that we don’t charge you for it. You are our friends. We want you to build for your future. And if we can help you in any way, we will, that’s what we are here for.

Building a Facility (Part One) from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

If you are thinking about building a new facility, or upgrading your existing facility, it’s very important to do your homework first. Have you asked these questions:

Can your community support a capital campaign for your project? What is the goal of your facility? How will this new building facilitate your organization’s mission?

Watch for more tips on how to navigate this important, but sometimes stressful, topic.

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

I get phone calls at least once a week, or once every other week, from someone wanting information on building a new facility; what steps they will have to go through and what advice I can give them.

This is my standard answer that I use…

First, are you sure that your community will support your capital campaign? It’s a great idea to build something but you have to have an idea on what it’s going to cost, where you are going to get the revenue from and is it really feasible.

Though I do believe in feasibility studies, I get concerned sometimes by some of the companies that do them. How in depth if their research? How much are they going to charge?

I am not a supporter of having a capital campaign consultant; been through that and saw other organizations that have been through that. I’m not saying that they are all good, or that they are all bad, I’m just saying that the experiences that I have had, and heard from others, that in very few cases has it been beneficial. In most cases it’s been very expensive and the organization wound up doing most of the work anyway.

That being said, there’s things that I look at when I am asked to review plans or even to start plans. You have to really do your homework. You have to start with the goal of the building. Are you going to be doing adoptions? How many adoptions will be happening in this building?

What I always see is that if an organization, for example, is doing one thousand adoptions a year, maybe twenty adoptions a week, then why do you need one hundred runs and fifty feline cages? If you are only going to be doing twenty adoptions a week then why are you building a facility to house so many pets? You should be building a building that allows you to do the projected amount of adoptions – without housing ten times the amount of pets. You want a facility if your turnover is great, not that the animals just sit there; the longer they sit, the more you have, the more expenses that you have, the more illnesses you have…

I always advise people to ask the question, “What is your objective with this building?” Are you going to have an education department? What is your future?

I’ve seen so many places do things and as soon as they get it built they find out in 6 months that they have already outgrown it! Or I’ve seen the opposite, where they build too much and then they can’t afford to keep it because they don’t have the revenue for all the manpower that’s needed to run the facility.

So, a lot of thought had to go into these facilities. And you want to do this long before you ever meet with an architect. I have seen organizations that have gone to the architect first and give them their wish list and all of a sudden they have a project that is so cost prohibitive that then they have to start the process of backing off.

So, be smart. Do your homework first. And don’t hesitate in emailing me. I’d rather show you the right way to do it based on the mistakes that we have all made over the years. We’re not smarter than you, we’re just more experienced in doing these things. So rather than let you make all those same mistakes, we’d rather give you our best advice.

I’m going to give you some tips. A lot of organizations think that if they put the puppies right up front that that will be a draw to people coming in to adopt our animals. Well, I got to tell you, if you put your puppies right out front, sure, they will get adopted! But your adult dogs will never be seen. So my advice is to put the puppies in a display area in the back. Therefore the traffic flow of potential adopters has to see every single adult dog before they get to see the puppies. This will give the adult dogs more exposure and a better chance of being adopted.

Again, don’t put the puppies right up front because they will get adopted right away and the adults will never be seen. And do the same thing with the cats and kittens. Put the cats up front, where traffic will have to walk through the adult cats, giving them more exposure before they get to kittens.

To be continued!

Add “Saving Lives” To Your Goal from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

One thing that I have done for over thirty-something years, is set goals. Go ahead, ask your staff, “How many adoptions did we do last year?” Nobody knows?

How many adoptions is your staff expected to do today? What’s the goal? How many lives do we want to save?

I go into a lot of these places and they have no clue… because no one sets the goal.

We as human beings like to know what the objective is. And staff members really want to know, is what is their goal, what is their objective? Is it just to come in and clean and feed and care for the pets? Or do we want to come in clean, feed, care for the pets and find quality homes as quickly as possible?

They would like to know what you did on this day last year and what is the goal, the achievable goal, that you would like to do today.

For years, I have incorporated, the “Plus 1” Theory. For example, if we have done five adoptions on this day last year, then today we want to do six. We want to save one more life today than we did the same day last year.

When I started this concept I had everyone in the organization, from the Accounting Department, Administration, everyone on the staff, everyone wearing a large +1 button. When the adopter, or anyone, came in to our facility they would always ask, “What is the +1?”

And we would say, “Today we want to save one more life. We want to spay one more pet. We want to vaccinate one more pet. We want to help one more animal.” And it became contagious! Everybody was into it.

Every morning, before we went out to the Adoption floor, they would meet with their manager and hear what their objective was. Last year we did this amount, today we want to do this plus one.

We would have these big counters up, like you would see in a deli, we would have them up strategically in different offices and throughout the Adoptions area and every time an adoption was done, the button was pressed. Everyone in the organization knew what the goal was, what the objective was, and when we would hit it, phones would be ringing throughout congratulating everyone that we won this game of Life, that we have achieved our goal.

Never let them be discouraged if they don’t hit that goal. And always set achievable goals. Don’t set goals that you know aren’t going to happen. That’s why I use the “Plus 1” Theory because it is an achievable goal.

Sometimes, things might happen that will have you not make that goal. Let’s assume you live in the Northeast. On this day last year it was a beautiful day, maybe 40 degrees in October, and you did great in adoptions. But the same day this year you have a snowstorm and nobody comes out. That’s the answer why you didn’t achieve your goal and you have to share that with your staff. You never want them to get discouraged.

So remember, never set goals too high that they can’t achieve, but set achievable goals so they feel good at the end of the day. This will say, “We came in, we fed the pets, we cleaned up after them, we nurtured them, we loved them, and you know what… we achieved our goal!”

Again, we’re in the business of saving lives. Run it as a successful business and more lives will be saved.

Think Like Retail: Business Hours and Holidays from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

Generating Revenue to Support Your Staff from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

Do you want to support your staff by being able to pay them salaries they deserve? Do you want to be able to give your staff benefits? As I travel and assess organizations, I hear this desire more and more.

Learn ways to make more money so you can pay your staff a deserving wage. This job is an extremely emotional and physical job. Let’s support our staff by thinking more creatively and using business practices to generate more funds.

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

So many places that I go to I hear the same story, “we can’t afford to pay our staff well,” “we can’t afford to give them benefits,” “we can’t afford this, we can’t afford that.” Well, then I’d have to ask you, whose fault is that? When that happens, it’s our fault. That means we don’t have a business plan in place, we don’t have a strategic plan in place…

We all know how hard our staff works. We know how difficult their job is, we know how emotional and physical their job is, and we just can’t treat them as second-class citizens. They decided to take their work ethics, their education and utilized these to enhance the quality of life for pets and they should not be treated like second-class citizens.

I know it’s hard. I know it’s hard to raise the money you need, but we don’t work at it… So many places that I go to don’t work at it.

Perfect example on pricing of pets. So many organizations think that we can increase our adoptions by decreasing adoption fees and some places I go to, there ARE no adoption fees, thinking that’s what is going to help to increase adoptions.

Well, guess what, it doesn’t help anybody. All that does is devalue the pets, devalue the services that you provide, and makes you come up short with funds, so how can you better-pay your staff? You have to get out of that mentality. You cannot continue to tell the general public that if you want to get a good pet, pay $1000 and find it out of a newspaper. If you want to get a cheap, bargain-basement, throw-away pet, then come to us. Stop that way of thinking. It does not do anything for your adoptions, all it does is devalue your pets.

If you increase your adoption fees, let’s say you increase them by $100, and you multiply that by 3,000, that’s $300,000! $300,000 will help you better-pay your staff and give benefits.

This is how businesses all over the world work. Your product is very valuable. If you feel that those pets are worth something, then it is your duty to put a fee on them. You don’t want people coming in and looking at your pets and saying, “I’m here because I want something cheap.”

You want people coming in and looking at your pets and saying, “You know what – I got to have it! I’m in love with it!” That’s the foundation for a good adoption. That’s the foundation for a lasting adoption. And that is the foundation that will bring in revenue so you can take better care of your staff.

Think about the future. If you need more revenue than why don’t you set up a day-camp? We have a day-camp where we teach children how to share the world with pets. We have it at summer-time, spring-time and winter recess. We raise about $400,000 in camp fees teaching children how to share the earth with pets. It is our responsibility to change the mentality of this country and around the world. We are not going to change that unless we start with the children. If you want to change tomorrow, start with the children of today.

The other aspect is to be creative! Think of different things that you can do. I know in some communities, like ours, everybody is doing dog-walks, it seems like everybody is doing a walk for different things, so it’s highly competitive. So we came up with the idea, since we have surf and surfers, of a Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon. Last year we had over 80 dogs competing on surf boards, we had three million media impressions, we raised $200,000. Be creative! If you don’t have surf, you may have snow! Maybe you can teach them to snowboard. If you don’t have that, you have other things, maybe skateboards? Do something – be creative. Don’t just sit there and wait for things to happen, make things happen.

That’s the best advice that I can give you. Get out of that box that we have all been living in, and let’s be creative. Let’s work for the pets that we have and let’s work to bring in the revenue so we can help our staff in our organization.

Creative Sales Ideas Means More Adoptions from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

If we think about pet adoption like a business, we discovery that professional AND creative sales techniques will mean more lives saved. In this blog, Mike explains a few of his professional sales ideas that are also a little ‘out of the box!’

Do you collect information from families adopting? Do you know why they are coming in to adopt on any particular day? Do you teach your staff customer service techniques? Did you know there are ways to train your staff in customer relations… for free?

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

When I talk about running our organizations like a business, we’re in the ‘business of saving lives,’ so what I have done all my life is I learn from others.

Adoptions are Sales. We want to save lives and we want to increase those adoptions.

Sign-in Sheets

Do you have people register when they walk into your organization? And if you don’t, you should. You want to have a form that asks people:

• What brought you in today?
• Are you here to adopt?
• What made you decide that today’s the day you want to adopt? Did you read something, see something, hear something?

This is Knowledge; this is knowledge to help you increase adoptions.

On those sign-in sheets you should also include a place that asks for the individual’s email address. Ask them if they would like to learn more about your organization through emails and success stories. This will help you in putting-together a bigger donor base for your organization. These people were actually at your facility, saw what you were doing for orphaned pets, and they can become ambassadors of your organization.

Exit Interviews For Potential Adopters

At the end of the day you need to look at the number of families who came into your facility looking to adopt, and how many actually did adopt. Let’s assume you had fifty families come in today, but you did two adoptions. Do you think that’s a very low percentage? When you see a pattern of these things then you need to stop, put together a questionnaire, and do exit interviews.

Get some volunteers together, work with them and teach them, and have them stop families leaving without adopting a pet, and ask them why they are leaving without a pet. Did they not see what they were looking for? Were they treated inappropriately? Did something happen that made them leave? This is vast knowledge that helps you in doing a better job in Customer Relations.

Customer Relations

Our staff, in all of our organizations, are trained to properly care for pets: how to disinfect kennels, how to properly feed, how to groom and brush pets, etc. And that’s all great! But where we’re lacking is Customer Service. That is how to approach potential adopters, how to treat them, how to close a sale.

Attracting an Exceptional Board of Directors (Part Two) from What Would Mike Say? on Vimeo.

Part Two of a two-part series on ‘How to Attract an Exceptional board of Directors.’

Where do you go to look for new board members? What is the best way to ask someone to sit on your board? How big should a board of directors be?

Mike Arms gives simple tips to start looking for a Board of Directors that will assist your organization in fulfilling its mission of saving lives. For example, just by changing the time of day your meeting takes place may attract more people in serving on your Board.

We always include a transcription for each ‘What Would Mike Say?’ video. To view this transcription in any language, please use the Google Translator widget to your right.

The best way to recruit board members is to first assess your needs. If you need a financial mind, then go to a bank. Talk to your local bank, the one you have an affiliation with, because a lot of people that work at banks, presidents or vice presidents, they look to sit on boards to help the community.

Invite them out to lunch, tell them what you are looking for, tell them the requirements and don’t make it depressing, don’t make it overpowering. Tell them, “We need your help. We are not financial people and that is where you would come in to guide us.”

Tell them you are very respectful of their time, but you are also respectful of their intelligence and how much you need them.

If you need public relations and marketing look in the Yellow Pages and you look in the paper for big PR firms in your area;  so many of these groups love to do pro bono work.

You have to be professional, you have to dress professional. When you set up a meeting, call them and say, “Can we have lunch together, my treat, I want to tell you about my organization and see if you can help us.” And that’s when you tell them all about the great work that you are doing, but that you need their excellent advice, and if they would be willing to come on your board.

If you do it the right way, if you do it the professional way, you have a better chance. Remember, never give up, if there is one thing I can tell you, never give up. If it’s a small firm and they don’t have the time, then try a larger firm. But if you do it right, present yourself right, present your organization right, you will get these people to sit on your board.

One thing that I look at, when I’m working with boards, is the size of the board. It depends on the size of your organization. If your organization is twenty employees, then you don’t need a board that has 30 members on it. I would say for an organization that size, seven board members is plenty.

I know how hard it is for executive directors to work with boards. If you have a board made up of twenty individuals, that is twenty different personalities that the director has to cultivate. And it’s not easy!

Make sure that the board is a manageable size, that the chairperson of the board is strong in leadership and can keep the board on the same page.

I find that most places that call me in, that are having trouble with the board of directors, is when the board of directors is not ‘gelling.’ When some want to go one way, some want to go another way, and the director is in the middle and they don’t know which way to go!

Make sure that the chairperson, or the president, of the board is somebody with good leadership qualities, somebody who can keep the board together, hold them together, and keep everybody going in the same direction.

And once that happens, trust me, there’s nothing that will stop your organization in achieving its goals.