Guidelines for Animal Welfare Groups

Your strategy

Draft out a rough briefing document and arrange an informal meeting with your colleagues to discuss your outline ideas. Emphasize that all you are presenting at this stage is an outline – you need to get both support and ideas from your colleagues. Make sure that everyone is happy to develop further whatever ideas are forthcoming from the meeting. And make sure you arrange the second meeting before closing the first! At this stage a rough schedule should also be drawn up.

Define your event objective accurately and clearly. What do you want to achieve from the event? It might be helpful if you were to compile a list and then focus on the area that is most important to you. For example, say you run a small dog shelter and you are going to hold an open day at the shelter on WAD, your list may look something like this:

What we want to achieve from the event

• We want local people to know that we do have dogs for rehoming.
• We want more local volunteers.
• We want people who have never been to a shelter to come and view the animals and meet our dedicated staff.
• We want to tell everyone about the importance of spaying and neutering.
• We would like the local vets to attend and ask if they would be willing to offer free veterinary services.

Now you have a list of important points to highlight on the day. But you must be selective. Ask yourself what is your main objective. You need to know it because if you are not sure of your message, you cannot expect the public or the media to grasp it! And, importantly, you cannot plan a strategy if you are not sure of what you want to achieve. An example of a main objective statement should read something like this:

To invite existing supporters and members of the public, who are truly interested in our shelter work, to attend the event; to offer our new visitors the chance to become supporters of the shelter; and to gain local media coverage highlighting WAD and our work.

Using the above example, you can now list all the various things you need to do in order to achieve the objective. And your list, based on the above example, should look something look this:

Membership and supporters

• Arrange to contact supporters with invitations to attend.
• Prepare and print up donation/supporter membership forms.
• Arrange for volunteers to hand out membership forms to all visitors.
• Produce a newsletter about the shelter's work and about WAD and print enough copies for all visitors. Don't forget to include a membership/donation form.
• Create a display about the shelter's work and successes, and arrange for it to be manned at all times by an employee who can answer questions about the shelter and take names and addresses.

Promoting the event

• Leaflets are cheap to produce, but they need to be distributed selectively to people interested in animal welfare. Outlets could include vets' surgeries, shops selling pet food and supplies, dog training clubs, grooming parlours, boarding kennels, etc. 
• Invite a celebrity to open or attend your event. This does not mean you have to find a big movie star – you could ask your town Mayor, a local sporting hero, the editor of your local newspaper or your Member of Parliament. Brief your celebrity well in advance to give a short speech or at least a comment to the media. If your celebrity has a companion animal you might wish invite the animal also – this always goes down well with the media and gives them a good photo opportunity. Do try, if you possibly can, to have a back-up special guest in case your main celebrity encounters last-minute problems and fails to attend.
• Create an exciting press release and ensure that someone follows it up with a telephone call to the media. If you can tell the media that you have a special guest opening your event or some unusual activities for the day your chances of good media coverage will be greatly enhanced.
• Send information about your event to the WAD website. It is important to do this as early as possible because, although dedicated to World Animal Day, this website is used as a resource all year round by journalists, schools and animal-lovers. Event details on the site can be updated whenever necessary. To submit details, click here.

Create your timetable

• At this stage, take your list and compare it to your main objective. Does the list enable you to tackle and achieve your objective? Having satisfied yourself that you have a good chance of reaching your objective, you now need to create a timetable with target dates for completion so that you have a smooth run-up to the big day. Do try to allow a reasonable timeframe for the tasks – you would find it very stressful, for example, to leave delivery of your newsletters to the day before the event!
• Draw up a list of housekeeping tasks and an inspection procedure for the day. (When you are expecting new visitors remember that first impressions count. Both the shelter and the animals need to look their best.) Appoint one person to be responsible for the inspection process.
• Will there be animals at the event? If so, appoint someone specifically to be in charge of their needs - i.e. to ensure that there are water bowls, food if necessary, 'Please keep your dog on a leash' signs, 'poop scoops' and bags, and so on.
• Make sure you have devised a checklist of everything that needs to be achieved before the day. This should include publicity, refreshments, seating arrangements, display material, special equipment to be borrowed/hired, etc. A template for such a checklist and other useful resources can be downloaded here.

After the event

• Following any project, it is always very useful to look back and give yourself an honest assessment of your event. Write a short report reflecting on both the good and not so good, noting down what changes or improvements to make for the next time.
• Write a letter of thanks to any special supporters, sponsors, ViP visitors or individuals/companies that loaned equipment. Make sure they know how valuable their support has been and what this will mean to the animals. Make sure that any special equipment that has been borrowed or hired for the event is returned clean and in working order as soon as possible.
• Send a brief description of how your day went, together with photos, to the World Animal Day website by clicking here. People from all round the world visit this website, so make the most of this valuable free advertisement for your work!
• And finally, don’t forget to give yourself and all your colleagues a pat on the back – after all you did it! You got involved for the animals! You got involved for World Animal Day!