We were asked by Woof Whiskers to participate in a survey about how COVID-19 has impacted our mission and here are the results!
“The world is going through a pandemic unlike anything we’ve experienced in at least 100 years. As governments enact social distancing and restrict business activities, every facet of society is trying to adapt to the new normal.
There have been some feel-good stories of animal shelters being emptied due to a tsunami of people now staying at home full-time, but we wanted to dig deeper to see if that was the full story or if there are other challenges animal shelters are facing related to COVID-19.
We did a survey of 108 animal shelters and rescues around the US asking how they have been impacted by the virus. These responses were collected between March 25th and April 4th. Here are some key findings, followed by the full survey data with charts.
- Of shelters with paid staff, 36% have had to do layoffs already.
- 19.5% of shelters with paid staff foresee layoffs in the next 3-6 months, and 52.9% say things are too uncertain to make a prediction on further layoffs.
- 43.5% of shelters said they have seen increased demand in adoption since the outbreak, while 28.7% have seen less demand.
- 75% of animal shelters report “about the same” or less surrenders.
- 70% of shelters have had to start limiting intakes. This is broken down further into not accepting any new animals (13%), limiting the number of animals they accept (53%), or offering assistance to pet owners to discourage surrenders (3.7%).
- 75% of shelters report lack of funding being a challenge during COVID-19, with 54% of shelters saying that’s their biggest challenge.
- 96% of shelters have had to cancel events such as adoption events, spay/neuter clinics, and fundraisers.
- Lack of veterinary services and personal protective equipment to do spay/neuter surgeries leaves shelters afraid of a boom in homeless pets and lack of funding to sufficiently help.
- Animals being surrendered back to shelters once people head back to work is another major concern. Some shelters have had to stop doing home visits to qualify adopting pet owners.”
-Woof Whiskers Staff
Read the full results here.
