A centre's view: how digital tools enhance the rehoming process

Heather, our Support Relations Officer at Merseyside has had a bit of time to think lately. Tripping and falling down the stairs, while not a pleasant holiday, will certainly give you plenty of time off work to ponder. Don’t worry everyone, she is fine! While she’s recovering, she has taken some time to talk about how digital tools enhance the rehoming process.

Take it away, Heather…

I was talking to some people the other day about how excited I was about updating the Dogs Trust Merseyside Twitter “Dog for the Day” on my phone. They replied, “Oh I don’t understand it all... it's a waste of time and pointless.” Which got me thinking about how does it help the centres?

We have all been recently uploading photos and videos to social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook but what impact does this actually have and is it worth it all? Well, I think so! Here are a few stories to share with you:

Recently we have been developing our enrichment area at Merseyside and after seeing pictures of the Glasgow team building platforms, I retweeted a picture saying how we would love some items to build jumps with. We then got links to a local tweeter who deals with all left over building material. Through this someone donated us lots of car tyres and we now have some brilliant jumps for the dogs.

A few months ago I started an album on Facebook of dogs at the Merseyside centre, in it was a picture of Old Meg with her pal Taz. Meg was 18 years young and constantly overlooked due to her age. We also then did a short video of Meg and Taz showing just how sweet and active she still is. A wonderful family in North Wales fell in love with her and a week later we took Old Meg up to her perfect new home. In fact, Old Meg now has her own Facebook page with lots of followers who also fell in love but were not suitable or couldn’t offer her a home, but they now could follow her progress. Unfortunately, Old Meg has now passed away but we were so glad that she was able to live out the rest of her days in a loving home. This family also saw our recently World Cup themed video and fell in love again. We launched the video on the Friday and by Sunday morning they were at the centre to meet gorgeous Grace who is now happily living the country sea side life in North Wales.

I have found that a lot of the people on Dogs Trust Facebook often either have dogs currently or join to show us pictures of dogs they have just rehomed. Last month I posted a picture of the Spock-eared Max who was a lovely, unusual boy who was often overlooked in the centre due to his unique looks. When I posted the photo I asked people to share it on their profile so friends could see it who were not members of the group. A young guy saw Max's picture on his friends profile and fell in love straight away. He and Max are now firm best buddies and Max is living the perfect life. Also, the owner is now a fan on Facebook.

After thinking about it, I think social media works and can only get better; in fact, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you want to know more about Merseyside, please visit their page on our website. Also, if you have any rehoming queries or want to know more about a particular dog, please call the centre on 0151 480 0660.

Facebook 'fans'* help Dogs Trust raise £1,500 in 24 hours

*They're really supporters, aren't they? Fans doesn't sound right!

Yesterday, Jacqui, Lo and I were looking at the Dogs Trust Facebook Page and thought, "wow, over 63,000 people supporting us now". Jacqui mused on how much could be done if all those people got involved to actively support us. So, on the spur of the moment, around 11am, we sent out a message:


The response was... amazing.

Within minutes, the donations started flooding in. Many gave £2, but the donations varied wildly according to how much people could spare; ultimately the average was about £4. All sorts of people took part: people overseas, people who already donate or sponsor, people who went on to become sponsors or members because of this, people who just thought it was as good idea and wanted to hit a high target.

What was brilliant was how many people posted to tell us why they'd donated. Others started a trend of donating from or on behalf of a specific dog, posting pictures which really gave everything a positive, happy feel. We left it up to the group to decide how often they wanted total updates; they were the ones doing the important bit, so they got to call the shots! In the end we let them know at around 5pm that we were near £1,000, and shortly after 11am this morning - around 24 hours after beginning - £1,500 had been raised.

If you think about it, that's almost a pound for every dog in our care.
...and the odd donation is still coming in.

Now we're getting feedback saying we should do this once a month! We're holding back on that as, although 370 people took part and made this their own, we don't want to alienate those on the page that choose to show support in different ways (or already donate anyway, or live overseas and support an animal charity where they are). But it's really heartening to think that many people would like to be asked for money every so often, and on an informal space like a social network, too.

One supporter even commented that doing it this way was 'more personal' than a standing order, which is definitely something to think about. The fact that it was easy as pie through PayPal probably didn't hurt either.

Although we left encouraging thank you messages and thanked as many people as possible individually, we're planning a special 'thank you' message for the page, and we're hoping to get some video or pictures we can add soon, showing what we do and why their donations are important to us.

Such a generous response to a spontaneous ask was amazingly good, and we're so humbled by the people who not only donated but kept this going, posting encouraging comments on ours and their own 'walls'.

If we were dogs, our tails would be wagging like crazy right now. As it is, what they've raised will set quite a few dog tails wagging!