How to engage your community without judgment - Ep63

GUEST: Lori Weise. In 1996, Lori founded Downtown Dog Rescue, which rescues dogs and provides services for low income pet owners in underserved communities in Los Angeles County. She is the founder of the South LA Shelter Intervention Program and one of the founding members of the Best Friends Animal Society's initiative No Kill Los Angeles and advised the ASPCA on their Safety Net Program at LA county shelters. And Lori is a national speaker on community programs and the shelter intervention model of keeping pets in homes. 

MAIN QUESTION: How can animal organizations better meet people where they're at?

TAKEAWAYS:

• You're more likely to engage people in a solution successfully when you meet people where they’re at rather than judging them based on how you would do things. Meet people at first with empathy - simply as one pet lover to another. 
• Asking “How can I be of service?” puts you in a better frame of mind to be truly successful and opens real dialogue with people. 
• Many organizations come in with big plans, overpromise, lose steam, and disappear. Don’t let this be you. Try a pilot program first or pick a very targeted group or service to focus on when developing a program or new organization so you can build trust with those you're trying to help and to see if this is something you’ll be able to commit to for the long run.
• Don’t get so focused on preventing people from taking advantage of the service or program that you create barriers that end up keeping people who need it from taking advantage of the program. No program can be perfect and total control is not possible so spend your time figuring out how to help people rather than on how to prevent a few people from benefiting who do not really need it.

LINKS:

• Downtown Dog Rescue (website)
• Leadership recommendation: “Cultivation: How to Build One-on-One Relationships With Your Donors" by Amy Eisenstein (blog post)