REDUCED FEE EVENT SENDS 80 CATS AND DOGS INTO LOVING HOMES.

During the month of October Palmetto Animal League offered a reduced fee adoption event to celebrate 5 years of lifesaving work! What an amazing experience for 80 cats and dogs who found their way home! In honor of our anniversary a committed animal lover and PAL supporter offered to subsidize all adoption fees reducing them to $5 to go along with our 5 year theme. That generous offer resulted in 80 cats and dogs moving into their new homes and PAL making room for 80 more in need.

Fee waived or reduced events can be misunderstood and we want to share what a success these events are for the animals and why they are essential. They are not “giveaways”, equivalent to a Craig’s list post or in any way diminish the value of a cat or dog. We are not pioneers in this thought – here are just two articles on why these events must be part of our lifesaving strategy.

http://www.aspcapro.org/feewaived

http://blogs.bestfriends.org/index.php/2015/05/05/you-cant-put-a-price-on-your-best-friend/

The amount of a “fee” does not in any way measure the commitment any potential adopter will make to a companion animal. People pay hundreds and thousands for purebred cats and dogs and these pets still end up in breed specific rescue and shelters by the thousands. What is most important is that we evaluate commitment each individual will make to that companion animal. We do that by requiring that all standard adoption criteria apply to every fee waived/reduced event.

As animal advocates we can’t afford to have strict or large fees waiting for someone to drop in and adopt. We have lives to save and we can only do that by creating the urgency to get folks in the door to adopt so we can bring in more. A fee waived/reduced event accomplishes this.

Interestingly, when we have a reduced/waived fee event, most adopters come to our Adoption Center because we have sent out a specific call to action that we need folks to open their hearts and homes. The primary motivation is not the reduced fee.

So – plan on seeing us do more of this good work in the future – like December – we have a lot of cats that have spent too many holidays with us. They need to wake up in a home, not still homeless.

We want to thank the community for adopting! We can adopt our way to a No Kill Lowcountry – we just need to be more open minded about it!