How Animal Shelter Architecture Supports Animal Adoption
Many of our new animal shelter clients tell us the same story: Their facility is overcrowded; they struggle to reduce numbers without euthanasia, and intake numbers continue to be unwieldy.
Compounding the issue is the fact that an overcrowded shelter is harder to keep clean and free of disease, yet it’s more difficult to adopt out sick or stressed animals.
This cycle sounds familiar because it’s one that almost every shelter faces.
But let’s take a step back and think of this process as the flow of animals through a shelter toward adoption. From this perspective, we can identify the bottleneck and find solutions.
There are many ways animal shelter design can improve this process. All of the solutions point to minimizing the length of stay by quickly moving animals through the shelter. The architecture of an animal shelter can significantly support the management process by promoting the idea of flow-through.
Proof is in the data!
During Aiken County Animal Shelter‘s first two years in its new facility, adoptions were up 40 percent. After four years, adoptions doubled!
Two years after Greenville Humane Society opened its new facility, adoption revenue increased by 22 percent.
Read the article here, by Cary Perkins, AIA.
Some of our recent animal shelter design projects include Jackson County Animal Rescue, Lancaster Animal Shelter, Aiken Animal Shelter, and the Greenville Animal Humane Society.
