Measures of Success 2023
In 2023, Riverdale Animal Shelter continued to make a positive impact while still facing national trends of high animal intake numbers, many of which are related to financial strain including housing issues. Despite these challenges, RAS celebrates another year of reuniting and finding homes for thousands of animals, achievements which were only made possible by our growing team of dedicated staff and volunteers, as well as creative brainstorming with our network of shelter and rescue partners. In comparison to 2022, below is how we made an impact:
- 3,854 Adoptions (6% increase)
- 2,000 Lost Pets Returned Home (9% increase)
- 2,799 Spay/Neuters (13% increase)
- 8,911 Animals Vaccinated (9% increase)
More Successes
- 115,385 days of shelter were provided for 7,637 animals.
- 600 animals were fostered in 2023.
- 225 animals were transferred to trusted rescue and shelter partners.
- Our expanded Shelter–Neuter–Return (SNR) efforts resulted in a 50% increase of community cats being vaccinated, spayed/neutered, and returned to their colonies last year, for a total of 246 cats.
- 343 animals were adopted during the month-long Clear the Shelters event in partnership with NBC Universal/Telemundo.
- 2,525 animals were adopted through 10 reduced-fee adoption promotions throughout the year.
- We saw a 5% increase in volunteer service hours, for a total of 28,120 hours of assistance with providing quality care to our pets, people, and community.
Serving Our Community
- Our volunteer program introduced a new, innovative onboarding process to improve accessibility to the public, increase overall efficiency, and better support high need shelter areas.
- We welcomed back student interns from Mapleton Career Exploration and expanded our internship opportunities to 27J district high schools, Brighton, Prairie View, and Riverdale Ridge.
- We worked with numerous county departments, including Community Safety and Well-Being and the Economic Mobility team at Pete Mirelez Human Services; and non-profit organization, Servcios de la Raza, to provide no-cost offsite vaccine clinics and food donations to pets of low-income families and those experiencing homelessness.
- Our partnership with Hyland Hills Water World in Adams County on their annual Cowabunga Beach Day event resulted in $4,800 in donations – a 25% increase from 2022 – that will go towards no-cost vaccinations and microchips for pets of low-income families and those experiencing homelessness.
- To better reflect and serve the Adams County community, we increased our number of bilingual staff members fluent in both Spanish and English (as well as Russian and ASL) to eight full time staff, three of which serve on our Customer Care Team.
- We modernized our website to allow for online donations that will go towards needed emergency medical care, community outreach and crisis support, and animal care and enrichment efforts.
- Our social media engagement increased by 70%, resulting in our impactful animal welfare mission reaching over 800,000 people through our presence on Instagram and Facebook.
More Data & Statistics
Riverdale Animal Shelter is an open-admissions shelter and follows the socially conscious sheltering principles: https://scsheltering.org/. This means we take in animals regardless of age, breed, health, and/or temperament, and place all healthy and behaviorally-sound animals. We do not euthanize for time or space, nor is there a set time limit for how long a pet can remain in our care while awaiting its forever home. All team members are trained in fear-free animal handling techniques to kindly reduce fear, anxiety, and stress for all animals in our care.
We are a PACFA-licensed facility and proudly report data on a monthly basis to Shelter Animals Count, a national database of sheltered dog and cat statistics by county to help provide facts and data-driven solutions to save animal lives.
Riverdale Animal Shelter partners with numerous rescue and shelter organizations to place animals with a variety of medical and behavior support needs. Together, we are making a difference.
