Government Budgeting

We have been honing the surveys we hope to send to various shelters. We are also continuing to pull data regarding government animal services budgets from public records.

The Government budgeting working group is streamlining their Animal Services poll before distributing. The group is also continuing to pull budget information from a randomly selected group of Animal Services Departments.

The Government Budgeting Group has completed an initial data pull from budgets of ten randomly selected government animal services departments and determined that the data is useful enough to expand the data pull. As end products we have agreed to produce a short white paper, a “pitch kit” to assist animal services departments in explaining the value of their work to budgeting decision makers, and a presentation outlining best practices for organizations facing potential budget cuts.

The Government Budgeting Working Group has worked on our Mission Statement and the description of the problems the group is trying to solve for. As a preliminary matter, the group has enlisted a volunteer to pull public records related to the process of government budgeting for animal services, starting with ten random jurisdictions to research. This data is related to overall spending on animal services, size of the populations served (both pets and people), demographics such as income level and population density in order to determine whether a larger survey is feasible or warranted. The goal is to determine whether there are any overall funding patterns which might provide some benchmarks for adequate funding levels.

The Government Budgeting Working Group is looking for innovative models to demonstrate the value of animal services beyond the traditional role of human protection from animals, and ways to communicate the value of animal services to government decision makers. So far the group has had two meetings and is beginning to research metrics government officials consider when setting budgets for various non-animal-related services.