Second Group Report: The Humane Society of Montgomery County

While we were unable to get a true face-to-face interview with Jamie Burton,
Shelter Manager, at the Humane Society of Montgomery County (HSMC) despite
our numerous attempts, we were able to correspond with her via email. While
Jamie stated that the "HSMC has no political affiliations or motives and
that they do not have any underlying motives," she was overly protective
about giving out any type of information on the types of assistance the
shelter receives when we asked how the shelter is able to function (see
Personal Interview: Jamie Burton). This made us very suspicious about what
the management wanted for the shelter and why they would keep basic
information so confidential. Because we were unable to get very concrete
answers to many of our questions about the HSMC, we had to look at the
bigger scale of humane societies - The Humane Society of the United States -
in order to find political participation.

The Humane Society of The United States works in conjunction with multiple
regional and local offices in order to help widely publicize and expand
their efforts. On a national level, The Humane Society engages in numerous
political and legislative processes. By assessing the community's needs and
resources, they are able to better understand the political and legislative
processes needed to occur in order for their organization to succeed. As
Homan states, "if the community is unable to draw in necessary resources, it
is likely to wither" (see Homan). Through the assessment of these resources,
the Humane Society is able to move to a focus of political and legislative
processes. According to Jamie, the Humane Society of Montgomery County
"does not participate in anything political," (see Personal Interview: Jamie
Burton). However, the Humane Society of the United States operates a great deal of
campaigns. The foremost campaigns run by the Humane Society of the United
States include: animal cruelty, hunting and chimp research. First, to help
campaign against animal cruelty the organization tries to constantly keep
topics and incidents in the news. Instances such as cockfighting cause an
uproar from citizens and always stir emotion. They also constantly campaign
to congress for stricter laws on animal cruelty. The Humane Society also
campaigns against many hunting practices and is constantly taking legal
action to protect species. Finally, this organization continues its
campaigning to save the more than 1,200 chimps currently living in test labs
(see U.S. Humane Society Website). These animals are subjected to painful
and invasive experiments that this organization believes no animal should be
put through. Through these campaigns, numerous legislative victories have
been achieved. Such victories come at both the state and federal level.
These legislative victories include: strengthening laws on animal fighting,
stricter laws on wildlife violations and even a bill to keep downers out of
animal food supplies (see U.S. Humane Society Website). Many of these and
other successes come because of increase support from citizens and the
constant media attention shown to animal cruelty topics.

Shirley Lord, a famous American writer once said, "Animals are considered as
property only. To destroy or to abuse them, from malice to the proprietor,
or with an intention injurious to his interest in them, is criminal. But the
animals themselves are without protection. The law regards them not
substantively. They have no RIGHTS!" The HSMC chooses to look at animals
another way - they choose to give them rights and protect those rights. A
non-profit and a no-kill shelter, which is what HSMC is, needs social
capital in order to function properly an uphold their beliefs about animals.
Social capital connects them to the community that they serve. According to
the reading, "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg," Lois connected the community
that she lived in and was like the glue that brought them together much like
the HSMC does for our community (see "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg," UAP
4184 Reader).
The shelter staff uses social capital to help the organization make friends,
volunteers, receive discounted services from local vets, educate the
community and receive much needed donations. The HSMC is different from the
"normal" shelter because they run solely on their own money that mainly
comes from donations, the thrift store and several big fund-raisers
throughout the year. "The Humane Society is fully funded by community
donations. No money is provided by federal, state, or county governments”
(see Humane Society of Montgomery County Website). There is no financial
gain to running a shelter like HSMC; you have to do it for the love of the
animals and in order to run the shelter you have to have a lot of social
capital. The largest part of the HSMC's social capital comes from their
volunteers. The majority of the volunteers that come to the shelter come
back. The HSMC has many devoted volunteers who never miss a visit to the
shelter and not only help to care for the animals by walking them, but they
also offer a key component to the animal's mental well-being. The
volunteers are used solely for social interaction for the animals. The dogs,
puppies, cats and kittens need love and affection and from different
individuals to make them well rounded and more adoptable animals (see Humane
Society of Montgomery County Website).
In order to fully understand the components of the shelter and to also
receive a more thorough interview with Jamie Burton, Chelsea decided to
volunteer for a day. While there, she witnessed how important volunteers
really are to the shelter. Chelsea brought much needed donations to the
shelter and volunteered to become a part of the shelter on a personal level
in order to understand it better. She spent at least 15 minutes with each
cat, kitten, dog and puppy and walked all the dogs. Before departing, she
spoke with Jamie about social capital and its part within the shelter. Jamie
stated several times that they do everything themselves and was very uneasy
about letting any information about their assistance out in public. She did
tell us that several veterinarians in the area occasionally offer free
or discounted services to the shelter and that the shelter has made many
friends over the years that donate religiously (see Personal Interview:
Jamie Burton). Without social capital, none of this would be possible.
Social capital brings the office workers, volunteers, local organizations,
and surrounding community together in order to help the animals by working
towards a common goal.
The HSMC also has a fully functioning website that is crucial to their
social capital. On the site there are links to use so you can donate
on-line, sign up to be a volunteer, and view some of the animals available
for adoption. The website also educates viewers on the shelter, their goals,
upcoming events, contact information, and hours of operation. There is an
email address that you can use to contact the shelter which opens their area
for personal contact with interested individuals. You can also use the
website to join the shelter as a "member." Membership is obtained by making
a donation online and once a member you are a part of the shelter you have
the right to vote at elections where important decisions about the shelter
are made (See Humane Society of Montgomery County Website). The website
abides by the suggested guidelines put forth by Andrew L. Shapiro who wrote
"The Net That Binds." He suggests that, "The architecture of the local
gateway is crucial. Its blueprint should be influenced not just by a
local/global balance but by other democratic values (see Shapiro)." The site
is obviously geared towards this path. Social capital and the website go
hand in hand because it increases the amount of people that have access to
information about the shelter, makes it easier for people to volunteer,
gives them the opportunity to donate, and gives them another way to contact
the shelter if needed.

When we asked Jamie how the HSMC promotes dialogue and participation among
its staff, she responded by telling us that they work together as a team and
no one person takes on all the responsibility (see Personal Interview: Jamie
Burton). While she was did not give us specific information on how the
shelter staff operates or any techniques they use, we can use our class
information to suggest possible ways that they could communicate which would
be beneficial in their situation.
One way for the HSMC to promote equal representation of everyone's
thoughts when discussing a matter would be for them to utilize the
cardstorming process which we practiced in class. The cardstorming process
(see The Cardstorming Process - Facilitators Guide, UAP 4184 Reader) allows
a group of individuals to deliberate a particular statement in order to
brainstorm ideas about the response to the statement. The statement is
incomplete and could be something like, "A reason that our animals aren't
being adopted fast enough is.," or "What we really need to make our shelter
run better is.". By using the cardstorming process, people are able to
brainstorm on their own at first, which allows everyone to come up with some
points for the larger group, and then in the larger groups, participants can
come together to notice similarities and differences in their thought
process and decide upon common themes that they want to present to the
entire group. The cardstorming process is very participant oriented and
less facilitator oriented which promotes communication among participants
and could open lines of communication for the shelter between volunteers,
paid workers, community businesses and voting members. By having a wide
variety of participants which represent all aspects of the shelter's social
capital and staff, the cardstorming process could be one that would really
help the shelter to communicate better and promote the sense of a team that
Jamie said the shelter personnel aim for.
The shelter does have a bi-monthly newsletter that they post online for
their viewers. The newsletter contains information about volunteers,
general meeting times, upcoming events, special thanks, important notices,
and new information about donations and fund raisers. Online newsletters
seem very cost-effective for the shelter. Newsletters can often be very
pricey to produce, but an online alternative drastically reduces costs (see
Creighton, 96-97). The newsletter is somewhat vague and only offers
summaries of key-points. By increasing the amount and depth of the
information presented, the shelter newsletter could become a much more
effective way of communicating for the shelter. Another way that the
shelter could improve the newsletter would be to publish it more often.
Currently, the newsletter is updated every two months. If the staff were
able to publish a shorter, more personal newsletter every week or two weeks,
information would be more up to date and could be more informative for
readers.
Although we are unaware of other techniques the shelter may use for
communication, the newsletter seems to be an obvious and effective choice.
Cardstorming would be a good alternative for the shelter to use if they had
the time and needed some brainstorming done on a particular topic. There
are probably other methods used to communicate such as email, listservs, and
maybe even discussion boards, but we were unable to get that information
from our email correspondence with Jamie.

In order to best assist this organization in achieving its goals, one
helpful public participation technique would be interviewing. "Interviews
are extremely useful when you want in-depth information from stakeholders,
particularly the kind of detailed information it would be difficult for
people to share during public forums" (Creighton, p.190). Interviews often
provide information that cannot be obtained any other way. Through these
interviews, The Humane Society would be able to obtain very valuable
qualitative information from a variety of stakeholders. In this case, a
sampling bias must be used. In order to achieve the information this
organization needs, they must target the specific groups affected. However,
before one can conduct these interviews, the organization must determine
what is to be learned from the interviews themselves. Once The Humane
Society has determined what exactly it hopes to learn from interviewing its
targeted groups, it can then begin the next steps of determining interview
length and asking the questions. During the question asking phase, the
interviewer must remember to ask open-ended questions in order to receive a
more in-depth answer. Finally, the interviewer must remember to take notes
through this interview process. The information received could come from a
series of stakeholders including; hunters, animal lovers and scientific
researchers. This process will not only help the organization gain
information it could not otherwise receive but will also help to build a
personal rapport with the stakeholders.

Clobrien (talk) 04:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Bibliography:

Creighton, James. "Conducting Interviews." Public Participation Handbook,
Chapter 13: 190-195.

Creighton, James. "Techniques for Getting Information to the Public."
Public
Participation Handbook, Chapter 6: 96-97.

Homan, Michael. (2005). "Knowing Your Community." Chapter 6: 57-58.

Personal Interview: Jamie Burton, Shelter Manager of Humane Society of
Montgomery County Shelter. Email correspondence, 28 March 2008.

Shapiro, Andrew. "The Net that Binds." Public Participation Handbook, 1-6.

The Cardstorming Process, UAP 4184 Reader, 107-109.

The Humane Society of Montgomery County. (2008). .

The Humane Society of the United States. (2008). "Campaigns and Programs,"

.

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