Seeking Volunteers

Volunteering is a great way to give back to a community and feel good about helping others. Below are some of the opportunities available on a regular basis. Our biggest need is for committed foster provider homes, transporters for dogs that need to get to and from veterinary appointments, chaperone volunteers to take dogs to events, the occasional need for dog walkers and volunteers for our fundraisers.

Be a foster provider. Fostering a dog  is a very rewarding opportunity to make a difference in a dog’s life. It helps our organization  with placing our dogs into their forever home having a foster provider give us feedback so we better understand the dog we are placing. The best way to learn about a dog’s personality, behavior and habits is by providing the dog with structure and stability in a home environment.

​To learn more about our Foster Provider Program click here.

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Provide a ride. There are several different transportation opportunities available to our volunteer network. These include transporting dogs to and from veterinarian or spay/neuter clinic appointments, picking up a dog being welcomed into our program from partnering shelter facilities all over the tri-state area, meeting up with other dedicated transport volunteers at various locations at a set time safely maneuvering the dog from one vehicle to another to continue the trip back to Cleveland and picking up various supplies or donations as needs arise.

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Be a dog’s chaperone. We host and co-host adoption and community events and fundraisers throughout the year.  Adoption events often provide the best opportunity to meet potential adopters. If providing  one of our dogs with a ride to and from an event (most often from our facility in Tremont) including spend quality time with the dog at an event than this opportunity is for you! For more information about becoming a dog chaperone contact our Lead Chaperone Volunteers at [email protected].

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Dot the i’s and cross the T’s checking application references. One of the most important and rewarding roles our trained volunteers assist us with is the outreach to our incoming foster provider applicants and incoming adoption applicants. Before we send any of our dogs home with anyone we make sure to verify crucial information gathered from our various applications. This role requires attention to detail, focus, experience navigating Google Drive documents and spreadsheets and a genuine interest in making a connection for our dogs and foster providers and adopters.  ​

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Event Representation. This opportunity may occur just a few times a year but when we have a fundraiser or event outside of our regular in-store adoption events we have a big need for volunteers. Representing our organization at an major event or fundraiser can mean anything from assisting us with transporting supplies, merchandise, tents and tables to a community event or fundraiser to being the host at our merchandise table during a fundraiser, volunteering building raffle baskets with donated items, selling raffle tickets during a fundraiser or being a part of our biggest fundraiser of the year shopping for or cooking pancakes at the annual Pancake Barkfeast held annually at the beginning of the calendar year.

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Gift Basket Maker.  Do you have a knack for arranging gift baskets? We are always collecting donations and can always use help making raffle baskets prior to our events. Our gift baskets are made from public donations collected and saved for our special events when we raffle them off. We can usually provide the baskets and the contents but ask that our volunteer basket assemblers purchase the wrapping cover and ribbon.

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Assist with administrative projects. We always need volunteers to help us with a mish mosh of various administrative projects. This includes everything from collating materials to build our adoption folders to creating graphics for a sign, assisting us with website edits and maintenance, basic data entry projects, organizing and inventorying our storage supply room and many other office-related task you can think of!  Administrative project assistance is generally a need on an as-needed basis. Most of these projects are eligible to complete from home.

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Raise awareness and funds. Without incoming funds our mission to Respect the Dog® and responsibly place dogs in homes would not be possible. We welcome volunteers who have a knack for marketing, prior experience with fundraising and those willing to reach out to various networks to ask for anything from a small monetary gift or sponsorship for an event, a gift card donation for a raffle basket, an in-kind service donation for an event or putting it all out there and asking for the big bucks. If you are interested in joining our Fundraising and Marketing Committee we want to hear from you.

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If you would like to volunteer you can get started by filling out our electronic volunteer application. Once we receive your application you will get an acknowledgement email, we will add you to our volunteer email list, and if you have a Facebook account, we will add you to our Volunteers group.

If you have specific questions please reach out via email to [email protected].