It’s been almost two months now since Neil Trent joined AWLA as its new Executive Director, and some good things are happening.

AWLA found a home for Mya

For starters, AWLA has taken tentative first steps toward marketing its on-view dogs. Three offsite events featuring adoptable AWLA dogs were held during the last two months. And AWLA seems to be discovering the potential of online marketing. They have yet to exploit Craigslist, but they did send out a broadcast e-mail asking recipients to help find a home for Mya, a young black dog with a bully-breed jaw who’d arrived at the shelter in April, gone on-view in May… and then spent five months waiting for a home. She was adopted in early October.

And while we haven’t seen the outcomes data for the most recent quarter yet, daily observation of the dogs listed on the AWLA website suggests that fewer dogs are mysteriously vanishing a week or two after they first appear on the site. I won’t be surprised if the Q3 data shows that AWLA has stopped killing the vast majority of its pitbulls and other powerful breeds.

Other promising signs: Trent has met with and listened to the advice of local animal-welfare advocates, many of whom have been repeatedly frustrated by their past interactions with AWLA. He has committed the organization to launching a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats, which his predecessor was unwilling to do. And he seems willing to expand the scope of AWLA’s foster program and develop more efficient ways of providing veterinary care for all its animals.

So the early evidence suggests that Trent is trying to steer the organization in the right direction.

A less encouraging observation is that he didn’t bring his team from Longmont Humane with him, which means he has inherited a management team steeped in AWLA’s traditional culture of selective disclosure and a circle-the-wagons mentality. Converting AWLA into a top-tier shelter (like those in Reno, Charlottesville, Ithaca, Richmond, Berkeley et. al.) would be a much easier task if he had a lieutenant or two who understood how these highly effective shelters work.

If Trent chooses to retain the management team he inherited, AWLA’s recently released FY2010 Annual Report demonstrates the entrenched culture he’s up against.

For example, the financial report states that for the fifth consecutive year, AWLA spent more money ($1.427 million) executing its responsibilities for animal sheltering and animal control than it received from its contract with Arlington County ($1.253 million). The report explicitly notes that “The League subsidizes this deficit (of $173,610) with its own funds.”

As we pointed out in our Fun with Numbers series last fall, this is pure fiction. Correctly allocating the fees that AWLA receives from adopting out county-funded shelter animals would go a long way toward erasing this “deficit”. Instead AWLA classifies those fees as “program revenues”. Tuition from AWLA’s summer Kids Camp is another example of “program revenues” that is entirely dependent on the County-funded shelter animals.

The bottom line is that Arlington County subsidizes AWLA, not the converse. Without its County Contract, AWLA would just be one of many local animal welfare organizations. Without a guaranteed revenue stream, it would have to spend more of its time pulling animals from municipal pounds and working to find them homes, because its fundraising efforts would depend on an expanding legacy of successful adoptions.

Much less effort would be devoted to projects that don’t directly save animals, like Kids Camp, Canine Behavior Classes, and Baby-Ready Pets. Without the County Contract, AWLA would have to compete for volunteers, adopters, and donors based on its animal-saving performance, rather than rely on taxpayer funding and a captive supply of animals.

For years, AWLA has essentially been a fundraising organization that uses its stream of animals to achieve its monetary goals, rather than an animal rescue organization that uses its stream of funds to achieve its lifesaving goals.

If you don’t believe that, download AWLA’s tax returns from GuideStar and juxtapose them with its animal outcomes results. Or read this post.

Or look at how AWLA’s profit of nearly $400,000 in FY2010 didn’t help increase the number of homeless cats and dogs it saved:

* = (adopted + transferred) / outcomes

Despite these uninspiring results, I’m convinced that Neil Trent has the motivation and ability to convert AWLA into the resource that it can and should be. But he’ll need plenty of encouragement and help from the outside the organization.

To its credit, AWLA first offered these dogs to two local rescue organizations, but both were at full capacity. While each group had recently accepted a difficult dog from AWLA, they both work primarily with rural high-kill shelters. That’s partially out of necessity, because until recently AWLA had no interest in transferring its dogs to rescue groups. If AWLA now wants to work with non-breed-specific rescue organizations, it needs to cast a wider net.

As we’ve noted before, AWLA has other options it could pursue for its long-tenured dogs. It could promote them by staging adoption events and taking them out into the community, by posting flyers in neighborhood venues, and by advertising them online. And it could circulate them through its own network of foster homes — if AWLA made the effort to develop a network of dog fosterers, the way the rescue organizations do. Both of these approaches are used by the country’s most successful open-admission shelters.

Instead, AWLA transferred five dogs to the Loudoun County shelter. According to ShelterWatch, here’s how LCAC’s kill rate for homeless dogs in 2009 compared to that of three similarly-sized open-admission shelters.

Out of 39 shelters listed on ShelterWatch, LCAC ranked 36th; only three shelters killed a higher percentage of their dogs.

Let’s hope Buddy, Buttercup, Hannah, and Sophera make it out of the Loudoun shelter alive. If they don’t, AWLA should be considered complicit in their deaths.

What, our hosts asked us, could they do to make it easier for the rescue groups to receive cats from FCAS during periods when the shelter was taking in more cats than it could handle? How could they help the participating groups stage adoption events? Would any of them be interested in using the FCAS classroom on weekends to showcase their cats? (Absolutely.)

What DC-area clinics were currently providing the most competent and cost-effective spay/neuter services? How many cats did the different rescue groups receive per year, and where did they get them from? Who (in addition to FCAS) was participating in local TNR (trap-neuter-return) programs? And much more.

The meeting lasted for two hours and could easily have run longer, since it provided a forum for the rescue groups to parameterize FCAS, for FCAS to learn from the groups, and for the groups to learn from each other. It’s the kind of event that should happen at least twice a year.

When was the last time a comparable exchange of information was sponsored by the AWLs of Arlington or Alexandria? How about “never.”

I’m actually not sure it’s never happened, but when I asked veteran volunteers at Homeward Trails and A Forever Home, no one could remember a comparable outreach to local rescue groups.

A few rescue groups have been prodding AWL of Arlington for years to collaborate, but most have dismissed the organization as insular and intransigent, and gone on to work closely with rural high-kill shelters that are overflowing with animals and greatly appreciate the opportunity to transfer some of them to DC-area organizations.

So why do the two AWLAs have no meaningful collaboration with local rescue groups that on a combined basis adopt out several times as many cats and dogs per year as they do?

I think the root of the problem is that the AWLAs have evolved over decades (both were founded in the 1940s) into organizations with well-developed donor networks and significant endowments. Despite their mission statements, it’s hard not to conclude that the true mission of these organizations is to nurture and develop their endowments. Anecdotes about successful adoptions are used to pursue that goal. At best, rescue organizations are a distraction, at worst they’re potential competitors for charitable contributions.

On the AWL of Arlington website the spotlight is currently on the upcoming Walk for the Animals 2010, the organization’s biggest fundraising event of the year. AWLA staffers spend months preparing for the Walk — when it’s done, the focus turns to Catsino Night, the second-biggest fundraising event of the year.

The current issue of AWLA’s quarterly Pawpourri newsletter is all about the Walk, donations, bequests, and (you guessed it) Catsino Night.

How many articles in Pawpourri or on the website about upcoming adoption events or promotions? Zero.

How many about working with rescue groups? Zero.

On recruiting new foster families for dogs and cats that spend week after week growing depressed (and less adoptable) at the shelter? Zero.

Trap-neuter-return efforts? Zero.

None of the programs that progressive shelters have implemented to achieve better animal outcomes get any attention in AWLA’s communications efforts. The results speak for themselves.

Unlike the shelters run by the AWLs of Arlington and Alexandria, the Fairfax shelter is a municipal facility that doesn’t benefit from substantial private donations and a significant endowment. It has only one focus — juggling the thousands of animals it receives every year and trying to save as many as it can. Who deserves your contributions more?

Because AWLA saves a much lower percentage (and kills a much higher percentage) of its homeless animals than the other shelters listed, you might hope AWLA’s Board of Directors wouldn’t reward AWLA management for its unimpressive performance. That hope would be in vain.

The numbers below reflect FY2009 data for AWLA and CY2008 data for the other organizations, and are drawn from Form 990 filings and annual animal-outcomes reports.

Why don’t Arlington taxpayers get their money’s worth from AWLA?

Imagine how AWLA’s animal-outcomes data might change if its management was paid based on the organization’s effectiveness at saving animals. How many more companion animals would survive to find forever homes if AWLA scrapped its Executive Director’s guaranteed $109K salary and benefits and instead paid her $50 for every cat, dog, bunny, or ferret that AWLA successfully adopted out or transferred to a rescue organization or foster home?

Instead, half of AWLA’s cat and dog cages sit empty week after week, while less-affluent shelters within a few hours drive beg cash-strapped DC-area rescue groups to take animals that the shelters will otherwise have to kill for space.

And when few potential adopters visit AWLA’s dogs — because not a single effort is made to promote them via proven tactics like adoption events, foster care, neighborhood flyers, or Craigs List postings — one by one AWLA quietly kills its unwanted dogs.

While the low-effort status quo must seem comfortable to AWLA management, it’s depressingly lethal for Arlington’s neediest companion animals.