On a cold and rainy Thursday, Nov. 14 evening, the Guilford County Animal Services Advisory Board met with staff from the animal shelter, and one of the most exasperating problems identified was that county rules and regulations are causing the shelter workers to have to throw away perfectly good donated food, spend hours of valuable staff time categorizing every item that comes in, send daily reports to the county manager’s office and wait to hear back while storing the items in much-needed space in the meantime.
Before the spring of 2024, the donation operations at the shelter worked very well and even helped dogs and cats at the shelter get adopted. Shelter staff could, for instance, provide food, pet toys, leashes and other donated items to needy pet owners who didn’t want to surrender their pets but who also couldn’t afford to keep them in a bad economy.
Early in 2024, however, the Guilford County manager’s office began imposing a rule – which perhaps had previously existed but hadn’t been enforced – regarding how in-kind donations are handled by Guilford County Animal Services at the shelter.
The change led to significant disruptions in shelter operations and has resulted in aggravation for staff, and pet owners – and has caused harm to the pets themselves.
Under these new policies, each and every donation to Guilford County Animal Services must be fully inventoried on a daily basis by staff. That employee must also estimate the value of each item and record the donation along with its assessed value.
It doesn’t matter what the item is: Even obviously useless things people simply drop off at the shelter, like broken hair dryers and old carpets, have to be inventoried.
Then, each inventory list must be approved by the Guilford County manager’s office before any of the items on the particular list can be used or discarded. The approval process can sometimes take several days, and, because of that, the animal shelter has become a warehouse – as one can see in the picture of the breakroom above.
This takes up valuable space in an already cramped facility and staff have to keep exact track of which donations are included on which day’s inventory list so they know whether or not those items can finally be used or discarded.
Also, under the new rules, no donated items can be shared with the pet-owning public. Currently, if the items can’t be used at the shelter or by Animal Services, they must be discarded or warehoused in surplus storage.
Since the shelter has a food supply program in place with Hills Science Diet – and doesn’t just feed shelter animals whatever happens to be donated that week – the shelter currently has little use for donated food.
Before the new rules were put in place earlier this year, shelter staff had the ability to help pet owners who were adopting pets as well as those who were considering turning their pets over to the animal shelter. The ability to help those people created a supportive relationship and made it easier for economically challenged residents to become or to continue being pet owners.
The issue has been highly frustrating to shelter staff, volunteers and pet lovers who know about it.
Two months ago, a large group of the heads of various animal welfare organizations in Guilford County spoke passionately, one after another, about the problem to the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. However, nothing seemed to change.
At the November 14 Animal Services board meeting, Animal Services Director Jorge Ortega and others said that the county is now in the planning stage of addressing the problem. County staff is drawing up a plan that will ultimately need to be approved by the Board of Commissioners. It could mean that Animal Services ends up working more closely with the county’s Division of Social Services, which might begin distributing donated items based on needs.
But for now, the situation continues and it is doing real damage to the severely understaffed shelter that has been facing many other major struggles. From Ortega on down to the volunteers, everyone is working as hard as they can to help the animals, and they need to be doing other things besides recording the receipt of a pair of used socks and then storing them until they hear back from county management.
Hopefully, the county will fix the problem; however; for now, the damage continues in a multitude of ways.
- Wasted staff time: Animal Services staff are now spending hours every week inventorying donations – including broken items and trash – which, as of Spring of 2024, must be kept track of and held in shelter space until approval of the relevant inventory list is received.
- Space overload: Donations are piling up at the shelter, filling employee breakrooms and offices since they can’t be used or disposed of until approved.
•The need to throw away valuable donations: Donations that could be given to the public – such as unopened pet food, litter boxes, dog leashes and puppy pads – are being discarded because the shelter lacks the space to store the items, and shelter workers are no longer allowed to redistribute them to pet lovers in need.
•A loss of community support: Guilford County Animal Services has been forced to cancel large, regular donations from Chewy and HSUS, which are sometimes worth over $60,000 per quarter. The shelter is fortunate to have an Animal Services director like Ortega who’s worked hard in the past to establish relationships with these major entities to bring large-scale donations to needy people in Guilford County. But now the county has lost this benefit because of the new rules that popped up earlier this year.
These major donations have, in recent years under Ortega’s leadership, helped the shelter advance the much-needed and long-needed process of building community goodwill and keeping pets out of the shelter. Some pet owners are surrendered by owners because they can no longer afford cat or dog food.
•Program suspensions: As a result of having to cancel the large-scale donations from Chewy and HSUS, the shelter hasn’t been able to hold a Mobile Pet Assistance Clinic event since April of 2024. These events were key in providing resources for financially struggling pet owners – which is a big part of building community trust, and a critical strategy for lowering intake to the shelter by keeping pets with their owners.
All these problems are coming from the changes earlier this year in the county’s regulations that cover handling in-kind donations, but there appears to be no formal written ordinance mandating that in-kind donations to Guilford County must be inventoried and restricted from the public in this way.
Animal lovers argue that, without a change, hundreds of thousands of dollars in in-kind donations each year from individuals, nonprofits and corporations specifically intended to help pets in Guilford County won’t be coming to the county.
It could also affect euthanasia rates, which are likely to rise because the shelter has lost valuable tools for community outreach and support.
And already overworked shelter staff waste their valuable time counting towels, bags of litter, and old electronics – and then they end up stepping around these items in their breakroom and other rooms – rather than using that time to serve the public and take care of animals.
At a Thursday, Nov. 14 meeting of the Animal Services Advisory Board, board members were informed that county administrators are finally working on the problem and they hope to have a plan for addressing it in the near future.
Wonderful article. I have seen first hand as a volunteer/foster how this negatively impacts the animals and all staff and volunteers. In the past, items that were not needed or used by the shelter were given to new adopters, people who could use the assistance AND FOSTERS. I have fostered for the shelter for the last 5 years, and now more than ever, fosters have to help purchase needed items for their newly acquired pet foster. The shelter desperately needs fosters, and this current policy is hindering foster program. This policy could cause a decrease in fostering and foster retention, negatively impacting the animals. I hope this policy changes asap!
Thank you for bringing awareness to the public with your article.
Jennifer
If it doesn’t benefit Skip, don’t count on him or the commissioners .
Another example of letting people with no common sense try to solve a problem that they have no idea of what it is. Get the red tape out of the way, and solve the problem.
But government agencies always work like this, don’t they?
Yes. I suspect it has to do with State rules, possibly about “gifts to government employees” and those “gifts” becoming the “property of the State or County”. This comes from years of people giving little and big gifts to employees and politicians that some used as bribes, and others used for the benefit of the community, and here we are. Good deed doers get caught up in the bad deed doers’ messiness.
Nothing new here! Bunch of idiots in government that have know clue in how to run anything. Just waist money,time my throwing away good stuff that could be used to help the animals and there owners.
Just like the idiots in New York who Murdered Peanut the Squirrel and Fred and Racoon. All the government basically is good for is wasting our tax dollars!
What a miscarriage of justice. Walking around this beautiful shelter breaks my heart to see all these innocent faces. So now politics are making a mess. Maybe these decision makers should take some time as visitors to the shelter ( if there are any empty cages)
Creating problems where none existed and standing in the way of solutions. As Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. ” County administration creates more problems than it ever solves and they wonder why things don’t get better. Let people be creative and find the best solutions. I am convinced that Guilford County Government looks at a service and thinks if it isn’t broken let’s see if we can beak it. These same commissioners have been at this job too long, they refuse to look at helping our animals unless there is a photo op or campaign benefit involved. The board members were all there 3 years ago during the grand opening, patting each other on the back and taking credit for the new shelter. The commissioners must step up to the plate and prove to the public that they are worthy of their positions.
To the gentleman that wrote this very informative article … Thank you good Sir … it is perfectly written and to ALL that work at Guilford County … SHAME ON ALL OF THEM !!! It is both sad and disgusting that they have NOT FIXED THIS UNNECESSARY PROBLEM !!!!! WHERE ARE THEIR HEARTS ????? They go home to their families and do not give A SHITE about those of us that are in need of help … to help feed their pets or to help keep their pets from being euthanized because of over crowded shelters … because of IGNORANT RUDE AND ARROGANT monsters that obviously do not CARE about ANY OTHERS except themselves !!!!! A HAME ON GUILFORD COUNTY !!!!! KARMA IS REAL AND IT IS COMING FOR ALL OF THOSE THAT ARE KNOWINGLY CAUSING GREAT HARDSHIPS AND TRADGEDIES FOR THESE POOR ANIMALS AND THE PEOPLE THAT LOVE THEM AND NEED HELP !!!!!!! WHAT KIND OF MONSTERS WORK FIR GUILFORD COUNTY ????? WHAT ROLE MODELS YOU ARE FOR YOUR CHILDREN !!!!! JESUS … GET YOUR HEARTS RIGHT … YOU ARE WORTHLESS … GET OVER YOUR SELFISH SELVES AND DO WHAT IS RIGHT !!!!!!! BASTARDS !!!!! God bless ALL the EARTH ANGELS that are trying their very best to help these people and their pets and ALL the animals that are simuffering even more because of the bullshit at GUILFORD COUNTY !!!!!!
It appears the shelter donation program has turned into a Goodwill. Staff is too busy to keep track of all the junk even before bureaucrats get in the middle. Then in the end, it all gets in the way of large-scale corporate donations that would actually help the shelter.
Shelter needs to immediately stop the small-scale public donations. They are just getting in the way. People mean well, but they are just creating a larger headache.
As for financially struggling pet owners needing pet food donations, that should be organized as a separate charity. It is not fair to make to shelter staff shoulder this burden on top of everything else they need to do.
I’ll tell ya what, I am so damn sick and tired of government thinking they need to control and oversee every single aspect of our lives!! What’s wrong with trusting the adults who are involved to make responsible decisions, which they obviously are capable of as they were doin just fine before someone got a hair up their bum. The shelter employees are invested, experienced and one would assume smarter than most government officials, they don’t need a babysitter for God’s sake. Why can’t people just help others where they can wo some jacka%$ on a power trip micromanaging something they don’t understand, don’t really care about, and in all honesty is only worth something to the people in need and those that can help them. I’d like to go back to letting the grown ups handle their business and if something comes up they can’t handle, then maybe gov can step in. Lord knows there are plenty of people willing to record and expose any bs these days, even if a lot of them are more in the “karen” category. 🙂 If the shelter is running smoothly and has good feedback from staff, volunteers and adopters, leave em the F alone.
I moved from NY a little over a yr ago & have volunteered here. I’ve never in my life seen such a terrible stray problem in a state. I currently feed 3 strays daily & when I went to foster a kitten here, I thought it was one of the best run shelters I’d ever seen in my life, so this completely breaks my heart to read.
I suggest going on a large/well-known podcast like Joe Rogan’s, to gain/bring attention to the matter, or a news channel…that’s how to force change to happen. People need to be aware of the problem to help so get this out there MORE! Rogan’s podcast & others reach millions of people daily & are certain to strike a chord with many of the “well off” folks that originated from North Carolina – then they can help influence to make positive changes or to donate financially where others seem to be unfortunately failing. This truly breaks my heart. Animals should not have to suffer for human mismanagement – they have enough challenges to face without it. good luck to you all working so hard for those fur-babies!
Typical example of “micro-managing.” The county conducted a search and hired a competent director for the animal shelter. And then the county manager has to get DAILY reports of donated items and APPROVE the handling/disposition. Total nonsense. Director Ortega should have that responsibility, PERIOD. This is why governments are often so inefficient at everything. No incentive to save time or money. Perhaps the salaried of the county manager’s office should be reduced for spending time on such inconsequential matters!