A lot of volunteers at the Guilford County animal shelter say the county should have just left well enough alone last year and let the shelter continue to handle donations as it had done for years.  Under that previous system, shelter workers would take in the donations and just use them in the best way they thought could help the shelter, the county and pet owners.

However, about a year ago, county administrators imposed new rules that resulted in huge problems with the shelter’s donation operations.

At the Board of Commissioners, Thursday, Feb. 6 meeting, the commissioners will unveil and adopt a new plan that will align the animal shelter with the Guilford County Division of Social Services and hopefully cut out much of the red tape that’s been causing all the problems.

Before a new plan was implemented last year, shelter workers could, for instance, if they knew someone was turning over their dog because they couldn’t afford dog food, give the owners some of the donated food to help them out and keep them from having to abandon their pets.

Also, under the old system that was in place for years, shelter workers could just throw away what was worthless – they didn’t need to elaborately track every item and hold on to useless donations until they were given the OK by county management to discard them.

Before the spring of 2024, the donation operations at the shelter worked very well and helped dogs and cats at the shelter get adopted: In addition to providing food, shelter workers could offer pet toys, leashes and other donated items to needy pet owners, which helped them decide to adopt.

Early in 2024, however, the Guilford County manager’s office began imposing a host of new rules regarding how in-kind donations were handled by Guilford County Animal Services at the shelter.

Once the county manager’s office changed the requirements, every donation to Guilford County Animal Services had to be fully inventoried on a daily basis. Shelter employees also had to estimate the value of every item and record the donation along with its assessed value.

After that, each inventory list had to be approved by the Guilford County manager’s office before any of the items on the list could be used or discarded. The policy took up a lot of space, and donations even overtook the break room, as is pictured above.

Also, under that policy that went into effect in 2024, no donated items could be shared with the pet-owning public. They were either used by Animal Services, thrown away or listed as unneeded surplus property by the county.

Due to the change, Guilford County Animal Services was forced to cancel large, regular donations from major companies such as Chewy and the Humane Society of the United States, which were sometimes worth over $60,000 per quarter.

Many other counties use a very flexible system like the one the Guilford County animal shelter used for years; however, Guilford County administrators stated that the system was not acceptable under the North Carolina laws that govern how items donated to local governments must be handled.

Last fall, Guilford County animal shelter officials and other county administrators began forming a new plan – the one that will be adopted this week.

Details of the new policy haven’t been released, but it will call for the shelter to work with social services to distribute the donated items to needy pet owners.

According to the information included with the item on the agenda,

“This action will memorialize the approval to operate a public assistance donation receipt and distribution program to provide donated goods to residents in need, which means it must comply with certain donation acceptance and property disposal statutes and policies.”

The information provided to the county commissioners goes on to state, “The Animal Services department may, upon approval by the Board of Commissioners and in compliance with applicable laws and County policies, partner with the Division of Social Services to engage in public assistance programs which accept and use donated pet-related goods to residents in need. With this approval and appropriate integration with the Division of Social Services, Animal Services may treat the distribution of the donations intended to support these programs to community members as uses of the donated items, instead of disposal as surplus property. Once accepted, these donations (and donations made without restrictions as to the end user) may be distributed to individuals in need. This program will serve a public purpose by providing pet-related goods to pet owners in need and avoid certain Animal Shelter expenses by reducing the number of animals surrendered to the Animal Shelter.”

It all still sounds pretty complicated, but hopefully it will improve the situation.

County animal lovers, and shelter workers and volunteers, are pleased the county has come up with a plan, but some said they are eager to see the details.  If a donation recipient has to, for instance, fill out a lot of forms at social services and go through many other hoops, then that, they say, might defeat the purpose of getting the supplies to those in need.

“Not everyone who needs help with pet supplies is a client of DSS and they don’t want to become one,” one shelter volunteer told the Rhino Times.

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