Want to organize a pet food drive? 4 Pet’s Sake takes about 2 months to plan. The following is a step by step guide to help you organize a 4 Pet’s Sake in your community.

Here you’ll find our ideas, but if you have ideas you want to share, please contact us, or visit our forums. We want to hear from you!

2 Months before:

• Contact your local humane society.

  Make sure that the date you have in mind doesn’t conflict with any of their events. You may also want to think about other events in your community. Are there any events coming up that would detract from or enhance your 4 Pet ’s Sake event?

  Get a list of items your humane society needs. In addition to dog and cat food, they may need other items such as kitty litter, cleaning supplies, etc. You want to focus on what they need most.

  Can your humane society get you any volunteers? The number of volunteers you will need will depend on the number of stores at which you’re located. Two people per store plus one person to go between the stores is best. In a pinch, one person per store plus one person to go between is minimum.

• Contact the stores

  You will want to contact the store managers in person, as it is much harder to say "no" in person than over the phone. Be prepared to make several trips because of the manager not being in, etc.

  When choosing stores, there are a couple of points to consider. 1) How many low cost items that the humane society needs does the store carry? In our experience, people were more likely to donate if they could donate a low cost item. 2) How likely are the clientele to donate? In our experience, people with pets seemed more willing to donate than those without, so pet stores had very sympathetic clientele. However, you must balance this with the fact that pet food in pet stores is more expensive than in grocery or discount stores. So, you may want to target different items in the pet stores such as toys or dog bowls.

  It also adds an air of professionalism to have a letter written describing what you are doing that you can give the store manager for reference.

One month before:

• Design your flier.

  We used half sheets of paper printed in color and copied in black and white for our fliers.

• Make arrangements to have your flier copied.

  We used about 50 fliers per store in 4 hours. Use our 4 Pet’s Sake logo, if you would like. See the terms and conditions.

• Write your pre-event press release.

  Some humane societies have a "pet of the week" that is advertised in the paper. You may be able to advertise your event with a press release along with the pet pic. If so, be sure to get your press release to the right person before the deadline.

• Contact your local radio station.

  They may be willing to give your 4 Pet’s Sake a public service announcement.

• Contact your local newspaper

  They may be willing to give you some advertising. Even if they don’t have any advertising space to give you, they may still be able to give you some ideas about how to get in the paper. Many papers have a community calendar, and your event could be listed there.

One week before:

• Print your fliers

  I recommend waiting to print the fliers until the week before in case there are last minute changes.

• Put together "volunteer packets"

  Each location will need several items, and putting them together in advance will minimize confusion. Items to include are an envelope to hold cash donations (we didn’t solicit cash donations, but some people donated cash, anyway) and bin of some sort to hold small items, and of course, fliers. We taped a sign to the lid of the bin for display.

Day of:

• Go collect food!

  Decide on the time that you will be at the stores. We were there from 10am until 2pm, and that seemed to be the busiest part of the day. Divide the number of volunteers per store into shifts. If there is only one volunteer, remember to send someone as a "runner" once in a while to give the volunteer a break. On hot days, your runner might bring cold drinks, also.

  If you have an excellent response, the food and supplies might pile up and get in the way, and you would need your runner to collect them during the day.

After the event:

• Post-event press

  Write a press release detailing the event and the results. You could tally the loot in lbs. For more info, see our facts and figures. Include a picture of your haul.

  Write a letter to the editor thanking the residents for their donations, stores for their participation, and the volunteers for their hard work.

Terms and conditions of use of the 4 Pet’s Sake logo.

You may use, alter, modify, or distribute the 4 Pet’s Sake logo for use with any not for profit and non-commercial use. You may not charge a fee associated with the use, altered or otherwise, or distribution of the 4 Pet’ s Sake logo.