Home 4 the Holidays' Adoptions Top 1M

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Home 4 the Holidays' spokesman, John Van Zante, left, poses with NFL player Darren Sproles, an example of one celebrity who has helped publicize nonprofit's holiday adoption program.(Photo Courtesy of Home 4 the Holidays)

NEW YORK -- 1,202,751.

This isn't about money -- it's the number of pets that have cashed out big, with Iams Home 4 the Holidays surpassing its goal of facilitating one million adoptions during the holiday season.

Or, as the nonprofit's spokesman John Van Zante likes to say, one adoption conducted one million times.

It took around three months for 591,533 dogs, 543,569 cats and 67,649 rabbits, birds and amphibians across the world to receive a one-way ticket out of a shelter, the organization announced yesterday afternoon.

"When we talked about this goal last year, someone mentioned one million and I laughed out loud and thought, 'Yeah, right.' And here we are today, still getting reports in," Van Zante said.

Established in 1999, Home 4 the Holidays is operated through the Helen Woodward Animal Center, a no-kill shelter in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. An Iams pet food partnership ensures that every animal that gets adopted goes home with a bag of the company's chow.

Working against the grain of many other animal shelters and rescue organizations, Home 4 the Holidays tries to encourage, and not bar, adoptions during the holidays. This year, the contest ran from Oct. 1 to Jan. 5.

Home 4 the Holidays was bombarded for days after the contest concluded with adoption reports from its 3,565 affiliated shelters. The efforts spanned international borders, picking up steam in Iran, Iraq, Cyprus, India, Guam and Australia, among other countries.

The program's contagious nature marked a sharp shift from its standing in 2000, when it facilitated only 19,998 adoptions. Last year, its partnered shelters adopted out 491,612 animals, a relatively slight increase from the 378,764 pets that found homes in 2006.

Though the program surpassed its own expectations, this year's success didn't catch Home 4 the Holidays' President Mike Arms off guard.

"It didn't come as too big of a surprise, and the reason was that we added an additional four weeks to the program," he said. "We knew that that helped and that we had more than 3,500 shelters working with us."

The extra time was added after Canadian shelters suggested switching the dates to accommodate Canada's Thanksgiving, the second Monday of every October.

"Shelters told us what their needs were and we responded to that," Van Zante said.

Yet as Arms watched the stock market continue to plunge throughout the fall season, he became concerned that the rate of adoptions would dip, as well.

"Were we scared for a while?" he asked. "Yup. The economy started going down and we thought this could have such an effect on helping the little ones."

In the end, though, it all worked out accordingly to the plan, and then some; Van Zante and Arms simply credit their success to a strong business model.

"A lot of it is about marketing," Van Zante said. "We are very adamant that a nonprofit business is still a business. We have to act as one because other operations, our competition, like puppy mills and pet stores, do. Their goal is to make a profit. Ours is to make a match."

Van Zante says Home 4 the Holidays tries to yield publicity in any way possible, and to then always direct media attention to the animals.

For example, last week the Helen Woodward Animal Shelter was broken into and robbed of more than $1,000. When the television news crews arrived to interview Van Zante, he went before the cameras holding a puppy.

The animals' appearance on camera was a premeditated, conscious decision, Arms said.

"You have to make sure you are out there on TV with the cutest puppies and kittens," Arms said. "Most Americans will never walk into an animal shelter because they believe it is a depressing place that harbors throw-away pets. You have to make people think otherwise."

Home 4 the Holidays has also enlisted the help of various celebrities, including actresses Diane Keaton, Felicity Huffman and Kristin Bell, as well as San Diego Chargers' running back Darren Sproles, to place a recognizable face on the program's label.

When the media doesn't come knocking at the door, shelters should try to generate news themselves, Van Zante suggests.

He recalled a Utah shelter that orchestrated an elaborate publicity stunt, teaming up with a local mall: It "kidnapped" the mall's Santa Claus, placed him in a kennel, and then said that Santa would be released when the shelter met its adoption goal that week.

Home 4 the Holidays offers detailed publicity materials to all participating shelters, including tips on how to orchestrate events and gain publicity. Formulaic press releases are also available to shelters that don't have a strong background in handling the media.

From there, the animals essentially adopt themselves out, Van Zante said.

"We try to increase our exposure through the media to let people know that you have an option. You can support puppy mills, backyard breeders, or you can save the life of a pet," he said.

"We have a great product -- we offer unconditional love."

Home 4 the Holidays has yet to set a goal for next year's contest, but it will likely be more than one million.

"If we realize we can work together and market animals, we can really increase our adoptions," Arms said.

Judging from this year's results, the potential of Home 4 the Holidays' future growth should not be capped -- or undermined.

"Over one million animals is great, but our numeric goal can't be the driving force," Van Zante said. "It has to be creating a lifetime match, one at a time. If we ever lose sight of that, we have to do something else."

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