Hearts Speak Inc

HeARTs Speak's goals are to embrace collaboration across many fields, improve the lives of animals, increase pet adoptions, and ultimately provide training and resources to those working and volunteering in the field of animal welfare. In the last decade, there has been a tremendous shift in animal welfare towards innovative lifesaving and bold programmatic changes to help more pets find or stay in their homes. While marketing has become a recognized + critical component to this movement, the concepts and skills are sometimes just out of reach for organizations struggling with resource deficits.

A 2014 survey of 783 shelter and rescue groups that HeARTs Speak performed found that 82.2% of those surveyed said that quality photographs are the most important part of marketing, and integral to effective lifesaving and visibility for their organization. Additionally, 61.9% felt their photographs needed to improve and 74.3% wanted support for writing better bios/pet descriptions. However, without training or opportunities to learn, these improvements and related goals remain elusive for many organizations.

Effective promotion of homeless pets doesn’t just impact adoption rates, but the variety of other programs that shelters and rescues undertake to increase adoptions, reduce intake, and increase overall lives saved. In the last decade, there has been a tremendous shift in animal welfare towards innovative lifesaving and bold programmatic changes to help more pets find or stay in their homes. While marketing has become a recognized + critical component of success, the concepts and skills involved are often just out of reach for organizations struggling with resource deficits, and often takes a backseat to urgent or emergency situations and the general triage-style nature of animal sheltering.

Our first strategy is to collaborate with and provide a community of support and resources for artists and creative professionals who provide pro bono services to animals shelters and rescues globally. This includes a large number of visual artists, graphic designers and photographers who create technically and stylistically proficient imagery, as well as marketing professionals, writers and volunteers of all kinds who create engaging and accurate bios and descriptions, and dazzling social media content. This strategy results in contributing to increasing adoptions and decreasing the length of time animals are waiting for their homes, while underwriting organizations of all shapes, sizes and kinds to engage in lifesaving goals.

Through the Perfect Exposure Project (PEP), our second strategy is harness the expertise of artist members and creative professionals and bring that information directly to shelters in the form of workshops that empower animal welfare staff and volunteers to be able to create photos, professional communications ---written content and digital marketing practices--- that will further their respective missions and goals.

Our third strategy uses the concept and curriculums of our PEP workshops to bring educational content to a larger audience, including but not limited to those unable to participate in in-person workshops, conferences or other hands-on learning experiences. HeARTs Speak EDU aims to put tools and resources, easily accessed online via downloadable tools, printables, templates, webinars and video tutorials, directly into the hands of animal sheltering staff, volunteers, artists and advocates. By eliminating barriers to access these skill-building and educational components, we hope to arm and inspire a new wave of animal advocates to invest in marketing, communications and imagery that will help to save the lives of shelter animals.

Our final strategy, through our Images with HeART program, is to provide stock photography for good, powered by the artists of HeARTs Speak! The program is a fresh spin on image licensing, merging the promotion of pet adoption and humane treatment of animals with a sustainable and ethical platform for artists to license their work. As with each of our strategies, we've designed this program to bring new attention to pet adoption and the work of shelters and rescues in the United States and abroad.

With more than 600 artist members, representing 21 countries and 48 states, countless animal shelter and rescue partners, a dedicated core of staff and volunteers, and proven-solutions to contribute towards existing problems for the animal welfare industry, HeARTs Speak's capabilities for meeting our goals are strong. We have all the pieces in place to continue to grow our organization, increase our impact and ultimately make a real difference for animals and the people who care about them. In more recent years, the growth of the PEP and EDU/Petblicity programs gives us access to more than 4,500 additional shelter staff and volunteers who in turn help to spread the word about HeARTs Speak programs and continue our grassroots growth.

Some of our major indicators of success and accomplishment and goals include: Increasing our artist membership with the addition of 80 new artists just this past year, each working with animal shelters or rescues in the U.S. and abroad, together providing 20,000+ hours of service monthly; Growing the Perfect Exposure Project by bringing 2-day workshops to more than 59 communities throughout the United States and reaching approximately 1500 shelter and rescue staff/volunteers who will work with more than 450,000 animals each year; and The EDU + Petblicty programs were recognized in 2018 with a spot as a finalist in a competition called the Innovation Showdown, earning HeARTs Speak a chance to pitch our innovative concept for an animal welfare marketing platform to a panel of funders and earning us a $40,000 investment. Usage of EDU + Petblicity resources increased by 537% with the addition of 56 new tools and resources — toolkits, printables, videos, and ebooks— to the library, and currently tops out at around 1000 downloads of our materials every month. Together, our programs are able to effect the lives of more than 1 million animals annually to help increase visibility through art and professional creative services, as well as to provide resources and training for those on the front lines of animal caretaking.