D650 Task 1 Capstone Project Proposal Example

The Dogs Nobody Clicks On: A Capstone Proposal to Shorten Stays for Long-Stay Dogs at a Composite County Animal Shelter Through Better Listings and Day-Out Stories

Student Name

School of Business, Western Governors University

D650: Communications Applied Learning Capstone, Task 1

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

The Dogs Nobody Clicks On: A Capstone Proposal to Shorten Stays for Long-Stay Dogs at a Composite County Animal Shelter Through Better Listings and Day-Out Stories

The Organization

Riverbend County Animal Services, a composite open-admission shelter in a county of about 310,000 people in central Ohio, takes in roughly 4,800 dogs and cats a year. It employs 26 staff, relies on about 140 active volunteers and has a one-person communications role shared with the volunteer coordinator. Adoption listings appear on the shelter's website, two national adoption listing sites and its Facebook and Instagram accounts. The shelter's director has agreed to host this capstone project and to share adoption and listing data for the project period.

Topic and Problem Statement

The broad topic is how a public shelter communicates about adoptable animals. Narrowed, the project focuses on one group: dogs who have been at the shelter for more than 30 days. Last year, dogs as a whole had a median length of stay of 11 days, but 190 dogs stayed longer than 30 days, and those dogs used about 40% of the shelter's dog kennel days. Long stays are costly, since each kennel day costs about $22 in care, and they are hard on the dogs, whose behavior in a loud kennel often gets worse over time, which makes them even less likely to be chosen.

The communication problem is that long-stay dogs are nearly invisible. Their listings are the oldest on every site, and staff photos taken through kennel doors at intake are often dark and show a stressed dog. A review of 60 current long-stay listings found that 48 used a kennel photo, 41 had descriptions of fewer than 40 words, and most described what the dog needs, such as no cats or an experienced owner, before saying anything about who the dog is. Listing views for these dogs averaged 14 a week, compared with 96 for dogs listed in their first week.

Problem statement: Riverbend's long-stay dogs are presented through listings that attract little attention and give adopters little reason to visit, which contributes to stays that are costly to the shelter and harmful to the dogs.

Research Questions

The project will answer three questions. First, do long-stay dogs whose listings are rewritten with outdoor photos and personality-first descriptions receive more listing views and adoption inquiries than long-stay dogs with standard listings? Second, does adding a short story from a volunteer day-out outing, in which a volunteer takes a dog off-site for a few hours and posts photos and notes, increase inquiries further? Third, are dogs in either group adopted sooner than similar dogs from the same period last year?

Each question can be answered with data the shelter already collects or can easily add: listing views from the listing sites' dashboards, inquiries logged by front desk staff, and intake and outcome dates in the shelter's records system.

What the Research Suggests

Research supports the idea that how a dog is presented online affects how quickly it is adopted. A study of the first listing photos of 468 adopted black Labrador retriever mixes across the United States found that overall photo quality had the largest effect on time to adoption, and that eye contact with the camera, a standing dog, an outdoor setting and a sharp, properly sized image were also linked to faster adoption; photos taken in a cage had no measurable effect either way (Lampe & Witte, 2015). The authors describe better photos as a cheap way to speed adoptions, which fits a shelter with one shared communications role.

Research on time out of the kennel points in the same direction for different reasons. When shelter dogs spent one or two nights in temporary foster homes, their urinary cortisol dropped significantly during the stay, a sign of lower stress (Gunter et al., 2019). Shorter outings of about two and a half hours did not produce the same stress reduction, but the researchers suggested that outings may still help adoptions by making dogs more visible, and called for that effect to be studied (Gunter et al., 2021). This project tests exactly that possibility: whether the story and photos from an outing increase adopter interest.

Proposed Approach

For eight weeks, every dog who reaches 30 days at the shelter will be assigned by coin flip to one of two groups. The comparison group keeps the standard listing. The project group receives a rewritten listing: at least three outdoor photos taken by trained volunteers, a description of 100 to 150 words that begins with the dog's personality and a short scene from daily life, and a plain statement of any needs near the end. Half of the project group, again assigned by coin flip, will also go on at least one volunteer day-out outing, with a short post and photos added to the listing and shared on social media.

I will write a two-page listing guide, train six volunteer photographers in a one-hour session, draft each new description, and have the adoption supervisor review it for accuracy about the dog's behavior. Accuracy matters: a listing that oversells a dog can lead to a returned adoption, which is worse for the dog than a longer stay.

Measures and Data

Three measures will be tracked for each dog: weekly listing views, adoption inquiries by phone, email or visit, and days from the 30-day mark to adoption or the end of the project. A fourth measure, returns within 30 days of adoption, will check that better listings do not produce poor matches. With about 15 new long-stay dogs a month, the project should include 30 to 35 dogs, which is enough to describe differences but not to prove them statistically. The capstone report will present these results honestly as a pilot.

Stakeholder Feedback and Timeline

The shelter director and adoption supervisor will review the listing guide in week one and the first ten rewritten listings in week two, and will sit down with me every other Friday to look at the numbers. Volunteers will complete a short survey at the end about the day-out program's workload. Weeks 1 and 2: guide, training and first listings. Weeks 3 to 8: ongoing listings, outings and data collection. Weeks 9 and 10: analysis and a presentation of results and recommendations to the director.

Ethical Considerations

No personal information about adopters will be collected beyond what the shelter already records, and the report will show group totals only. Day-out outings will follow the shelter's existing volunteer handling rules, and dogs with bite histories will be excluded from outings. Every listing will describe each dog's needs honestly.

Conclusion

This project takes a broad goal, better communication about adoptable animals, and narrows it to a measurable problem: long-stay dogs whose listings give adopters little reason to look twice. Using research on listing photos and time out of the kennel, a simple comparison design and data the shelter already collects, it will show whether better stories can shorten stays.

References

Gunter, L. M., Feuerbacher, E. N., Gilchrist, R. J., & Wynne, C. D. L. (2019). Evaluating the effects of a temporary fostering program on shelter dog welfare. PeerJ, 7, Article e6620. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6620

Gunter, L. M., Gilchrist, R. J., Blade, E. M., Barber, R. T., Feuerbacher, E. N., Platzer, J. M., & Wynne, C. D. L. (2021). Investigating the impact of brief outings on the welfare of dogs living in US shelters. Animals, 11(2), Article 548. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11020548

Lampe, R., & Witte, T. H. (2015). Speed of dog adoption: Impact of online photo traits. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 18(4), 343-354. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888705.2014.982796