Volunteer .JPG)
We're thrilled you're interested in volunteering with Best Friends Animal Society - Utah. As a leader in animal welfare, Best Friends is quite active throughout the state to achieve the mission of No More Homeless Pets ®. Below is a brief description of our programs and initiatives to get you acclimated with our needs here in Utah, as well as next steps for signing up to volunteer.
Kitten Nursery: Help feed bottle-baby kittens at the nursery at Salt Lake County Animal Services. Click here for more information.
Pet Adoption Center: Our Pet Adoption Center in Sugar House features cats and dogs available for adoption from our adoption program, Salt Lake County Animal Services and West Valley Animal Services. Weekly shifts are available for volunteers to assist with animal care. Volunteers are required to attend a new orientation, and must be 18 years old to work with dogs.
Utah Beer Fest: Best Friends Animal Society is excited to partner with City Weekly for the 4th Annual Utah Beer Festival as the charity recipient. Best Friends will provide volunteers to help run the festival and, in exchange, will receive a portion of the profits, stage time and premium booth placement to promote our cause, our new adoption center and Strut Your Mutt (as well as showing off a few furry friends that may just find their forever homes)! Volunteers will receive a t-shirt and admission to the festival for the portion of the day you are not volunteering. So, come help support Best Friends and enjoy being part of this exciting event. Volunteers must be at least 21 years of age to participate in this event. A mandatory orientation will take place
Saturday August 4 at 2 pm, location TBD. Learn more and sign-up
here.
Cool Cats of Summer Adoption Event: An adoption event for cats only! It will be held June 28-30 at PetSmart (389 W 1830 S, Salt Lake City). Sign-up
here.
Super Adoption: We hold at least 2 Super Adoptions in the Salt Lake valley a year where we provide the infrastructure for rescue groups and shelters across Utah to showcase there adoptable animals. We have between 800-900 animals available for adoption at each event and about 500 volunteers are needed to make the event happen from set-up to tear-down.
Community Cat Program: Our community cat program provides TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return) assistance all across the state. Volunteers are needed to help with everything from education and outreach to trapping and care giving of cats.
Strut Your Mutt: Strut Your Mutt is our big fundraiser of the year. The next one is coming up September 21, 2013. Sign-up
here.
Shelter Partnerships: We partner with several different municipal shelters to provide them with volunteers to assist with adoptions promotions, photography and clerical work.
Spay/Neuter Outreach: We offer several different ways to help the public get their animals spayed and neutered. Volunteers are needed to help educate the public about the benefits of spay/neuter and our programs to assist them.
Foster: Best Friends - Utah is always looking for foster homes for our adoptions program. You can fill out an application and read more about the program
here.
Other opportunities: There are lots of things to do administratively at our office in Sandy. We need help with everything from data entry to preparing items for our Spay/Neuter clinics.
Signing up for a New Volunteer Orientation 
All volunteers are required to go through volunteer orientation before actively volunteering at anything besides Strut Your Mutt and Super Adoption. Visit
http://bfas.org/slcorientation, click "I AM INTERESTED" under the volunteer orientation date and time that works for you, and create or log into your volunteer account to finalize the RSVP process.
A few things to note:
- Please remember your user ID and password when creating a profile, as you will be using this account often for volunteering.
- If the current listed orientation dates do not work for you OR there are no dates listed, please visit the link again in the future to sign up.
- Volunteers must be at least 12 years old (and supervised by a parent or guardian while volunteering if 12-14 years old).
- There is an additional form for youth volunteers, so please alert the Utah Volunteer Department or your volunteer orientation host if you are under 18 years old so we can provide you the proper documents and forms .
- If you have any additional questions or concerns, contact the Utah Volunteer Coordinator at utahvolunteer@bestfriends.org.
- We do accept community service volunteers depending on the charges. We ask that you complete a minimum of 50 hours with us before we will write a letter to the courts for you. Orientation does not count towards your hours and we ask that you contact the volunteer coordinator prior to signing up for orientation.
Thank you again for becoming a Best Friends - Utah volunteer. Please also join us on
Facebook and on
Twitter.
For more information, contact our volunteer coordinator at utahvolunteer@bestfriends.org or 801-432-2124 x2423.