Dear Prospective Volunteer

Thanks so much for being interested in joining our team. Our volunteers are the backbone of our organization and provide essential support to our staff as well as a framework of trust and love for our dear senior residents.
However, volunteering at Frankie and Andy’s Place is not the usual animal shelter volunteer experience. We are a full-time, 24-7 hospice facility for old, painful and mobility impaired dogs. Those who come to help must possess excellent dog handling skills, an understanding of senior dogs’ needs and a willingness to learn, as well as to get their hands dirty. Our dogs require expert care and responsible monitoring; our amazing volunteers are a cut above the average animal shelter volunteer and understand that this is a working hospice facility, with sick animals. Think of it as a luxury veterinary hospital without the surgical procedures and the most attentive nursing team you can imagine, and you’d be right. If you already have some animal handling skills, we welcome you to join our crew of happy sanctuary volunteers.
You will be joining an amazing team of like-minded individuals, you will make many friends and you will spend many happy hours working with them to better the lives of our residents.

Before filling in this application, we’d like to fill you in on the requirements we have of our volunteers so that you don’t fill out this form unnecessarily.

1. All volunteers must be happy to commit to volunteering at the very minimum one visit every two weeks for a period of not less than two hours. This is to maintain a close, knowing relationship with the dogs and to keep apace with changes to our residents, which happen frequently.
2. You will have a four week orientation / shadow with an experienced volunteer whom you will shadow for one session every week for four weeks to learn all about the dogs, the facility, security and how to handle emergencies. Please do not start this process if you are not going to be able to maintain this four week momentum, followed by your first few months volunteer visits. It is always best to start with us AFTER you’ve had that two week vacation or lengthy planned hospital stay etc.
3. We are not a facility where you can bring friends and family to show them what you do here and let them meet the residents that you love. All visitors and volunteers have to undergo a strict background check and all volunteers have to complete the four week orientation/ shadowing shifts before they are allowed on the premises without a senior staff member to escort them. Once training is over, volunteers are allowed to enter the facility and carry out a volunteer shift without a staff member or mentor.
4. We have different kinds of volunteers for each part of our mission.
   i) We have ‘Super volunteers’ who come in once a week or more to help clean, do laundry, help with the gardening etc., Super Volunteers tend to stay at the cabin for anything between 2 and 4 hours each visit.
   ii) We have regular volunteers who come in to love on the dogs, keep them company and give cuddles and keep an eye to make sure they’re safe. Once you are trained and able to visit the cabin solo, it is a time requirement of 2-3 hours, minimum every two weeks.
   iii) We have offsite volunteers who come to help just with our pet food pantry outreach, getting up early a couple of times a month to help distribute free pet food to needy families in local communities. There is no extensive training required for this volunteer work, we appreciate you coming out to help us and can train you on site, as you go. This is a time requirement of just 1.5 hours at each event.
   iiii) We have volunteers who come to help pack food bags or transport food for our food pantry. This yet again requires no training, as there is no access to the senior dogs sanctuary, although you do help pack in the car park at our facility.

If you are still interested in joining us, please fill out the application form, being sure to a copy of your driving license and clear referees information.

We do thorough background checks because our dogs are very fragile beings and also because this is not just a sanctuary, it is also our home, we live on site, and so we want to make sure that we only welcome folks with the purest of intentions.

We sincerely hope this answers some of your questions and look forward to hearing from you.