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Step One: Understand the Requirements
Minimum Age
Anyone interested in volunteering must be 18 years old. We do not offer a youth program for volunteers under the age of 18. If you are under 18 and interested in helping the animals in your community, you can host a donation drive in your neighborhood to collect towels, blankets, and newspapers. Download a flyer here.
Time Commitment
To volunteer at the Animal Care Center, you must be able to commit a minimum of 5 hours weekly for at least 6 months.
If you need signatures for community service, class assignments, or other special programs: You must complete 60 hours of volunteer service (not including orientation and training time) before submitting any forms for signature, even if your program requires fewer hours. Requests before you have logged 60 volunteer hours will not be honored. |
Materials Fee
Volunteers are responsible for a $35 materials fee, which includes training materials, volunteer apron, t-shirt, and badge. It is mandatory for volunteers to wear their apron and badge while volunteering at the Animal Care Center. |
Experience Required
Our volunteers fulfill a variety of roles and perform many different assignments. This ranges from helping with administrative tasks to helping with projects around the facility to working with our animals.
- To work with the animals, you must have prior animal handling experience. For instance, if you want to socialize cats, you must have had a cat of your own or had significant experience with cats.
- No experience? If you want to help, but you don't have the experience, don't worry! We have plenty of other volunteer opportunities where we can put your help and skills to good use.
Adult Day Care or Developmental Services Programs : Supervisors are REQUIRED to attend the entire training session(s) with your client and stay with their clients EACH time they volunteer for the entire time they are volunteering. If you have specific questions on this, please call (408) 794-7211.
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Step Two: Read the Volunteer Handbook
Click here to download our Pet Pal Volunteer Handbook. This manual provides important information about the expectations and experience of Animal Care Center volunteers. Before you apply to be a volunteer, you are required to read the entire manual, and you will be expected to know and follow rules and procedures that are covered in the handbook.
Step Three: Check Out Our Volunteer Positions
Not Directly Working With Animals
All of these roles are open to new volunteer applicants. These roles do not require previous animal experience. Most of these roles do not require previous experience, but may have other specific requirements. For all roles, volunteering must be done on-site at the shelter, unless otherwise indicated. Training for these roles are generally offered once a month.
Category |
Tasks |
Availability |
Apply |
Licensing
(Administrative) |
Opening mail, stuffing envelopes, filing, data entry and territory lookup assignments. More |
Open |
Apply |
Shelter - Front End
(Customer Service) |
Answering questions from the public, retrieving voicemails from the phone line, conducting lost pet tours, and more. More |
Open |
Shelter - Back End
(Clean Team) |
Laundry, dishes, stocking adoption rooms and kennel areas, cleaning support for kennel staff, and more. More |
Open |
Working With Animals
To volunteer with our animals, you must have animal handling experience for the type of animal you want to volunteer with. This means that you are already confident, comfortable and capable of interacting with animals properly and safely. You must have a strong understanding of animal body language. Applicants will be thoroughly interviewed about animal handling experience during training. These requirements are designed for your safety as well as the safety of our animals.
Applicants should expect to spend 8-10 hours doing volunteer training. This involves instruction about behavior and health of shelter animals, how to work specifically with our adoptable animals, and extensive shelter procedures. During this training, applicants must pass written and practical exams before being accepted into the volunteer program. Training for these roles are generally offered once every 2 months.
Positions for New Volunteers
Open to all new volunteer applicants with animal handling experience. |
Category |
Tasks |
Availability |
Apply |
Dog |
Walk and exercise adoption dogs. Provide basic training to imcrease adoptability. More |
Open |
Apply
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Cat |
Socialize and exercise adoptable cats. Provide human interaction and affection. More |
Open |
Rabbit |
Socialize and exercise adoptable rabbits. Provide human interaction, affection, and socialization. More |
Open |
Small Animal |
Socialize and handle adoptable small animals, such as rats, mice, gerbils, and guinea pigs. More |
Open |
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