Overview

The problem that we noticed when visiting the Sandy City Animal Shelter was the

amount of in and out traffic of the actual facility and the attention the animals were being

given. Another thing we noticed was the kennels in need of padding and a bit of clean up.

Our proposal for solving this problem

was to host an adoption day for the animal

shelter in hopes to find better homes for

these animals. The adoption day was

designed to spread the word to the

community in hopes to get people here in a

fun environment to see if the animals were a

good fit for their home. We accomplished this

by creating a flyer and getting in touch with

the Sandy City marketing team to really get

the community excited and spread the word

about the event.

Kasey, Juan, Kalee, and Margaret setting up the
kittens to be looked at during adoption day! In addition to these things we also

created a publicity video by taking pictures of the animals and making a video to play in the

background of the event to create excitement for potential owners. The director was very

helpful and responsive during our weeks of planning. He helped us connect with people to get

the word out about the event and helped with getting donations for the goodie bags in which

we created before the actual event.

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 We were able to pack about 20 bags with some toys, treats and coupons to give to the

families that adopted the animals during our event. With the director’s enthusiasm and help we

were able to complete the adoption day and get several animals adopted. At the end of the day

our service project was really successful in that animals were adopted and the wellbeing of the

animals and the shelter were improved. The value of our proposal was that we were able to

help the shelter by completing odds and end jobs. This benefitted the wellbeing of the animals

still in the shelter.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Our purpose of this project before the official site visit was to create an adoption day for

the animal shelter and help the animals get to a better home. After we did the actual site visit

and talked to Director Williams our purpose

completely changed. The director gave us a ton of

ideas of stuff we could potentially do that would best

serve the community and we became eager to help

out and complete all of his ideas. Our purpose

changed from just a simple project to one that

created a much bigger impact on the shelter and the

community. Our purpose now was to get in contact

with various places for donations, make a publicity

video, create a flyer and get in contact with different

Sandy City social media platforms to get word out

Kalee and Linzi helping hold the dog
while the paperwork was being filled way in advance. The first thing we did when we got
out.

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there was got the video up and going to help the potential families see what kind of animals

were there and just how friendly they are. We then separated into our assigned task groups.

The first group was in charge of packing the bags for the animals adopted. The second

group was in charge of directing the traffic of people coming in to adopt and helping with the

animals in any way needed. After 4 hours we made 15 goodie bags and had a great turn out of

people that actually came through to look and play with the animals. We made sure to set goals

as teams along the way and also as managers to better help the employees throughout the day.

We were able to all interact with each other as well as the people coming through to look at the

animals. At the end we were able to play with the left over animals and it made all the

volunteer animals very worth it for everyone involved.

Linzi, Allie, and Juan helping clean up after

the pregnant dog.

GROUP ASSETS

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 One asset we found was a great use was self-directed/self-motivated teams. Self-

directed/self-motivated teams are teams that are “responsible for managing their own

behavior to get a task done instead of being managed by a supervisor, coach or manager”

(Adler, Communication 1010 Communicating at

Work, The McGraw-Hill companies, 2013, pg. 195).

Instead of us as managers having to direct each

team member for all the little tasks, we made an

environment so the teams self-directed

themselves. Using these types of teams helped

things run way smoothly and more efficiently. It

helped communication with everyone in the group

and helped us as managers not have to

micromanage in a way. They knew exactly what

Margret and Kasey mopping the play room was expected and how and what to do during

which time periods.

The second asset that we found was great communication which in the end helped us

be very effective. “You can communicate in ways that help the teams work effectively and

make the experience satisfying” (Adler, Communication 1010 Communicating at Work, The

McGraw-Hill companies, 2013, pg. 197). Having effective communication with in our teams was

very crucial in accomplishing what needed to be done for the project. It also made the teams

gain trust with one another and really rely on one another to solve problems that came up. This

made the environment fun and enjoyable.

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GROUP LIMITATIONS
One limitation that our group ran into during this service project was that we didn’t

have a concept of shared purpose. Even though we all were familiar with each other and we

had assigned tasks at certain times we were still

lacking a shared purpose. To fix this shared

problem if we had the opportunity to do this

project over we would start our project with

“discussing purpose issue next time we would

talk more about the collective goal; we would

give a clear sense of a shared purpose” (Adler,

Communications 1010 Communicating at Work,

The McGraw-Hill companies, 2013, pg. 187).

We ended up accomplishing a lot more than we

intended at the beginning of the project and

Allie and Juan helping put the play room back
together after cleaning it. but we didn’t all have the same shared

purpose which would have made our team more productive knowing why they were doing this.

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Another limitation we had was when things weren’t working smoothly or someone wasn’t

doing their assigned we didn’t give others the chance to give back feedback on leadership or

different ways to make it more affective. Being able to give perspective on leadership is

important for people, and leaders as well to

grow. “Different team members can take

part in providing leadership to the team”

(Adler, Communications 1010

Communicating at Work, The McGraw-Hill

companies, 2013, pg. 191).

I think it’s always smart to get others

feed bad to help everyone in the group as

leaders to be able to grow and make a

happier environment for everyone. An

example of this in our project was one

member in our group was getting tired and Kalee picking up after a family played with a dog.

frustrated with her assigned task which

made it hard for the people that came through to talk to them. If we allowed for feedback we

would have been able to solve this problem and came up with a solution that would have been

better for everyone.

If we from the beginning we would’ve been talking to each other and communicating

things that weren’t working from the very start. We would have eliminated a lot of problems

and been able to work more effectively.

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RECOMMENDATIONS

If we had the opportunity to do this project again we would have changed up a couple

things that we did throughout the project. When potential families came and asked questions

about animals the ability of some members to influence a group because of the information

they possess (Adler, Communications 1010 Communicating at Work, The McGraw-Hill

companies, 2013, pg. 196). Only some of the group members knew different things about

certain animals which made us look uneducated about the actual animals. This caused some

confusion but towards the end of the day we knew several facts about most of the animals.

We were able to share some of the

facts about the animals and gain a better

knowledge so when asked questions about

them we knew a little more than we did

before. By working together and helping each

other out when needed we were able to

complete the actual adoption day with better

skills on how to be a good team player. If we

had these facts in the back of our minds at the

beginning of the project I think it would have

been more productive and flowed more

smoothly but I don’t think it caused that big of

Kasey, Margret, and Juan helping Caw’s bring
a problem after we were able to listen and in their supplies to help with the adoption day.

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learn from each other. Again we improvised with the things we individually knew and helped

each other out when another group

member didn’t know something.

Another thing we would’ve

changed was making sure we had enough

supplies to make the goodies bags for

animals adopted. By having a large supply

of reliable donations would’ve made it

possible for performing better functional

role because they involve functions that

are necessary for the team to do its job

(Adler, Communications 1010

Communicating at Work, The McGraw-Hill

The coupons we got for 50% off dog grooming for
companies, 2013, pg. 198). We realized the goodie bags.

while packing the bags we would probably run out of donations to make our goal amount of

bags which was about 20. If we would’ve planned a little better on how many donations were

actually being donated and how many bags that would have accounted for we wouldn’t have

had this problem. We were able to improvise and make enough bags for the animals actually

adopted at the event.

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CONCLUSION
Being a project manager’s for this project was not a simple task. Our group had an extra

group leader and it was a little difficult to plan to go meet with the animal shelter all at one

time. We were able to work this out and differing opinions to create a very successful adoption

day and a more improved area for future animals to reside.

During the planning of the project

there was a lot of hours put in before the

actual project such as getting the word

out about the actual adoption day

making sure we had enough donations to

make the goodie bags for adopted

animals and finding a date that would

The goodie bags are packed
work well around the holiday, sandy city

events, and the schedules of everyone

involved. Despite these setbacks we were

able to accomplish all the things we

needed to by strict planning and

Kalee taking a family back to look at the animals. improvising with the supplies we did

have and work with other people to get

the supplies we needed.

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 The project ended up running very smoothly and was a lot easier than we expected.

Having strict time assignments made it easier as group managers because company students

knew exactly where they needed to be at the exact time they needed to be there. This created

a stress and confusion free project which helped the people that came to the adoption day to

be more at ease and able to find where different things were. Completing this service project

didn’t only help the animals in the Sandy City Animal, it also improved the actual Shelter for

future animals and helped us as students grow closer and find joy in serving.

Kalee, Margert, Kasey, and Juan after making goodie bags

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Works Cited
Adler, Ronald, Jeanne Elmhorst and Kristen Lucas . Communications 1010 Communicating at Work . The
McGraw-Hill companies, 2013.

The whole group meeting the animals and

learning a little big before the adoption day
started.

Getting the bunnies ready for display

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