Improve foster retention with research-backed workflows, clear communication, and 24/7 triage support trained on your shelter's protocols.
Fostering should feel meaningful, supported, and doable, not overwhelming or uncertain.
The research is clear: the will to foster is strong. In a recent prospective study across five U.S. shelters, 86% of foster caregivers said they would foster again (Powell et al., 2024). Hill's Pet Nutrition's 2024 State of Shelter Pet Adoption Report found 64% of potential foster caregivers said they'd be likely to foster if the costs of pet care were covered (Hill's Pet Nutrition, 2024).
What stops people isn't lack of caring. It's structural friction: schedule conflicts, family circumstances, burnout, and a lack of support from the shelter when things get hard.
Pawsitive Foster, and Pawsitive Foster AI, give caregivers the support they've never had, and coordinators the breathing room they've always needed.
The largest study of foster caregiver turnover in the U.S., over 4,500 caregivers surveyed by University of North Carolina Charlotte and funded by Maddie's Fund, gives the clearest picture available of why fosters stop volunteering.
Top 5 reasons for voluntary turnover (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017):
For current fosters specifically, the picture sharpens:
A separate study of 611 dog foster caregivers found that 74% discontinued because their schedule was no longer compatible with fostering, and approximately 50% mentioned burnout, lack of support from their animal shelter, and issues between fostered dogs and family members as reasons they stopped (Reese et al., 2024, in Phillips & Gunter, 2024).
Some of these (schedule, life events) feel like things the shelter can't control.
But here's what the same research found, and this is the part most shelters never hear:
The #1 thing that would have kept ex-fosters and fosters on a break, across every group, was improving communication. Followed closely by offering more training, more flexibility, more recognition, and more opportunities for fosters to give input (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017).
Communication isn't the #1 reason fosters leave. Communication is the #1 thing that brings them back.
That's a much more important finding than the usual narrative, and it's a lever shelters can actually pull.
So why don't shelters pull that lever?
Because the tools they've been forced to use weren't built for it.
Legacy shelter software platforms:
These systems weren't designed for foster caregiving, only for kennels, compliance, and records.
Fosters didn't fail the system.
The system failed them.
The training and support gap is well documented. The largest U.S. survey of dog foster caregivers found that only about 70% of caregivers felt they had adequate training before fostering, and under 50% reported receiving food, supplies, a foster mentor, support for medical issues, enrichment items, or sufficient communication from the animal shelter (Reese et al., 2024, in Phillips & Gunter, 2024). The Maddie's Fund / UNC Charlotte study confirms the impact: 20 to 35% of ex-fosters reported they did not receive training from their organization, and lack of training was directly correlated with a lower likelihood of continuing to foster (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017).
You can't recognize, support, train, or communicate with fosters at scale without the infrastructure to do it. That's not a willpower problem. It's a tooling vacuum.
The research points consistently at the same set of needs.
The #1 retention lever in the largest U.S. foster turnover study (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017).
Especially on basic handling, behavioral issues, and medical care, the three areas most strongly correlated with retention (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017).
Bottle-baby fading, URI symptoms, behavior questions, "is this normal" panic at 10pm. Reese et al. (2022) found that nearly a quarter of foster caregivers report that fostering animals with behavioral issues is emotionally difficult and draining, while 7% say medical cases are emotionally challenging (in Phillips & Gunter, 2024).
Without fear of "bothering" anyone, at any time of day or night.
Specifically named in the Maddie's Fund / UNC findings as a significant predictor of continued fostering.
Adult dogs with known behavioral issues are 3x more likely to be returned from foster when caregivers aren't equipped for them (Gunter et al., 2022, in Phillips & Gunter, 2024). Better matches mean better experiences mean longer-staying fosters.
A 2026 Best Friends Animal Society survey of nearly 650 network partner organizations found that shelters that empower their foster caregivers to help with adoptions (promoting the animals, attending meet-and-greets, championing their pet) adopt out 77% of their animals on average (Best Friends Animal Society, 2026). Fosters know their animals better than anyone. Letting them participate isn't risk; it's leverage.
Roseveare et al. (2023) note that fosterers describe a sense of meaningful connection and value being part of a supportive community. Strong attachment to fostered animals, the same paper notes, is positively associated with willingness to continue, not negatively, as commonly assumed.
When fosters ask:
Pawsitive Foster AI gives them:
This addresses the lack of shelter support that ~50% of discontinuing fosters cite (Reese et al., 2024, in Phillips & Gunter, 2024). It's the difference between a foster feeling alone at 11pm and feeling held.
No more scattered texts, emails, DMs, or lost instructions. Everything lives in one thread: visible, searchable, central.
This is the #1 retention lever shelters can pull, finally implemented at infrastructure level (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017).
Pickups, drop-offs, medical visits, reminders, all automated. No more "Did they see this?" No more resending messages. No more manual tracking.
Lower scheduling friction has measurable program impact. Maddie's Fund's 2022 survey of 2,406 organizations found that shelters with onboarding wait times of less than one day placed a median of 270 pets in foster care annually. Shelters with wait times over a month placed only 20 (Maddie's Fund, 2023). When you reduce friction at every touchpoint, more animals get into homes.
Feeding charts, medication schedules, signs to monitor, weight logs: always accessible inside the app, always tied to the specific animal in the foster's care.
This closes the training gap that 20 to 35% of ex-fosters report they experienced (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017), without putting more on the coordinator's plate.
Foster activity, milestones, and contributions are visible: to fosters themselves, to coordinators, and to leadership.
The "feeling appreciated" and "feeling that input matters" levers identified in the Maddie's Fund findings, finally surfaced in workflow.
When fosters feel supported, they thrive.
When they thrive, they stay.
When they stay, coordinators breathe easier.
When coordinators breathe, programs stabilize.
When programs stabilize, more animals survive.
This is how support becomes lifesaving.
And it works at scale: foster-based rescues, built around exactly this kind of caregiver-centered model, place 75% of their animals vs. the shelter average of 56% (Shelter Animals Count & Pawlytics, 2025). And in the Best Friends 2026 survey, shelters that simply have a foster program at all adopt out 68% of animals on average vs. 48% at shelters without foster programs (Best Friends Animal Society, 2026).
Strong foster retention isn't a nice-to-have. It's the math of community-based animal welfare.
A note worth surfacing: foster volunteer populations are predominantly female, under 65, and from ethnic majorities (Roseveare et al., 2023; Phillips & Gunter, 2024). Hill's State of Shelter Pet Adoption Report found that 64% of potential fosters said they'd foster if costs of care were covered (Hill's Pet Nutrition, 2024), a cost barrier disproportionately felt by lower-income communities, including communities of color and immigrant communities that are often underrepresented in foster rosters.
A modern foster platform can support more equitable engagement: lower-language-barrier interfaces, mobile-first design, transparent cost-coverage workflows, and outreach tools that meet new caregivers where they actually are. Pawsitive Foster is built with this in mind.
The will to help is already there. The infrastructure to keep volunteers in the work is what's been missing.
See how Pawsitive Foster and Pawsitive Foster AI transform foster recruitment and retention from a chronic challenge into a predictable, scalable program.
Self-serve signup on the pricing page. Give your fosters the support layer this month's recruits will stay for.
The largest U.S. turnover study (n=4,588) found the top reasons are needing time for their own pets, adopting their fosters, schedule incompatibility, personal issues, and living situation (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017). Among current fosters, burnout is the #2 reason. In a study of 611 dog fosters, 74% discontinued over schedule and about 50% cited burnout and lack of shelter support (Reese et al., 2024, in Phillips & Gunter, 2024).
Communication, first and above everything: across every group surveyed, improving communication was the #1 thing that would have kept them, followed by more training, flexibility, recognition, and input (Rogelberg & Williams, 2017). The will is already there: 86% of fosters say they would foster again (Powell et al., 2024).
Lower the barriers the data points to. 64% of potential fosters said they'd be likely to foster if pet care costs were covered (Hill's Pet Nutrition, 2024), and onboarding speed is decisive: organizations with wait times under one day place a median of 270 pets in foster annually vs. 20 when the wait exceeds a month (Maddie's Fund, 2023).
Yes. Organizations that empower fosters to help with adoptions (promoting their animals, attending meet-and-greets, championing their pet) adopt out 77% of animals on average, vs. 68% for foster programs overall and 48% for organizations without one (Best Friends Animal Society, 2026).