About UHA

United Hope for Animals is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization working to end homelessness among companion animals by supporting shelter adoptions and spay/neuter programs.

United Hope for Animals works in cooperation with shelters all over Southern California to aid in the rescue and placement of as many animals in need as possible.

Our goal is to develop a larger network of people helping to share the animals we photograph in the hopes of more quickly finding them forever homes.

United Hope for Animals has teamed up with the Baldwin Park Animal Care Center to help some of the many pets left at the shelter get more visibility through our shelter “glamour” shoots. Our dedicated volunteers include professional photographers, videographers, dog handlers, writers, editors and more. Our goal is to help homeless pets put their best “paw” forward!

UHA volunteers also help take the guesswork out of the adoption process. UHA volunteer Adoption Coordinators, who socialize, photograph, and walk the shelter’s homeless dogs, are available to work one-on-one with adopters to match them with a dog whose personality and temperament best fits with their environment and lifestyle.

In recent years, UHA has been instrumental in helping other shelters in the LA County system train volunteers to do their own “glamour” shoots and network the animals through a variety of social media outlets. This process raises the animals’ changes of adoption from 50-60% to more than 95%.

UHA is always looking for passionate and dedicated volunteers. Should you be interested in joining us, please join our Meetup group or fill out a volunteer application. If you are able to donate, it will help support our volunteers, give us the ability to purchase equipment, and provide veterinary care to animals we rescue. Donate Now.

Here’s a little more about what we do and who we are, in case you’d like to know about a day in the life of United Hope For Animals:

United Hope for Animals is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization working to end homelessness among companion animals by supporting shelter adoptions and spay/neuter programs.

Through our Shelter Support Program, our volunteers photograph and video shelter pets to increase their chances of adoption significantly. Our volunteer Adoption Coordinators help facilitate adoptions of shelter pets by members of the public. We also help rescue companion animals from Los Angeles County shelters and help place them in loving foster homes until they are adopted.

United Hope for Animals spends every other Saturday at a Los Angeles County Animal Care Center. Currently we are at the Baldwin Park Animal Care Center. We call these “Glamour Shot Days.”

Each Glamour Shot Day, we have a list of animals that the shelter gives us, so we can “network” them. This can be anywhere from 40 to 80 animals each Saturday, including dogs, cats, rabbits, turtles and even guinea pigs, ducks and birds sometimes. These are animals currently available for adoption at the shelter.

We do this so that we can create a special profile for each animal, which then goes on petfinder.com, adoptapet.com, our own networking list accessible to the public, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and the list goes on. The more each animal is exposed to the public, the better chance he or she will get adopted and find a new home.

And we make sure that when we do all of this, the animals look and sound as great as they truly are.

So how do we do that and what happens at our Glamour Shot Days, you ask? A lot! Here’s what we do:

Photographs: We take each of the dogs, cats and rabbits out of their kennels and then we have professional photographers take their pictures. You can see these fabulous photos here. 

Videos: Once we have great photos, we video record the dogs. Our volunteers trot the dogs on over to our Video Recording tents, and we create brief videos of the dogs, allowing potential adopters to see the dog’s personality and how they interact with their handler. (We can’t do this with the other animals because there is too much a risk the rabbits, cats or birds will escape). Click here, look at any animal you see, and then click on the Video link to see our videos. Or go straight to our own YouTube Channel.

Gathering Animal Descriptions: Once the photos and videos are done, then the dog handler or animal volunteer walks over to our “writers” table and they give the writers all sorts of information about the animal’s personality, such as whether they are trained, walk on a leash well (dogs), are cuddly or independent, mellow or active, kissy and sweet and all sorts of other stuff you want to know when you adopt animal from a shelter. 

The writer gets that all down, and writes down their own observations as well, such as how beautiful the animal is, any unique markings, interesting personality quirks and anything else they see at the time. 

Sometimes the dog handlers will introduce their dog to other dogs we have out, to see how each dog interacts. They’ll also bring dogs up to other volunteers and staff at the shelter, to see how friendly and affectionate the dogs are. And sometimes everyone just runs right over to the dog to give it lots of love because the dog just grabs everyone’s attention from the start. All of this information gets collected and given to the writer.

Writing Descriptions: After all of the above is accomplished, then our writers get to work. They take all of the information they have about the animal and they write the descriptions (you can read right here) on our networking lists. 

Sometimes we only have one person writing descriptions about 10, 15, 30 (or more) animals. 

Sometimes we have three or four people writing. And sometimes our loyal volunteers write from home, when they can’t make it down to the shelter. But we always get it done. 

Post Production: Once we have all of the above accomplished, then other volunteers and our one loyal, paid “post production manager” uploads all of the photos and videos and proofreads all of the descriptions – to make sure it all makes sense.

Networking the animals and finding them homes: And now, after all of that is done, whew, we’re still not done with this process! 

Now one of our other volunteers, working  from home, uploads the photos, videos and descriptions to various adoption websites, like adopt-a-pet and petfinder.com. 

Next, a couple of our volunteers start posting a few of the animals each day on our Facebook page, which also gets posted to Twitter. And, when we have a little money left in the till, we “boost” posts on Facebook for the really at risk or special needs animals, to get them more attention and out of the shelter as soon as possible. This means we pay to have the post reach more people than just those who have liked our page.

But wait, we’re not done yet! We also have a few dedicated volunteers that we call Adoption Coordinators. Our Adoption Coordinators are available for anyone to call or email to help that person with an adoption through the shelter. Their numbers are listed on the list of adoptable dogs from Baldwin Park Animal Care Center (and other LA County Shelters) and wherever else information is posted about the animals on sites like petfinder.com. While we don’t process adoptions and are not a rescue group ourselves, we help people who are interested in the animals navigate the shelter adoption system and we give the more details whenever we can. 

We also have really cool gift bags with leashes and collars and stuff if you adopt one of these pets, and we have helped you do so. And even if we haven’t helped you, if you adopt a pet from the Baldwin Park Animal Care Center and let us know about it, we’ll give you the gift bag too! You can email us at .

And then, guess what, we do it all over again two weeks later. Rain or shine or 104 degrees or 50 degrees, we’re always there every other Saturday.

Lastly, we also have adoption events a few times a year where we help take out Baldwin Park Care Center dogs so the public can adopt them at various locations. 

If you’d like to help out, we always need people to either help at our Glamour Shot Days, or to help from home. We need people to do any of the following tasks:

  •  Adoption Coordinator—Baldwin Park Shelter (Urgently Needed) 

  •  Handle Dogs (personal health insurance required) 

  •  Photograph Dogs (some experience required) 

  •  Videotape Dogs 

  •  Upload Videos to YouTube (can be done from home)  

  •  Write Descriptions (can be done from home)  

  •  Upload Photos and Descriptions to Adoption Websites (can be done from home)  

  •  Promote Animals on Facebook (can be done from home)  

  •  Help with Marketing and Fundraising (can be done from home)  

  • Write Blog Posts 


To volunteer, go here to fill out our volunteer form and one of us will get back to you within a few days.

And don’t forget to join our MeetUp group so you get any updates about our events. Don’t worry about how many people RSVP. 

We hope you’ll join us or donate and help us make a difference!

United Hope for Animals is a 501(c)3 charitable organization and that means that your donations – whether money or in-kind materials and products – are tax deductible.