• Promote animals available for adoption.
• Give tours of your shelter every half hour or hour.
• Provide snacks (try to get them donated) for both the human and animal visitors. Consider baking bone-shaped cookies.
• Allow folks to tour your animal control vehicles.
• Provide lots of educational materials, including tips for solving common behaviour problems.
• Invite a local radio station to broadcast out of the shelter during the open house.
• Set up an arts and crafts station where kids can learn about being kind to animals.
• Recruit a local business to sponsor your open house.
• Hold a poster or essay contest with a humane theme - such as the importance of spaying and neutering, the role of the shelter, or responsible pet ownership - at local elementary schools the week before the open house. Then display the winning posters or essays with ribbons on a designated wall in your shelter.
• Provide instant identification tags to visitors so they can make tags for their pets.
• Offer reduced-cost spay/neuter surgeries on-site or inexpensive vouchers to have the surgery performed elsewhere.
• Hold a pet and owner look-alike contest or a pet costume contest.
• Offer seminars on various pet-related issues, such as moving with pets, pet-related allergies, and house-training.
• Have local pet supply stores donate pet-related items such as bowls, leashes, toys, and treats that you can raffle off.
• Have a dog wash.
• Invite a dog trainer to do an agility demonstration, and allow time for visitors to give it a try with their own pets.
• Hold a microchip clinic.
• Hold a pet care clinic and show people how to clip their pets’ nails and clean their pets’ ears.

Source: The Humane Society of the United States www.AnimalSheltering.org