If you run or manage an animal rescue organization in the United States, you've almost certainly heard the term "Asilomar report." It comes up in grant applications, in shelter advocacy conversations, and increasingly as a standard requested by partner organizations. But many rescue operators aren't entirely sure what it measures, how to generate one, or why it matters.
This guide covers all of it — what an Asilomar report is, where it came from, how the categories work, and how to produce one without a statistics degree.
What Is the Asilomar Accords?
The Asilomar Accords is a set of operating principles and data definitions created in 2004 at a meeting in Pacific Grove, California (near Asilomar State Beach, hence the name). Animal welfare leaders from shelters and rescue organizations across the country came together to create a common language for measuring shelter outcomes — particularly around euthanasia and live release rates.
Before the Accords, different organizations measured and reported outcomes differently. One shelter might count transfers as "saved," another might not. One might report euthanasia rates that excluded animals deemed "owner-requested." The Accords created a shared framework so that outcome data could be compared across organizations.
The Four Animal Categories
At the core of the Asilomar framework is a system for categorizing every animal your rescue handles. Every animal that enters your organization must be assigned to one of four categories based on their health and behavioral status at intake:
Animals with no medical or behavioral concerns that would prevent adoption.
Animals with medical or behavioral issues that are correctable with reasonable resources.
Animals with medical or behavioral issues that are manageable with ongoing care.
Animals with conditions that cannot be treated and are suffering, or pose a serious public safety risk.
These categories aren't permanent — an animal's status can change as they receive care. A Treatable animal that recovers might be reclassified as Healthy before adoption. What matters is the status at intake and at the time of outcome.
The Outcome Categories
The Asilomar report tracks every animal that leaves your organization, categorized by how they left:
The Live Release Rate (LRR)
The headline number from any Asilomar report is the Live Release Rate — the percentage of animals that left your organization alive (via adoption, transfer, or return to owner) compared to total outcomes.
The formula is:
A common benchmark in the no-kill movement is 90% LRR — meaning 90% or more of all animals leave your organization alive. This is the threshold used by the No Kill Advocacy Center to define a "no-kill" community.
Why Your Rescue Should Track This
Even if no one has asked you for an Asilomar report yet, tracking the underlying data has three direct benefits:
1. Grant Applications
An increasing number of animal welfare grants — from national foundations to local community grants — require outcome data in Asilomar format. Having the report available on demand, rather than scrambling to reconstruct months of records, can be the difference between a successful and failed application.
2. Operational Clarity
Knowing your live release rate by animal category reveals where your rescue can improve. If your LRR for Treatable – Rehabilitatable animals is significantly lower than for Healthy animals, that's a signal about capacity, treatment resources, or placement partnerships.
3. Partnership and Credibility
Transfer partners, municipal shelters, and rescue coalitions increasingly use Asilomar data to vet organizations before establishing partnerships. A rescue that can produce a clean Asilomar report on request signals operational maturity.
Generating an Asilomar Report in Rescue Workflow
Rescue Workflow tracks Asilomar category and outcome data automatically as part of normal intake and exit workflows. You're not required to run a separate process or re-enter data.
At intake, each animal is assigned an Asilomar health category. At exit, the outcome type is recorded. The Reports dashboard generates a full Asilomar Accords report for any date range — with live release rate calculated in real time, broken down by species and category.
The report is export-ready as CSV, making it compatible with grant application templates and coalition reporting requirements.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Not tagging animals at intake. If you start tracking Asilomar data mid-year, your annual report will be incomplete. Tag every animal from the moment you implement.
- Inconsistent outcome recording. "Transfer" and "Adopted" are different outcomes in Asilomar math. Make sure your team understands the distinction.
- Including owner-requested euthanasia in LRR. These are typically excluded from the denominator to give a fair picture of rescue-controlled outcomes.
- Confusing intake count with beginning inventory. The report starts with your population at the beginning of the period, then adds intakes — it's not just a count of new intakes.
The Bottom Line
Asilomar reporting is one of the clearest signals that a rescue is running with operational discipline. It tells funders, partners, and the community that you track what happens to every animal — and that you're accountable to that data.
Getting started doesn't require new processes. It requires consistent data entry in your existing workflow, and software that translates that data into the report automatically. The hard part is already done if your intake and exit records are clean.