Maddie's Funding Strategy

The goal of Maddie's Fund^® is to help build a no-kill nation where all healthy and treatable (underage, sick, injured and poorly behaved) shelter dogs and cats find loving new homes. Maddie's Fund is striving to reach the no-kill nation goal by supporting Community Collaborations (coalitions of adoption guarantee organizations, animal control agencies, traditional shelters and private practice veterinarians), Private Practice Veterinarians and Colleges of Veterinary Medicine. And in recent years, we have expanded our funding to speed progress towards the no-kill nation goal.

~ Community Collaborations ~

It takes everyone working together to provide a safety net of care for the homeless dogs and cats in our communities. When rescue organizations, traditional shelters and animal control agencies collaborate, animals who might not find a home through one agency have the opportunity to find safe haven through another. With the help of breed rescue groups and feral cat caregivers, even more lives get saved. The added spay/neuter assistance of the community's veterinarians broadens and deepens the safety net. With all animal organizations and caregivers contributing their specialty and expertise for one united effort, the whole becomes much bigger than the sum of the parts. Synergy is created, effectiveness and efficiency is enhanced, focus and momentum are built. Collaboration between all animal organizations provides incentive for city officials, local businesses and private donors to come forward with additional resources. With everyone collaborating, community goals can be established, community strategies created and community successes achieved and celebrated.

Maddie's Fund is using its resources to foster and promote community collaborations so entire cities, counties and states can pool their talent and resources to end the killing of healthy and treatable dogs and cats in ten years. Our focus is on saving healthy shelter pets first. Once the healthy animals in a community are guaranteed a home, Maddie's Fund directs its funding to programs that rehabilitate the sick, injured and poorly behaved, knowing that when these animals are whole again, there will be a loving home waiting for them.

~ Private Practice Veterinarians ~

It seems natural that animal welfare organizations and veterinarians would work together to save animal lives, and yet working relationships between the two have sometimes been strained. Maddie's Fund includes private practice veterinarians as part of community collaborations to encourage greater veterinary participation in the animal welfare movement and lay the groundwork for collaborative efforts between the two groups.

Private practice veterinarians help provide spay/neuter programs for pets of low-income caregivers and create an additional model for delivering spay/neuter at the local level. Over time, we believe these programs will reduce the supply of animals entering shelters and make it easier for communities to attain and maintain adoption guarantees.

Maddie's Fund includes private practice veterinarians in our funded projects to broaden the safety net of care for homeless dogs and cats.

~ Colleges of Veterinary Medicine ~

Maddie's Fund envisions a time when animal shelters will truly be shelters - temporary way stations of nurturing, refuge and rehabilitation for dogs and cats awaiting new homes. In order for this to happen, we need to prevent healthy shelter pets from getting sick and help the sick pets get well. Most animal shelters today lack the veterinary staff to maintain wellness programs and/or comprehensive treatment programs for the sick, injured or poorly behaved. The veterinary profession itself lacks a sufficient body of knowledge to help with shelter medicine programs because shelter medicine has rarely been addressed in academic institutions. To change this situation, Maddie's Fund has elected to support Colleges of Veterinary Medicine that are seeking to establish Shelter Medicine Programs. Through newly developed curriculum, residencies, externships and hands-on shelter rotations, Shelter Medicine Programs will introduce veterinary students to this emerging discipline of veterinary medicine and create a well-informed pool of shelter medicine specialists for the future. These individuals will play a key role in building the no-kill nation.

As lifesaving efforts for healthy animals improve, all shelters - traditional, animal control and adoption guarantee - will be able to focus more attention and resources on animals who are underage, sick, injured and poorly behaved. A new generation of shelter veterinarians will desperately be needed to administer behavioral and medical care for dogs and cats with contagious diseases, broken bones and behavior disorders.

Maddie's Fund is providing funding for Colleges of Veterinary Medicine to develop Shelter Medicine Programs that will improve the quality of shelter pet lives, reduce shelter deaths, increase the adoption of shelter animals and lay the foundation for saving all treatable shelter pets.

~ Expanded Funding~

Starter Grants for shelter data, one-year business plans and ten-year strategic plans are designed to encourage collaboration formation. Although Starter Grants are available only to community coalitions, the partners within the coalition (municipal animal control, traditional shelters) are all eligible to share in the financial award.

• We believe data collection is a key element in reaching the no-kill nation goal. Community Shelter Data Grants support coalitions to gather and publish community statistics and live release rates using the Asilomar Accords. Once a significant number of shelters and communities report, the practice will be expected - and demanded - in communities nationwide, and at that point, contributors, animal lovers and the media will be able to make direct shelter to shelter and community to community lifesaving comparisons. Statistics from the top performers will set the bar for the industry. This will foster competition and drive performance nationwide.

To quickly reduce shelter intake in communities with high euthanasia rates, Maddie's Fund offers Targeted Spay/Neuter Grants that focus on populations, locations or conditions leading to high shelter impounds and euthanasia.

Maddie's special Lifesaving Awards recognize communities that reach the goal of saving all of their healthy or all of their healthy and treatable shelter cats and dogs so that these model communities may serve as a beacon to other shelters nationwide.

Thanks to an ongoing decline in shelter intake, many shelters now house animals longer and treat pets who are, or become, sick or injured. In these shelters, veterinarians are a must if adequate care is to be provided. To encourage shelters to hire veterinarians and to reward those that have, Maddie's Fund offers Medical Equipment Grants to any adoption guarantee shelter that is located in the US and employs at least one full-time veterinarian who is responsible for the care of the shelter's animals.

Maddie's Fund has expanded its funding to new areas to generate broader organizational participation and speed progress towards the no-kill nation goal.