East Bay SPCA: Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

We used the funds to help us test some end-of-year social media and Google ads using lookalike identifiers to find more followers and potential donors.

It helped us expand awareness of the East Bay SPCA in our region. It also helped us reach out to lapsed donors using social-media profiles matching emails in our database. The funds raised during this period went right back into operations to help us adopt out more animals than any previous year on record.

How many pets did this grant help?

We adopted a record 3,417 animals in 2016 -- a 20% increase over 2015. Of that number, 903 -- one third -- were adopted in the fourth quarter of the year versus 607 in the fourth quarter of 2015. We attribute this leap to smoother shelter operations and more-targeted marketing.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Walter is the sweetest, gentlest dog you’ll ever find. And like most of us—humans and pets alike—he has a few medical issues. Walter is a doberman pinscher and suffers from a common, potentially fatal canine blood-clotting disorder. Because of that, many shelters would euthanize him. But not the East Bay SPCA. With your help, we intervened on Walter’s behalf and brought him to our shelter. In one month, he was adopted by a physical therapist (pictured with him) who works with elderly patients. In Walter’s gentle nature, she spotted a future therapy dog who could be by her side at work every day, gently cheering her elderly clients.

Similarly, many shelters view cats like 13-year-old Blackberry as a burden to avoid. Blackberry came to us as an emaciated stray. We fell in love with her huge polydactyl feet. Over three months at our shelter, we helped her gain back the weight she needed, cured painful skin issues and provided long-overdue dental care. She was adopted by a terrific Oakland family and now lives with another cat, coming back to our clinic for periodic checkups.

Thanks to generous support from donors like the Petfinder Foundation, we are always by the side of animals like Walter and Blackberry, every day, year after year.