David, you have terrific art on your site—it’s the equal of your reporting and commentary. Kudos to your artist!

We have so many good, hard-working shelters here in Chicago that I would much rather support them directly than HSUS. I stopped donating to HSUS several years ago.

Good decision, Margaret!

“In fact, we post a link to a hands-on dog or cat shelter every day, and ask readers to “Donate. Volunteer. Adopt.”

Is someone checking those shelters for affiliation with HSUS before they are selected as shelter-of-the-day?
Earlier this month the selected shelter was the one whose executive director is also the chair of the National Federation of Humane Societies - an organization of local shelters allied with HSUS philosophically, if not financially, and one whose baord Pacelle himself sits.

While I don’t know of a simple way for people to determine if their local shelter actually has policies they can support other than looking at the organization’s web site, you can check for participation in the NFHS here:
http://www.humanefederation.org/OurMembers.cfm

Elaine- I think you’re right, and think the good, well-intentioned shelters are receiving a lot of collateral damage by the AR extremists.  Few people in my area are donating, because there is one “rescue” that follows the HSUS’s playbook exactly. The one good shelter is suffering. It was noted that today’s showcase shelter had been a victim of theft. Guess I’ve become so paranoid that it reminded me of my local “rescue” who routinely gets broken into, and coincidently usually when they are involved in court cases.  I hope humanewatch does some investigating before recommending one.  Unfortunately, as more and more become skeptical of the HSUS, many people are having fears about local shelters as well.

An animal rescue gets broken into? That’s low… Where do they break in next, orphanages?

I have a question, however uneducated, please be clement on me.

When donating directly to a shelter, does it really matter if they are or not related to the humane society? Do they have to give money up to the organization? Common sense would seem to say that if the shelter’s actions are satisfactory to my personal values towards animal, it should be sufficient…? (favoring no kill shelters for example).

Our local shelter is listed as the Humane Society of Logan County, Bellefontaine, OH.  They are dangerously near being closed for lack of funding.  They are dedicated, wonderful people and I hate to see the shelter close on their watch.  I have worked as a police dispatcher in the county seat and they have always responded to every call, but with the money just trickling in, they will soon have to close. I even called them one night to respond to a puppy and ended up calling them back to cancel….I took the puppy home and we had her for 13 years.  Please help our shelter.
Lyn Marker

You guys are right on the money. I volunteer at a local shelter. A local shelter doesn’t just need money for operating expenses but supplies like paper towels, bleach, and other other cleaning supplies…..

Most of the shelters I know about only get money from the adoption fees, direct donations, and their own fund raisers.

You’re right about local shelters.  $19 a month would help tremendously with cleaning supplies, food and toy making supplies.  The big parrots go through tons of toys and the amount of paper towels we use is unbelievable!

Underfunded or mismanaged?  just because someone is running a shelter doesn’t mean they have a lick of business sense and yes folks you do have to run a shelter like a business.

Thanks for your info. I would hate to stop supporting homeless and abused animals. You advice to seek out my local shelters and help out directly is a great idea. I will advise my other pet loving friends to do the same. keep up the good work.

The problem with our local shelter is 10 percent of all donations go right in the director’s pocket. Make sure you know how much of your money goes directly to the animals before you donate cash. We have other local foundations who help, one helps people who want to adopt, but cannot come up with the adoption fee, another rescues older or “unadoptable” animals (on death row) from the local shelter and fosters them until homes can be found. Not all people who run shelters have the animal’s best intentions in mind.

I was a long-time supporter of the HSUS until this past February…with monthly contributions…then I learned that less that 1% of funds was ever given to shelters…and I know our local shelter NEVER received one penny!  I immediately pulled my support and they never even asked why!(fearful for her job, I guess) Anyway…my shelter is a 501(c)3), and we changed our name from Humane Society of Schoolcraft County because we did not want the association with HSUS.  We had people tell us they would never donate to our shelter because we were affiliated with the HSUS….!  As long as we had Humane Society as part of our name, they wouldn’t listen to us that NO, WE AREN’T.
Our shelter is a ‘quality of life’ shelter and we are now known as the Eva Burrell Animal Shelter (named for the woman who started it all here).  We are located in Manistique in Michigan’s upper peninsula.  We exist on donations, with less than 4% of our yearly budget coming from county and city coffers.  We have an underpaid office manager and an underpaid cleaning gal…EVERYTHING else is done by volunteers, and we have the greatest volunteers in the world!  We fund raise…we keep in the public eye, we’re out there and we work for the animals….our shelter mgr is a penny-pincher and because of her frugality, we succeed…We have a great board of directors and we work together…We are small, but since 2000 when our shelter was built on donations and hard work, over 2600 animals have passed thru’ our doors and found wonderful homes.  We are on Petfinder, AdoptAPet.com, our new shelter website is http://www.upebas.org. People have found their new ‘best friend’ and have come from as far away as Texas, Washington, Oregon, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin as well as the lower peninsula.  We work with rescue groups, stretching our meager resources as far as we can in order to provide for the animals we care for.  Why?  Because WE CARE - WE CARE about the animals, we care what happens to them.  If I happen to be at the shelter when a pet is adopted, I give them a kiss and wish them good life…and shed tears for a happy adoption.  I shed tears for the ones who come in too ill to be mended to find good homes…WE CARE!  And it shows with the dedication of our group..we teach, we work with the dogs in obedience, bringing many of them back to manageable and being loving creatures.  We have colony rooms for our cats.  WE CARE !