Helen Sanders CatPAWS has been awarded a $2,000 grant from Best Friends Animal Society, a leading national animal welfare organization working to save cats and dogs in America’s shelters.
The grant recognizes Helen Sanders CatPAWS’ efforts to increase pet adoptions through successfully completing the Best Friends Bring Love Home Challenge — a nationwide initiative led by Best Friends to help more cats and dogs find homes this December.
The Bring Love Home Challenge ran from December 1-31, 2025. Nearly 300 organizations were selected to participate, with 219 reporting their results, leading to an extraordinary 15,321 pets finding homes in December — including 21 adopted in December from Helen Sanders CatPAWS. “We spent all of December celebrating the cats who got to be in a home for the holidays thanks to our participation in the Bring Love Home Challenge,” said CatPAWS Director Deborah Felin-Magaldi. “Being awarded this grant from Best Friends means we can keep that incredible momentum going! This challenge, and grant, will have lasting effects for the pets in our care, and for our community.”
Participants in the Bring Love Home Challenge piloted data-backed best practices to make pet adoption and fostering more accessible and welcoming to their community— which included reducing adoption fees, shortening applications, eliminating home checks, offering multilingual adoption and foster support, and more.
“More pets being adopted and fostered means more lives saved. We’re proud to recognize Helen Sanders CatPAWS for their commitment to lifesaving,” said Whitney Bollinger, director of Strategy & Network Operations, Best Friends Animal Society.
