Home > Out of the Cage! > December 2004 > Alliance News: What You Should Know About Maddie's Fund

Alliance News

What You Should Know About Maddie's Fund

As someone interested in the welfare of NYC's rescue animals and the goal of creating a No-Kill NYC, you might be familiar to some degree with Maddie's Fund. Also known as the Pet Rescue Foundation, Maddie's Fund is a $240 million family foundation established in 1999 to help communities throughout the U.S. eliminate the unnecessary killing of healthy and treatable homeless animals merely because they do not have homes.

The foundation was created by Dave Duffield, founder and Board Chairman of the Silicon Valley-based software giant PeopleSoft, and his wife, Cheryl, in honor of the beloved family Miniature Schnauzer, Maddie. After Maddie died in 1997, the Duffields made good on a promise they made while Maddie was still alive: should they ever be well off, their top priority would be to give back to Maddie and her kind in dollars that which Maddie gave to them in friendship and love. Thus, Maddie's Fund was born, and as a result, millions of homeless cats and dogs across the country have a chance at a better life.

To achieve the goal of making the U.S.A. a no-kill nation, Maddie's Fund awards grants to Community Collaborations — coalitions of no-kill shelters and rescue groups that work with animal control agencies, traditional shelters, and private practice veterinarians.

Grants also are awarded to Veterinary Medical Associations to encourage greater veterinary participation in the animal welfare movement and spur collaborative efforts between the two groups. What's more, Maddie's Fund is providing financial support to Colleges of Veterinary Medicine to develop shelter medicine programs designed to improve the quality of life for shelter animals, reduce shelter deaths, and increase the numbers of animals adopted from shelters.

Saving Lives from Coast to Coast

Maddie's Fund is helping communities develop and expand adoption and spay/neuter programs so that within five years all healthy — and within ten years all treatable — shelter dogs and cats will be guaranteed loving homes.

Among the collaborative communities that currently receive Maddie's Fund support are Lodi, California; Alachua County, Florida; Maricopa County, Arizona; and the entire state of Utah. Two of these communities — Alachua and Maricopa counties — also receive funding to their Veterinary Medical Associations.

In June 2003, the Mayor's Alliance, in collaboration with the Veterinary Association of NYC, submitted a grant application to Maddie's Fund seeking approximately $15.5 million in funding over the course of seven years. Approximately $9.5 million of the Maddie's grant would be used to fund life-saving initiatives like those outlined in "A Strategy for Transforming NYC into a No-Kill City" in the October issue of Out of the Cage! and will also be paid out in the form of direct subsidies to Alliance Participating Organizations that succeed in increasing their adoptions each year over the life of the plan. Six million dollars would be allocated to provide subsidies to low-income New Yorkers for spay and neuter surgeries for their pets through veterinary offices participating in the project.

Watch for exciting news about New York City's participation in Maddie's Fund projects in the next issue of Out of the Cage!

To learn more about Maddie's Fund, please visit the website at www.maddiesfund.org. Click here to subscribe to Out of the Cage!