What are your favorite animal charities?

[nam78_two]

I usually make my big animal donations at the end of the year, when I have an idea of how rough (or not) the year has been financially.

So I feel like I am stuck in a rut and always giving to the same handful of groups. I would be grateful if you could share your more obscure charities with me :hi:.

(These are the ones I currently give to: Farm Sanctuary, HSUS, ASPCA, COK-compassion over killing, the Elephant Sanctuary in TN, bigcat.org and The Snow Leopard Trust).

[flvegan]

1. You've made some good choices.

Big Cat Sanctuary is local to me and the organization has been a huge help in the area. They have partnered up with some of the feral cat groups to help the little cats, too. If you're ever in the Tampa Bay area, I'd love to take you. I'm friendly with the owner, and I've brought guests in the past.

Farm Sanctuary and HSUS get money from me as well. As does Best Friends, and a couple locals. My biggest contributions (short of my own rescue, obviously) is to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I'm a big fan of direct action, and it doesn't get much more direct than what they do.

[nam78_two]

2. Oh thanks-I might take you up on that some time

My fiance has family in FL so we occasionally land up there. Yes-Sea Shepherd-I had forgotten about them. I will definitely give to them this year.

I got off a bunch of mailing lists through Green Dimes last year-the only thing I miss is receiving mailings reminding me of different animal charities. I particularly liked getting information about the more obscure causes-like this one time I got a mailing about the abuse of donkeys and that was sort off my radar. Now I can't remember the group though :-/.

I love cats and dogs and horses, but I usually don't give to charities for them, just because I figure those are animals a lot of people beyond AR people love, care about and give to. My biggest donations are usually to farm animals since they get so little thought about :(.

The thing that many non-AR people don't realize when reading about things like the Michael Vick case, is that while that stuff is horrific, stuff like that or worse ROUTINELY happens to farm animals and no one gets to know and sadly I suspect there exists a small group of people who probably wouldn't care if they knew.

[flvegan]

3. Good points.

Lots of folks give to the local humane society. The doggie/kitty people far outnumber the "all animals" or farm animals donors. It doesn't mean that those orgs aren't deserving, it's just they have a better chance of getting money than say, United Poultry Concerns. I mean...who cares about chickens?

I tend to diversify my giving by giving 25% to the lobby groups/crossovers like HSUS and Farm Sanctuary (both of whom I trust implicitly), 25% locally, and 50% to my favorite orgs (like SSCS).