A passion for putting pets first — and for staying ahead of the curve — fuels the ASPCA’s innovative strategies, and kept it energized when Katrina-relief efforts, a rebranding campaign and the overhaul of its development department all converged.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

The main focus was less on bringing in new donors than bringing in new advocates, to help more people make a connection between themselves, their pets and the ASPCA. The one concern, however, was making sure the new look didn’t alienate existing donors.

“We don’t have a lot of money for research, so some of this was just a big gulp and a leap of faith,” she says. “And I wanted to be able to use the limited research dollars we had to make sure that this wasn’t going to alienate the current donor base, to at least make sure that they were engaged with it. When we found donors saying, ‘I love that, what a great concept,’ we kind of took a good-faith belief that the general consumer, pet-passionate audience would feel the same way.