Fundraising Gone Wild!

"The perfect scenario for us is that those admission numbers decrease and adoptions increase," says Kelsea Vescova, director of marketing and development at AHS. "Unfortunately, we're seeing the opposite trend."

That means there is more pressure on the animal-welfare organization to raise funds. Yet its own budget constraints have made that difficult to the point that the annual pet telethon held each August had its air time cut by more than half. In past years, the telethon ran for six and a half hours. In 2010, it was reduced to three hours.