Excellent Animal Welfare Organizations To Donate To

For those animals who aren’t lucky enough to have a forever home, or whose habitat is threatened, there are kind humans taking up the mantle.

This is the season of generosity where we open our hearts up to all creatures great and small. Every year at this time, shelters do big adoption drives, often because their facilities are overcrowded with abused and abandoned animals. Similarly, there are many wildlife populations that are struggling, and farmed animals that suffer throughout their lifecycle.

The good news is that in this season of giving, there is also an outpouring of support in the form of volunteers and donations to help right some of these wrongs and help animals of all stripes thrive. Below is just a smattering of the many hardworking organizations and non-profit groups that make such a huge difference in the lives of animals domestic and wild.

1. Animal Welfare Institute: this organization runs a broad spectrum of effective campaigns, everything from illegal whaling to representation on the legislative floor of the House. https://awionline.org/

2. Friends of Animals: this group successfully spayed and neutered 2.5 million animals to prevent overbreeding. http://www.friendsofanimals.org/

3. Wildlife Conservation Society: with active partnerships among some of the largest zoos in the states, the mission revolves around education, targeting vulnerable species and raising funds to protect local populations and conduct studies. http://www.wcs.org/

4. Marine Mammal Society: the disastrous manmade effects on the oceans are the focus of this non-profit since 1975. These scientists and volunteers work to protect seals, whales otters and other at-risk species. http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/

5. E.L.T.A Rescue: this massive refuge is unlike any other domestic shelter. The group’s policy is to keep cats, dogs and other domesticated animals safe and happy for life, even if they are unfit to life in a household. http://deltarescue.org/help-support-delta-rescue

6. Human Farming Association: The HFA is a network of farmers and activists that are trying to change inhumane and abusive factory farming practices. They are the lone lobbyists in cruelty prevention for ranch and farm animals. http://www.hfa.org/index.html

7. Animal Equality: Internationally active and exceptionally pragmatic, this non-profit does deep investigative work, runs public education campaigns and develops media programs to defend animals from abuse. http://www.animalequality.net/about-us

8. Animal Ethics: this group is largely academic, gleaning research from a wide variety of educational bodies and distilling down facts around wild life suffering as a result of overdevelopment. http://www.animal-ethics.org/

9. Mercy for Animals: also focused on factory conditions for farmed animals, this organization does everything from investigation to corporate outreach to push the industry toward humane raising and slaughtering practices.

We humans are pretty self-centered. We spend most of our time thinking about our immediate experience and only really think about the planet and all its other inhabitants when it affects us. This holiday season, consider giving to these groups, because they are doing the heavy lifting of incorporating all creatures into our big picture. The future depends on our willingness to cohabit and protect the world we live in, and we can start now, in this small but important way.