How corporate partnerships save lives
One of the benefits of Best Friends having grown to become a national organization of considerable scale is that we are able to leverage our name recognition and public attention to attract corporate partners to our cause of ending shelter killing.
That was the key to last November’s Black Friday through Cyber Monday Zappos sponsorship of adoptions for Best Friends and participating No More Homeless Pets Network partners. A mutual interest is served and lives are saved.
Corporate partnerships can build public awareness for a nonprofit, generate income and help cover necessary expenditures by providing goods, services and more. For an organization like Best Friends, one of our highest and most important costs is high-quality pet food for all the animals in our care, which over the course of a year across all of our operations exceeds 10,000 dogs and cats. So you can imagine how thrilled we are to be able to partner with Nature’s Variety Instinct as our official pet food and treat partner.
In a world of conglomerates and businesses buying up other businesses, Nature’s Variety remains an independently owned pet food company. That’s a big deal because any savvy pet owner knows that once a pet food company is bought out by a larger company, the quality of the food often declines dramatically. Nature’s Variety Instinct and Best Friends share a common vision related to the health and well-being of animals, in that we both expect the very best for our pets and see them as not just animals. They are family members. On top of that, Nature’s Variety’s alignment with Best Friends’ mission to end the killing of pets in shelters is a significant plus.
In 2016, Nature’s Variety will start a partnership to supply pet food not only to the animals at our sanctuary in southern Utah, but to all the animals at our regional centers in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and New York City (where an adoption center will be opening soon). The food piece of this partnership alone is valued at more than $4 million! That budget-relieving donation allows us to spend more money on the various programs that we deploy across the country to save lives, and the highly nutritious food will ensure that all the pets coming through our centers will be at their best for adoption.
An equally exciting feature of this partnership is that the Best Friends logo and mission will be displayed on special edition Nature’s Variety Instinct packaging, which is sold across the country. That means millions more Americans will be exposed to Best Friends and our mission. That means more people will learn of the issue and be encouraged to adopt their next pet, become a foster caregiver and contribute to the cause locally and nationally. That means more people joining the fight to achieve no-kill communities around the nation.
Together, we can Save Them All.
