Nice news for a great organization. It is my shelter of choice for charitable giving and I would recommend any company or organization to help them out as well. They tend to do an amazing amount with the resources they are given.
The Animal Rescue League of Boston has received a $3 million grant from The Stanton Foundation, the largest private contribution in the ARL of Boston’s 109-year-old history. The Stanton Foundation was created upon the death of the late Dr. Frank Stanton, the former president of CBS and a noted philanthropist.
The grant allows the ARL of Boston to develop the first-in-the-nation Center for Shelter Dogs. Once completed, the Center for Shelter Dogs at the Animal Rescue League of Boston will provide a model for improving the welfare and eventual placement of homeless dogs cared for by humane organizations, animal control facilities and rescue groups in Massachusetts and throughout the nation.
“We are honored to be selected by The Stanton Foundation to develop a world-class program for homeless dogs. The Center for Shelter Dogs at the Animal Rescue League of Boston will greatly impact the welfare and placement of dogs in Massachusetts and throughout the country,” says Animal Rescue League of Boston President Jay Bowen. “We are grateful to The Stanton Foundation for its financial call-to-action for shelter dogs in our society.”
Both through its name and mission, the focus of the Center for Shelter Dogs at the Animal Rescue League of Boston will be canines. The Center will accomplish this goal by improving our ability to screen for, evaluate, and resolve dog behavior problems; by increasing our understanding of the role of the shelter environment and the disruptive effect of the stress of homelessness and rehoming on dog behavior; by developing better methods of evaluating and mitigating stress in the shelter environment; by developing improved strategies for matching with prospective adopters, and by implementing long-term follow-up programs to help validate assessments made in the shelter environment and smooth the transition to an adoptive home. It will also examine the role of alternatives (e.g., home-based rehabilitation programs) to the traditional approach for homeless dogs. Amy Marder, VMD, CAAB, an internationally recognized animal behavior specialist, will serve as the Director for the Center for Shelter Dogs at the Animal Rescue League of Boston.
“Rigorous science-based research and outcomes assessment will be the cornerstone of all the efforts of the Center for Shelter Dogs at the Animal Rescue League of Boston,” says Gary Patronek, VMD, PhD, Vice President for Animal Welfare and New Program Development. “Although anchored in our Animal Behavior Program, the efforts of the Center for Shelter Dogs will extend beyond the discipline of Animal Behavior and will incorporate clinical medicine and epidemiology to develop a world-class program on behalf of homeless dogs waiting for adoption into loving, caring homes.”
4 responses so far ↓
1 cup beans // Feb 15, 2008 at 11:16 am
That is great news!! it sounds like the money has reached the best place. It just made me think about the other organizations and other cities where the dogs are in miserable conditions and donations are never enough.
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2 Ari // Feb 15, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I agree, this is great!
3 U.R. Indeenyall // Feb 23, 2008 at 6:20 pm
You people must have your heads up your butts!
The $3 million grant comes less than a year after the Animal Rescue League closed its state-of-the-art shelter in Pembroke, using the excuse that the shelter was losing money (despite the fact that the ARL has more than a $10 million endowment), and that facility, which was funded by a huge personal bequest, remains closed and empty to this day while the ARL is supposedly looking for someone to buy or lease it.
Why is the ARL building a completely new facility when they already have the Pembroke shelter, which is less than ten years old? What is also find astonishing is that the ARL got the $3 million after the Pembroke fiasco (which, by the And after closing the Pembroke shelter, the ARL went on to hire a high-priced PR firm Gordon & Lower to run interference as a result of all the bad publicity from closing the shelter, as well as Barry Stein, a Harvard Business School consultant, to help repair the ARL’s image and boost morale. (All this information was posted on the ARL’s website, which is either an indication of supreme arrogance or stupidity, while ARL’s annual report and financials have never been posted on the website.)
Put in the right hands, an amount like $3 million could do so much to better the lives of homeless animals, but in the wrong hands, they might as well have flushed it down the toilet!
4 Tom // Feb 27, 2008 at 3:33 am
Yes - this IS great news. people should help fund pet organizations with as much zest as those for people….
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