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- [00:00]
A
There are a lot of great causes out there, but many of them do not have a cure. Many of them don't have a solution. A sustainable solution. We do and see that go from the day the founders broke ground to where we are today, and that we are so close to that finish line in creating societal change. How cool is that? Who gets to do that in their lifetime?
- [00:38]
B
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Ever True Studios, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy, and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. In this episode, we speak with Julie Castle, chief executive officer of Best Friends Animal Society and a leading voice behind the national no Kill movement, about her remarkable journey from aspiring lawyer to one of the most influential leaders in animal welfare. Julie shares how a single visit to a sanctuary in Utah changed the course of her life, setting her on a path that would take her from cleaning kennels and answering phones and to building one of the largest and most effective animal welfare networks in the country and helping to drive a nationwide movement to end the killing of dogs and cats in shelters. Where are you from originally?
- [01:35]
A
So I grew up in Utah. I grew up in a town just outside of Salt Lake City called Bountiful and had a great childhood. Loved it. It was a different time back then. You know, we grew up kind of feral and. Which was really nice, really great neighborhood. And I ended up going to college in Utah as well and loved that, too. Did a couple of internships in Washington, D.C. and was super focused on going into law and had spent my entire career, basically up to that point, focused on how to get into the best law school. And so I got into a couple of really great law schools. And my friends and I decided after undergrad that, look, this is probably the only time in our lives where we have a break from reality. So we're going to spend the summer in Mexico. And so we drove down to Mexico in my 1979 Dodge Colt. And the car had. Every panel was a different color because I'd been in so many car accidents. And we drove down to. We decided to stay until we ran out of money and we got all the way down to Puerto Vallarta. And lo and behold, we woke up one morning and we had just enough gas money for gas and a candy bar each to get home. And so we started our journey back home, which was, I don't know, something like 2,000 miles. And one of the friends that was with us wanted to stop at this animal sanctuary in Southern Utah. And none of us wanted to stop. We were tired and hungry, and everybody was grumpy. And we finally agreed to. To stop by on our way back. And we pulled into this magnificent canyon that in any other state would be a national park. It's, you know, where all the movie sets. A lot of movie sets were here in this canyon. And a lot of the great westerns were filmed here, like the Lone Ranger and the Apple Dumpling Gang. There were just a ton of movies here. And so that was the first thing that was very striking to me. The second thing is we decided to take a tour. And I took a tour with one of the founders, and they described the philosophy of no kill. And it totally captured every bit of my imagination, because the only experience that I'd had with anything related to animal control or homeless pets was in college. I wanted to adopt a cat. And I stopped by my local shelter, which was like a lot of shelters down by the city dump. It was a center block building, corrugated metal roof. And I walked in and looked around, and there was a guy sitting at the desk. He had his feet up on the table, and he was reading the paper. He had a cowboy hat on. And I looked around and there were no animals. And I said, where are all the animals? And he said, oh, well, I took care of them this morning. And I said, well, what does that mean? And he said, well, every morning we take all the animals that are here, we put them in a barrel and hook them up to the back of a pickup truck. And I couldn't believe that here I was in the 20th century, and we were relating to dogs and cats this way. And so that was the last thing I had in my head about how we take care of population control in America. And so the juxtaposition between that and then coming to the sanctuary and hearing this philosophy about no kill, we can do better for our companion animals. We are stewards of these sentient beings, and it's our duty to, you know, this is totally in our control to solve. And I was so absolutely taken by the place, the people, the mission and that. We pulled out of the sanctuary and the next gas station we stopped at, I put a couple of quarters into the payphone, and I called my dad and I said, I'm not going to law school. And it was the University of Virginia. And my dad had this really long pregnant pause, and he was not happy. And I never left. I was employee number 17 and spent the next 30 years of my life here.
- [06:54]
B
You just packed so much in There I have to go back a little bit because you described yourself as a feral child. So this wild side of you, I'm sure that then informs all of this. But what was your relationship like with the environment and with animals specifically growing up that gave you the heart for all this?
- [07:19]
A
Well, so I grew up in a large family. I had five older brothers and an older sister. And it was, like I said, it was a really fun childhood. We, we had a lot of animals growing up when I was a kid. And I had the good fortune of traveling a lot with my family and my parents. That was something that they really valued. And so we would do a lot of trips to national parks, we did a lot of foreign travel. And so I feel like that opened my mind to the greater world out there. And, you know, that you can grow up and not do any of that. And I think there are studies today that talk about how traveling actually increases your brain capacity. You know, it is definitely something that I think that exposure to different cultures, to different environments, to nature, it really helps you grow as a human being. And so I think I had that capacity to walk through that door of opportunity. But it was so unusual for me because I was so committed to school and going to law school. And I think it was a very unusual move for me. And especially when it came to my friends and family and professors in college, everybody was shocked by it. And so, you know, I spent many years questioning, gosh, did I make the wrong choice? Because when I showed up at the sanctuary, it was a very hand to mouth operation. We were very, very poor. It was a bootstrapped operation. We were basically very hand to mouth and sort of piecing the thing together as we went along. And so there were a lot of elements to the story that just didn't really make sense to a lot of people in my prior life.
- [09:51]
B
As you talk about that, though, I'm thinking about the kind of person who has a certain amount of fearlessness. Because if you were willing to go with, I guess, a group of friends driving way down deep into Mexico and then only having enough money for the gas to come back, and gas and a candy bar to come back, you must have been not entirely risk averse.
- [10:14]
A
Yeah, well, I think that's definitely true. And I think it's a, you know, that's something that served me well over the years. And I think it's something that I've also had to grow into. You know, I had to become aware of it so that I can, you know, that awareness factor of knowing That I am risk avert, not risk averse, that I'm a high risk person. I think has helped me surround myself with people that can really check me and say, julie, I don't think we want to do this. So I think that it's knowing that that is something that I'm capable of and knowing that that's something that I do. Often it's helpful to have people that are the polar opposite of you surround you.
- [11:07]
B
What was the attraction to law before you decided to put it aside?
- [11:11]
A
You know, when I was a kid, my parents were very. My father was really into education and he grew up without parents and ended up putting himself through college, joined the military, got the GI Bill and ended up at UC Berkeley in economics. And he ended up going for his PhD there in economics. And so he was a very active learner. You know, he was an adult learner. He believed in reading. Oftentimes, you know, we'd read the newspaper at breakfast as a family. He would ask us a lot of geopolitical questions. And I really loved that sort of scene. I loved the political scene in America. I loved the geopolitical scene in the rest of the world. And I was very attracted to learning more about that and particularly in my internships in Washington D.C. really opened my eyes to this is a career path that I'm really interested in. And everybody around me knew that I was very involved in student government in college and high school. And so the complete detour to this was definitely. I think it gave people pause. I don't think people thought that I would have stayed here for 30 years.
- [12:56]
B
As you're talking about it though, it strikes me that a part of the work. I'm sure you'll talk more about this as we dive into the organization in a bit. Must be about advocacy at the individual level. Even because you're advocating for an animal, you don't want that animal to go into a barrel. But then writ large it's to make sure that there's a no kill policy across the country, which I know we'll talk about. So I wonder if maybe part of this is your ability and willingness to just to advocate.
- [13:30]
A
I haven't thought about it that way. I think that's a really insightful thing to pick out of this story. But I think you're probably right about that. It does come down to advocacy. And part of it is just the underdog factor where you recognize that what's been created, the system that we work within in this country for animals, for homeless pets, is such a broken system and was set up as a 150 years ago as a catch and kill operation. And the reason it was set up that way was because there were a lot of dogs back in the late 1800s that were running loose around New York City. And the public was very concerned about rabies, as they should have been. And so they said, hey, government, we want you to do something about this problem. And so the city placed a bounty on all of these dogs, and they were offering a quarter ahead. And so dogs were being scooped up all over the city, and they'd take the dogs and put them in a cage and dug them in the east River. And that's how this whole movement started. And the public was outraged about that. And so the city decided and shelters started popping up all over the country to do the exact same thing just behind closed doors. And so animals were losing their lives in mass numbers for decade after decade after decade. And it was sort of woven into the culture of this field that, well, this is how we solve pettlebird population. We just, you know, there's too many pets, there's not enough homes, and they have to die. And that's just the way it is until the founders and best friends showed up on the scene and said, there's gotta be a better way. And 17 million animals is a lot of animals. But we believe that people love their pets. Some people love their pets as much as their children, some even more. And we know that this is something the public wants, and there's got to be a solution. And so that, to me, was a very daring statement and a very daring move to say, we're going to build this massive sanctuary in the middle of nowhere and we think we can solve this issue. What a great idea. So I think it's a, you know, it's such an incredible story that has so many different elements to it that are completely unlikely. You know, the measure of success. If you would have asked anybody who had a business mind or strategic planning or what are the chances of this organization actually making it past a year, Everybody would have bet against it. It was just an unlikely story, but also a story of grit and resilience and the human spirit, really.
- [17:08]
B
And I know it's one that's continuing because you're fighting the battle now with a lot of partners leading that battle across the country. You introduced this history of the catch and kill programs. I didn't know anything about this. And I'm sure that other people listening are also very surprised to hear about this. What does that look like outside the context of Best Friends, what does it look like across the country now? Maybe take us back a little bit and then to today. Is that still the major practice? And I assume that animals aren't being thrown into cages and drowned in the river or put in a barrel and killed with carbon dioxide, but there are probably equally horrible things that are happening to animals. How big of an issue is this? How large is it?
- [18:00]
A
Well, when I started here at best friends, 17 million animals were losing their lives around the country.
- [18:08]
B
And that's every year, is that right?
- [18:11]
A
Every year. Every single year. And so to think about this is what I find so remarkable about this. To think about that is so overwhelming. You know, 17 million, that is what, two New York cities and human population comparison. When you think about all those lives that were being lost every year in cities, shelters all across the country. And it was still very much a catch and kill mentality when I started. It was a. There was one no kill shelter in this country that had just barely gone no kill. And so there was the sanctuary and then this one city. And we, we took a lot of heat from our peers, our colleagues in the field, because they felt like we were weaving this tale, this spinning gold talking about no kill when it was basically a dream and that we were misleading the public because no kill is just not possible. It's not going to happen in this country. And the list of really reasons or excuses, whatever you want to call them, were pages long. And so to go from that to today, we're at less than 400,000 animals are losing their lives every year. That's still a lot, but just in that short period of time to create that kind of societal change. And not only that, two out of every three shelters are no kill now in this country, which is well beyond the tipping point and is something that I think as a country we should be really proud of because it's a demonstration of our values and our ethic in relationship to life and to sentient beings and living. And it is, in my opinion, as a country, if we can't solve this issue, this is like one of the lowest thresholds in terms of. It's a pretty black and white issue. It's very nonpartisan. Every time we do any type of survey, 80 to 90% of Americans believe in this, want this to happen. I mean, I can't even think of any other issue that so many Americans agree on. So to me, it's kind of imperative to a bigger picture that we finish the job and actually get to a point. Where we're a no kill country.
- [21:19]
B
When you were talking about that, pages and pages, list of reasons or excuses, whatever they are, it must still exist, at least in people's minds, if not in their cabinets, because there are still 400,000, as you said, perishing every year, although that's a huge reduction. Do those boil down to mentality or money or some kind of combination? Because I know sometimes there are a lot of reasons people give for something, but there's an answer sometimes that answers a lot of those concerns. So what was it really? What does it boil down to? All the reasons why people say we just can't let all these animals continue to survive. And what has been kind of the largest and most dominant answer for oh, yes, we can do this, we really can be no kill?
- [22:07]
A
You know, part of me goes back to like, it's a Roger Bannister moment. You know, he's the guy that broke the four minute mile. And before he broke the four minute mile, everybody thought it was impossible. And the minute he broke that mile, within the next year, there were a handful of people that did the same thing. Because you open up that window of possibility and you, you demonstrate a path forward. And I would say in the very beginning, when we started out on this mission, it just hadn't been done before. And so everybody thought it was impossible until it wasn't. And I think that that was a really big moment for this movement, was actually achieving a situation where in a community no animals have to die simply because there are no homes. And so once that started happening, we started seeing other shelters go no kill. It was very slow though. And I think that the biggest thing that has moved the dialogue has been really reaching into every corner in this country to determine what is really happening in terms of how many lives are being lost. What I mean by that is we went to every single county in America and collected their data and we put it into a national database that's on our website, which is our pet life saving dashboard. And you can literally go to any community in America to learn what's happening in each shelter, how many animals are dying, how many are being adopted, you know, basically how big the organization is. And so really opening that door up to the public to have visibility into what's really happening in their communities was a big step forward. But I think the next big step was just going to some of these shelters and sending our staff to these shelters to work side by side with these folks for up to a year to create change from the inside out. Because a Big part of it was people just didn't know how, you know. And it wasn't really groundbreaking changes. It was easy stuff. The work is not easy by any stretch, but it was stuff like changing operation hours so that you're open on Saturday and a Sunday or after 5 o' clock at night, more like a retail operation, or that you're vaccinating upon intake, which wasn't happening in a lot of places. So animals were dying of disease or had to be euthanized because they were sick. And so examples like that and going in and really helping shelters because nobody raises their hand and says, hey, I want my job description to include killing animals. The vast majority of people do not want to see animals die. So a lot of it is just getting the right tools into the right hands to create changes. It's that simple. And obviously money plays a factor, but the biggest factor is really, it really is that know how and that, oh, okay, I get it. You know, taking animals to an off site adoption event outside of Walmart, you're going to get a lot of eyeballs that walk past those animals that are going to want to take one home. And so it was really changing a lot of those paradigms and dynamics. And there was a lot of resistance to that in the beginning, a lot, which is crazy to think about now. But having lived through that, it's a demonstration of sometimes the clear path forward you think isn't going to be met with resistance. It's always met with resistance because people are not into change.
- [26:48]
B
Change is hard, especially if people don't know how to make the change. And you described that even in places where they clearly. Well, I imagine that most of these people loved animals, even these places that were causing this great harm, but they didn't have a process for dealing with it. And you just alluded to the money, which I know is not everything here, but it's a piece of it. I wonder if for many organizations they were thinking, we just don't have the space, we don't have the money to care for all these animals, et cetera, et cetera. And so they led to this kind of horrible conclusion. But today, now that the commitment is there and there are methods of making these animals less invisible so they can be adopted and other things. What about the money aspect? Has that also gotten easier? Is it easier now to raise funds and to support shelters which are no kill shelters to support adoption, et cetera, et cetera, all these different services that make it possible for the animals to live?
- [27:53]
A
Yeah, it's Such a great question. And the money piece is, you know, that is always a, that is how it's a challenge for a lot of organizations because what you get is you either get a municipal shelter that's funded through taxpayer dollars and that's usually funded by a contract. And a lot of times, even though the public, whenever there's an issue around animals that's on the ballot or in the legislature, we always hear, please stop your constituents, or you know, please stop the phone calls, stop the emails, because people really care about this issue. Sadly though, governments, when a lot of them go to fund this issue, it's always at the bottom of the barrel. You know, the things that come before that, that take a higher priority are stuff like city roads and you know, things that utilities and the fire department and animals are oftentimes at the bottom of the list. And so you either get government agencies that are indeed underfunded or you get small rescue groups that are really scrappy, 5, 6, 15 people operations where they're trying to build, they're trying to save lives and at the same time they're trying to build a fundraising apparatus. And it's very difficult to do that as a grassroots organization. And so there's this sort of dichotomy in our field where you have these very small rescue groups that are really hand to mouth. You've got underfunded agencies, government agencies, and then you oftentimes have private humane societies that are typically brick and mortar, bigger facilities, and those are generally quite well funded. In a lot of communities. Those organizations tend to be the most successful at fundraising primarily because they have a very long history in their community. Many of those legacy humane societies are way older than best friends. You know, they've been around since the early 1900s. And so those are kind of the three different buckets of organizations that relate to animals. And you know, when you look at the pie chart of how people give animals are, it's the smallest sliver in the chart. So it is, you know, it's a challenge. Fundraising for animals and on behalf of animals is a big challenge.
- [30:56]
B
As you're talking about this, I'm thinking about two separate tracks of things I'd love to ask you about. And one is another thing that might influence the finances, which is just spay neuter, which I believe is something you've also worked on. And that's been, I suppose, a part of the puzzle for a long time. But now it seems like it's more prevalent. There's more of a push to do that as a way of, again, preserving the animals that are here. Can you talk about where that fits in this equation?
- [31:29]
A
Spayneuter is a really important piece to this whole puzzle. You know, we've been doing spayneuter programs since we started. And in fact, I had the good fortune of running one of the very first mobile spaydor clinics in the country and did that all throughout the state of Utah. And spayneuter is very important. And one of the things that, you know, as an evolving field, one of the things that we learned early on, and I wasn't a believer of this early on, which is, you know, to my mind, in the very beginning, I thought, well, let's just fix anybody who walks up with an animal. We're fixing that animal. It doesn't matter where they come from, what their socioeconomic status is. We're just going to. We're going to provide that service for the community. And what we discovered was we were spending a lot of money on servicing a public that would have gotten their animals fixed regardless. And I think about those early years and how much time and effort we wasted on just fixing everything. And what we soon discovered, and what a lot of organizations over the years have discovered, is that when you really target spay neuter services, you really start to see that change in a community. We really started to overlay maps of a shelter population by zip code. Where are these animals coming from? And you could generally pick out there were less than 10 that were responsible for the majority of the animals entering the shelter. And so by focusing on those neighborhoods, by targeting those neighborhoods, and by recognizing what are some of the barriers as to why people aren't getting their animals fixed. Most of them came down to transportation issues, accessibility, affordability, you know, a lot of the same issues that really plague any health and human services issue. And so for us, that was the aha moment around spayneuter. If we can target these surgeries, we're going to see a lot more success more quickly, and we're going to save a lot of money doing that. So that's where that fits into the equation. And the other piece is, you know, community cats.
- [34:21]
B
And ask you about the feral cats, because people talk about it in all sorts of ways. And how is that essentially, then again, a spay neuter issue? So. Or is that a catch and release versus catch and destroy?
- [34:37]
A
Yeah, and that's another one. You know, where in our field, when I first started, it used to be that animals would. Cats in particular, animal control officers would round up all the cats, take them to a shelter, and of course, cats, if you have any contact with cats or any familiarity, you know that cats in an environment they're not used to, they appear feral, they're fractious, and really they're just scared out of their minds, most of them. And so what was happening is these animals were being rounded up and then just some summarily killed in shelters automatically. And a woman that I work with by the name of Holly Sizemore, she's really been involved in community cats since she started in animal welfare, like 1991. She was one of the first people to come up with this idea of relating to feral cat colonies and community cats. And she came up with the idea to what if we brought these cats to the shelter, got them neutered and returned them back to their home? Because they already have a colony, they're already surviving out there and it would spare them from being killed by the drone in droves. And so the first community to really adopt this was in Salt Lake City, Utah. And then it just spread like wildfire. Everybody does this now. Everybody. I shouldn't say everybody. Most shelters do a trap, neuter, vaccinate and return. And basically what they're finding is that by managing the population that way, by fixing these cats, you're reducing the population out in the field. Whereas if you just take them out of a colony and kill them, other cats are just going to populate that colony and it's this never ending cycle. And so in theory, it kind of, you know, when you first hear that, it doesn't make sense, but the numbers back it up and the science backs it up. So we've seen tremendous success doing that and other folks all over the country have too.
- [37:19]
B
I wonder if sometimes when you're doing this work that you still might get pushback. Not from people within the work who are probably still looking at that invisible list of all these reasons why they can't do something. I'm sure that still exists a little bit. But just the public, I mean, if you think about, I remember stories about cats at, what was it, LaGuardia or Kennedy Airport or something, and they needing to round up the cats. Or there is, there's also all this stuff about, and I'm sure there's a kernel of truth in all of this reporting, but cats being the public enemy number one of birds in the United States and killing a billion birds a year. So do you sometimes encounter that? And then people say, well, just, you know, to heck with these cats. They're killing all the birds and they're blocking our Airplanes. Do some people just say, no, we can't try to save every animal?
- [38:08]
A
Yeah, I mean, that is a perennial dispute that we have. It's one of those things where the irony is cats are the most loved animal in this country. And yet they are, they can be in certain cases, public enemy number one. We do get. There are many reasons that birds die and cats seem to be. They seem to get the bill and cape every time. And. But, you know, it's one of those issues that I think I see more movement on than almost anything that we've worked on, which is, you know, again, the public is the answer. The public doesn't want to see cats rounded up and killed. They just don't. And I think that of course you get those complaint calls from the neighbors of cats coming into their yard and blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, we've just made so much progress on this issue. And, you know, it's a funny story. I can remember when I very first started here a couple years after, we got a call from a rescue group in the D.C. area and they had this meeting with the Admiralty of the Navy because there were colonies of cats on a naval base. And so this rescue group said, we really need Best Friends help here because there's so much opposition to maintaining this colony. And these other national animal welfare organizations are attending and they're all opposing this effort to save this colony because their policy at the time was catch and kill. You're the only one that believes otherwise, and so can you come help us? So we went out and we met with these really high ranking officials in the Navy and you know, all of these other animal welfare organizations had these proper names. And then it was this rescue group's name was Me Our Power. And then Best Friends Animal Sanctuary from Utah. And back then our logo was cartoon animals waving cartoon animals. And you can just see these military officials rolling their eyes, eyes at us. And needless to say, we lost that. We lost that particular battle. But it did prompt us to want to change our logo and name. That was the incident that informed we need to rebrand our organization. So a little bit of Best Friends history there.
- [41:18]
B
Yes. And you had started on that history before, and then I took you off course because I was so interested in some of these things you were sharing. But you've been, okay, employee number 17. And that was when, when did you join originally?
- [41:33]
A
So that was 1996.
- [41:37]
B
And there's been a lot of growth since then in terms of programs.
- [41:41]
A
Sure.
- [41:41]
B
But just give us a snapshot of where the organization is today, like the number of employees, but also the number of partners. Because you really, if I understand correctly, that's where you've gotten a lot of your real power is by working with all the others in this field in order to spread this message, advocate for this, and also have a lot of hands out there who can do this work. So how large are you today? And then how large is your partnership network?
- [42:08]
A
Well, when we moved to, when the founders broke ground here at the sanctuary, there was one building that was functional on the whole property. There were no roads, there were no power lines, there was no water. You know, there was no telephone or Internet. Didn't exist back then. But so these, these folks got together with, and this is so remarkable, through time Life books, they taught themselves how to frame up buildings, pour cement, lay electricity lines, power lines, water, sewer, the whole gambit. And with their own bare hands, they built this sanctuary. And today we have about 170 structures on our property. And now some of those are tough sheds. But the point is, it's grown tremendously just the physical space of the sanctuary itself. We're on roughly 6,500 acres here. We lease another 30,000 from the BLM. And really the idea is to create a true sanctuary and somewhere where people can come and get back in touch with what's important to them, whether that be nature or nature and animals. Just having that solace and that solitude in a very remote canyon in the Southwest is very meaningful to people. And so we see probably 70,000 visitors a year from all over the world. For many of them, it's their bucket list item. And so I think about those early days when I started, I used to show up at the welcome center, which was the only structure on the property when the founders bought the property. And I would, you know, report. I reported to one of our founders who's no longer with us, and I'd show up and she'd say, julie, we need today. Here's your task today. There was no job description. We didn't have an HR department. And she would say, I need you to go install an irrigation line in the upper canyon up my cap. Or the next day it was, the radiator on the old Ford isn't working. Go figure it out. This is before Google or the horse fence needs fixing or, you know, we need you to go work in Dogtown. It was that sort of whatever it took. And we legitimately worked six and a half days a week. We had a half day off. My first paycheck was $183. And it was a really fun time. It was really hard work. There were days where we'd get the call to, we're running out of money and we need you to go tabling. And that's what we used to call sitting out in front of a grocery store with a coffee jug, one of those metal cans, and a mailing list and pictures of the animals. And people would walk into Natural Foods or Mrs. Gucci's in LA or in Salt Lake or wherever we were doing this in the Southwest. And I'd ask for their name, a donation to help the animals. And that's how we built our mailing list and that's how we survived. And every day at the end of the day, I'd take my money, go to the bank, deposit it in, night deposit, I'd call the sanctuary, tell them how much I'd made, and then I would fax down the list of names and those people would get a thank you call within a week. And that people, I'm telling you, there is not a day. This is no exaggeration. There is not a day that goes by that I don't encounter a member in our lunchroom here or when I'm traveling who will tell me, I met somebody in front of Gelson's who I gave $10 to, and I got a thank you call the next week. And I've been a member ever since. And just endless numbers of people who had that same experience. So back then we were an $800,000 organization. And this year we're $180 million. And we have a thousand employees all over the country. We have employees in every state. We have life saving centers. And we've got one in Manhattan, we've got one in Houston, one in Bentonville, Arkansas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles. And we have 6,000 network partners all across the country who all carry that no kill flag. And that to me, is what I'm really super proud of, because these are all people who. These are all organizations that 25 years ago would have been totally chastised for doing. And today it is a force of nature. And they are organizations that are all different shapes and sizes. They are doing great work all over the country. Through our network, we provide resources in terms of grants to them, we provide different webinars, sorry, zoom calls. And we provide a lot of materials and resources for them. And really our idea is you can't go wrong being generous. And so we've been really fortunate to grow to the point we're at Today. And it is part of our duty to help these other organizations grow and to help them become better fundraisers, to help them become better marketers, to help them become better lifesavers. But really, it's about sustaining these organizations from a financial point of view and growing them, because we know that rising tides lift all boats. I know that's kind of cliche, but there is strength in numbers. And I want these groups to be successful. I want them to be as successful as best friends, because the animals deserve it, the public wants it, and it's our responsibility to pass along all of our learnings to these groups. Our information is not proprietary. You want our architectural plans, Here they are. You want to learn how to fundraise? Here's how we do it. You want to. Whatever it is, that information sharing is critical to helping these groups not have to go through all the bumps and bruises that we did to get to where we're at. And so generosity really drives our network. And it's a. I can remember I started a fundraising event in Salt Lake City called Strut yout Mutt, and it was a dog walk. And we were wanted to expand it to different cities, and eventually we got to, I think, 20 cities all over the country. And then we did a virtual event. And about five years in, we said, look, we're going to open this event up to our partners and allow them to utilize this platform to raise money. And back then we had this director of development who said, why would you do that? You're giving away your premier event, and you're giving away potential donors to another group. And my response was, no, it's absolutely the opposite. The more of a community you create, the more that community builds. And sure enough, we've seen that take place with our network. It's been really a cool. It's been a cool experience to grow that.
- [52:00]
B
I do want to ask you, because you've done so much already, but I know there's more you want to do. Your ambition in this is clear. But what remains undone for you, what do you still want to accomplish through this?
- [52:20]
A
I want to see a day when every community is an Elkil community. That, to me, is a really important step in our progress and evolution in the way that we relate to animals. Not just dogs and cats, but all animals. And I think one of our founders, who is sort of. I call him our hero. He's our own Benjamin Franklin. His name is Francis Batista. He oftentimes will say, if we can't, dogs and cats are humans best friends. And if we can't solve this basic, fundamental issue of not killing them as a country, how do we think we're going to solve these really complex issues that face us related to other animal issues or health and human services issues? He's absolutely right to me. And it's not about just crossing a finish line and waving a flag. It is saying to ourselves as a people. This is so fundamental to who we are. We invite these beings into our homes. They sleep on our beds with us, they watch TV with us, they sit at our feet at dinner, and they're part of the family. And we certainly wouldn't do this to a family member. And so I think that achieving that is absolutely paramount. And I think not just my own personal drive to do this, but I think it's important to us as a human race.
- [54:31]
B
As you've been talking about this, I'm thinking about all the impact that it's had on, obviously, all these animals, but also all the people who love the animals in this world. But what is it that it's done for you? How does it fill your cup?
- [54:51]
A
Gosh, I think if you had said to me when I was in college, hey, Julie, you're going to move to rural Utah and basically live on a ranch and not make any money for many, many, many years. You're going to work your butt off, and it's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done. But your reward will be that basically, you are seeing societal change happen right before your eyes. There are a lot of great causes out there, but many of them do not have a cure. Many of them don't have a solution, a sustainable solution. We do. And to see that go from the day the founders broke ground to where we are today, and that we are so close to that finish line in creating societal change, how cool is that? Who gets to do that in their lifetime? I mean, that to me is like, why would you want to do anything else? And so that really is kind of my. That's where my head goes.
- [56:17]
B
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about Julia Always Work, and the mission of Best Friends Animal Society@bestfriends.org Our thanks to our sponsor, Evertrue, the leader in donor engagement and fundraising intelligence, helping nonprofits find, engage, and inspire their supporters. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor, provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe where wherever you listen to podcasts and don't forget to check out our sister shows, Front lines of social good and how to raise all part of the Philanthropy Mastermind series. Until next time, I'm Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.