RedRover’s mission is to bring animals out of crisis and strengthen the bond between people and animals through emergency sheltering, disaster-relief services, financial assistance, and education. We accomplish this by engaging volunteers and supporters, collaborating with others, and maximizing the use of online technology. The RedRover Relief program provides financial assistance, resources, training, and support to individuals and organizations. The RedRover Responders program provides emergency sheltering for animals displaced by natural disasters and rescued from cruelty, as well as training and consultations for organizations in communities facing crises. The RedRover Readers program provides educators with the tools they need to teach children empathy skills.

RedRover believes the world is stronger when we work together. Our mission is to help animals in crisis and strengthen our relationships with animals – but the lives of animals do not exist in a vacuum. We cannot fully and effectively help animals without looking deeply at ourselves and how we treat one another. Therefore, we see diversity, inclusion, and equity as integral and vital to the success of our mission, as well as to the wellbeing of our staff, volunteers, the people and communities we serve, and the world at large. We strive to examine and remove barriers impeding the health and well-being of both people and animals. We align and work collaboratively with individuals, communities, nonprofits, schools, and businesses who want to help animals and people in crisis and foster a kinder and more compassionate society for all. We accomplish this vision through our three main programs.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Have a high impact on animals and people in emergencies and/or underserved communities.

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Goal Two: Efficiently support pet caregivers who are in financial and/or emotional crisis, and end animal suffering caused by abuse, lack of emergency veterinary care, or lack of preventative care.

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Goal Three: Inspire people to support RedRover by creating a state of shared empathy and sense of connection through genuine communications resulting in enough income to support RedRover’s programmatic operations

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Describe an investment in leadership

RedRover holds monthly Coaching meetings where leaders can share resources, skills, and successes. Leaders worked through the book Crucial Conversations together before our whole staff read it and attended this communications training. Leaders have also read The Coaching Habit together. In 2021 RedRover created a Mentorship program that empowers RedRover staff to learn and practice Leadership skills, and we hired an HR firm to ensure leadership has the training and resources to best support and guide their teams. This HR firm is also supporting RedRover leadership as we implement our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan to ensure that we accomplish our organization mission with the goal of increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion among staff, supporters, and the communities we serve. Lastly, the organization invested in 18 weeks of coaching for the CEO to support her continued growth and ability to build capacity for RedRover.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

RedRover is about engagement and collaboration. We partner with other animal professionals, animal groups, local officials, law enforcement, media, and schools to change the way animals are viewed and treated in our society. We are a founding member of the National Animal Rescue and Sheltering Coalition and serve on various other animal-related committees and coalitions, such as the PAWS Act Coalition. We train individuals and communities on how to shelter and care for animals in crisis. We have trained staff and 4,600 volunteers who assist with sheltering and caring for animals rescued from crisis. We support legislation that promotes pet well-being. We speak at national conferences, train domestic violence advocates and educators, and have been a guiding force in ensuring pets are included in disaster planning and that survivors of domestic violence can escape their abusers and bring their pets with them. We inspire kids to be curious and kind to people and animals around them.

The coronavirus pandemic changed the entire world, and 2020 became a year of grit and perseverance for all of us at RedRover. We are proud of the ways RedRover quickly pivoted to adapt our programmatic work to help people and their pets impacted by COVID-19. We sent staff rather than volunteers to RedRover Responders deployment requests between March 2020 and June 2021. In lieu of fee-based, in-person volunteer training workshops, we held virtual workshops free of charge. To give educators and parents access to our RedRover Readers program, we conducted free virtual readings of the books in our program and provided free digital copies of our Kind News magazine. We extended our Safe Escape grants to cover pet boarding expenses for an additional 30, 60, or 90 days beyond our normal 90-day maximum, while survivors struggled to look for affordable housing that accepted pets during the pandemic. We extended our May 15, 2020 Safe Housing grant deadline to June 30, 2020, to give overwhelmed domestic violence shelters more time to complete their grant applications, and we expanded our RedRover Relief grants to cover emergency boarding for pets of people who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and were unable to care for their pets. More than a year into the pandemic, 2021 became the year of growth and learning that continues into 2022. We expanded our Safe Housing grant program with the goal of making 25% of domestic violence shelters pet-friendly by 2025 through our Purple Leash Project, in partnership with Purina; we are expanding our RedRover Responders program through various community partnerships as a way to improve the quality of life of even more animals; we are increasing Kind News magazine subscriptions in schools; and we are developing strategies to grow partnerships and work collaboratively with communities where people face significant barriers to accessing care for animals.