Richmond SPCA
Love Lives Here
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The Richmond SPCA is deeply committed to helping eradicate commercial breeding operations and the abuses they inflict on innocent animals. Our organization works to raise attention and awareness surrounding the inhumane conditions that exist in puppy mills by delivering education to our constituents and the public through both social and traditional media as well as through active participation in the legislative process. Additionally, as the largest adoption agency in the Greater Richmond area, we are dedicated to reinforcing the important message that pet adoption is the most responsible means by which to acquire a new companion. We have impressed upon our community members that the best way to express personal commitment to the welfare of the dogs and cats who share our world is to always find a new family member in a shelter or through a rescue agency. We further stress that when adopting a dog or cat from the Richmond SPCA, it allows us to immediately save another deserving pet.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Adoptions
The largest animal welfare organization in Central Virginia, the Richmond SPCA is a national leader in progressive animal sheltering. Each year, we save the lives of about 3,500 homeless animals and deliver crucial programming. This includes rescue, shelter and adoption; veterinary intervention for at-risk animals; free sterilization and vaccination for community cats; low-cost, full-service veterinary care for animals in homes with guardians of modest income; humane education for children and adults; shelter diversion programs to include a pet food pantry, free behavioral helpline, free re-homing services and more; and advocacy for all animals. We raise awareness regarding adoption and rescue as the most responsible means by which to acquire a new companion.
Founded in 1891, the Richmond SPCA is one of the oldest humane organizations in the nation —and one of the most innovative. For decades, we have been providing the progressive tools and leadership necessary to make the Greater Richmond area a no-kill community where every healthy and treatable homeless dog and cat is assured a loving home. We give extensive thought, analysis and creative imagination to devising programs and services that increase and sustain lifesaving in our own community and serve to inspire other communities to adopt similar programs and services nationwide. We became a no-kill shelter in 2002 and have worked hard to promote this philosophy in animal welfare throughout our surrounding counties. Among the 3,500 animals we care for on an annual basis, our live release rate is 99%, and by strategically partnering with municipal shelters in the surrounding city and counties, Metro Richmond has a live release rate of 90%. Statewide, we partner with 55 municipal shelters, targeting animals in high-risk situations where their lives are in danger. The majority of the animals we bring into our care (over two-thirds) require some medical intervention for a treatable medical condition before they can be adopted. Though treatable, these conditions would tax the resources of municipal shelters, thus placing those animals in immediate danger of euthanasia if they were not brought to the Richmond SPCA. In addition to transferring animals whose lives are most at-risk, we are unique in our approach because of our efforts at shelter diversion. As we reached milestones in our services with pathbreaking public-private partnerships, we identified the remaining barriers we faced to making our community no-kill. We began offering full-service, low-cost veterinary care to keep animals in loving homes that simply could not afford the rising costs of private veterinary care.
Susan M. Markel Veterinary Hospital
The Richmond SPCA became a no-kill humane society in 2002 and created numerous innovative programs and services designed to dramatically reduce pet homelessness communitywide. We committed ourselves to increasing adoptions, transferring pets into our care from government shelters where their lives were at risk, and improving pet retention to foster a more compassionate community. As we reached milestones in our services with pathbreaking public-private partnerships, we identified the remaining barriers we faced to making our community no-kill. We recognized that we needed to provide a resource that responds to three critical challenges: (1) the thousands of pets in wonderful homes with families who love them but cannot afford the rising costs of private veterinary care; (2) hundreds of treatable sick and injured homeless pets who suffer and die in local government shelters each year because those agencies have inadequate resources to provide crucial veterinary care and; (3) the families who would provide wonderful adoptive homes, but who are concerned about the high cost of veterinary care.
The Susan M. Markel Veterinary Hospital developed, tested, evaluated, and modified its operation since opening first as a pilot program in 2012. We developed a sustainable model that effectively addresses the challenges previously outlined. After seven years, our management team has developed a formula of success that is proactively reducing pet homelessness.
The overall goal for the hospital is to provide, at a low cost, the treatment and care required by the most at-risk animals. The result is more lives saved through adoption and fewer animals being relinquished to shelters. Specifically, your investment will help us to:
• Prevent owner relinquishments due to the owner’s inability to afford basic veterinary care
• Increase the universe of potential adopters by making ongoing care for their pets more affordable
• Strengthen the healthcare network for sick and injured animals, while building upon the Richmond SPCA's existing relationships with government shelters. By helping government shelters treat more of their sick and injured pets, we significantly increase the number of lives they can save.
In the first year the Richmond SPCA opened a full-service veterinary clinic on a pilot basis, our professional staff delivered care to about 7,000 patients belonging to 3,800 families. In our most recently completed fiscal year, our Susan M. Markel Veterinary Hospital saw more than 10,000 patients with an average of 2,400 appointments per month, or 60 per day. Of the families whose pets are being served by the hospital, one in two has an annual income that is less than $30,000, and one in four has an annual income that is less than $15,000.
Typical services provided for dogs and cats include:
• Wellness care
• Dentistry and dental X-rays
• Spay and neuter surgery
• Geriatric care
• Diabetic and other chronic illness management
• In-house laboratory and radiology services
• Wound repair and management
• Puppy and kitten care
• Acupuncture and laser therapy
The veterinary hospital also offers non-routine surgeries, such as:
• Cranial cruciate ligament repair
• Femoral head osteotomy
• Foreign body removal
• Amputation
• Fracture repair
• Hernia repair
• Mass removal
Additional services added in the past two years include:
• Fluid diuresis for patients with chronic and acute-on-chronic kidney disease
• More advanced diabetic case management; glucose monitoring
• Management of chronic urinary tract disease in both dogs and cats
Additionally, in 2020, we discounted over $98,000 in services to treat more than 2,000 patients belonging to community-based clients who could not afford our already low-cost fees.
The hospital is open Monday through Friday from 8AM to 6PM, for a total of fifty hours per week, and is closed on national holidays and weekends.
Pet Retention
Programs that help pets stay in their homes, reducing the rate of relinquishment at shelters, are crucial to lowering the numbers of homeless animals non-lethally. Our Project Safety Net provides pet guardians with an array of support services to help them keep their pets. We provide a behavior helpline with access to the professional advice of a trainer to overcome troubling behavior issues. Training classes taught by professional trainers are offered along with a housing guide that identifies all pet-friendly housing in the community and help for people seeking to rehome their pet safely on their own. Our full-service, low-cost Clinic for Compassionate Care provides veterinary services to the pets of income-qualified families and pets in the care of local government shelters. Our SAAF program offers care to the pets of people entering local domestic violence shelters.
Humane education and Paws for Reading
Education of adults and children in our community is essential to achieving our goal of ending the loss of any life of healthy and sick and injured but treatable homeless animals and to ending the brutal and inhumane treatment of animals that damages the fabric of our society. The Richmond SPCA provides humane education for school age children, both in the schools and in the Robins-Starr Humane Center in the form of a summer Critter Camp and after school programs during the school year. We provide a vast array of programs for adults to learn how to care for pets and to learn proper training techniques. Our obedience and agility classes are extremely popular and help people form closer bonds with their pets. Our staff members provide public education to neighborhood associations and community groups and write for numerous publications on many topics that encourage compassionate philosophies. Our educational programs are essential to promoting humane attitudes in our community.
In 2017, a local television news reporter ran a story about a dog named Mr. Jax, who paid regular visits to a Richmond City Public Schools' kindergarten classroom. The purpose of his visits was to allow the children, who were developing early reading skills, to practice those skills in front of a non-judgmental audience. The children eagerly awaited and prepared for Mr. Jax's twice-monthly afternoon visits, and the teacher whose classroom Mr. Jax visited reported that the program was a wild success. The teacher noted that children who typically lacked focus while reading showed improvement when Mr. Jax was in the room. She also said that children would devote more time to practicing their reading at home in anticipation of Mr. Jax's visits. Overall, the teacher said that having Mr. Jax in the classroom had enormous benefits for the young students.
During the news story, the school's principal was quoted as saying she wished there was a Mr. Jax for every classroom. In response, our management staff, which already had a great deal of experience creating and administering animal companionship programs, offered to turn that dream into a reality.
We proposed to the school that we would develop a program that paired carefully screened dogs and their guardians in more of the elementary school's classrooms. Children would have the opportunity to practice their reading in front of these four-legged visitors during monthly or bi-weekly visits, and the pets would become important members of the classroom family.
As a result, we developed the Paws for Reading program—recruiting and training volunteers and their companions, creating presentations for participating classroom teachers and students, and more. Last year, the Richmond SPCA secured seed funding from a local corporate sponsor to develop the curriculum, devote staff time, and recruit a core group of volunteers and their pets (many of whom are Richmond SPCA alumni) as participants.
The program launched in October 2018 with six pilot classrooms at William Fox Elementary School in Richmond’s Fan District. Four kindergarten, one first grade, and one second grade classroom (a Spanish immersion room). As the academic year progressed, the program expanded to include an additional classroom.
Outcomes
The feedback regarding the program—from the school’s administration to Richmond City Public Schools’ central office, to the individual teachers, to the students and their parents and the dedicated volunteers who visited the classrooms—was overwhelmingly positive. The program generated positive media coverage in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and on several local network affiliate stations. It was widely promoted on social media, in our print newsletter distributed to 20,000 households, in our e-news that goes out to 40,000 of our online constituents, and on our website. Most importantly, teachers reported positive outcomes for their students, including progress in literacy skills and excitement to engage in the learning process when the dog and volunteer were present. Paws for Reading is working.
Paws for Reading also creates a positive volunteer experience for the Richmond SPCA to offer highly-skilled volunteers and their canine companions. In addition to the immediate benefit and reward experienced by participating children, the positive press presents a public relations opportunity for the Richmond SPCA to connect the community (at all ages) to the benefits of humane rescue and adoption and the myriad of humane education opportunities available at our humane center. The net result is more children excited to read and reading at their grade level, civic engagement both in our public schools and with Richmond’s largest humane organization, and an opportunity to open public dialogue on the importance of animal welfare and its associated mission-critical elements, like rescue and adoption.
Where we work
Awards
National Lifesaving Award 2009
Maddie's Fund
Best Nonprofit or Charity 2007
Richmond Magazine
Best Annual Benefit Gala - Fur Ball 2013
Style Weekly
Most Creative Charitable Event in Central Virginia - Fur Ball 2013
Virginia Living Magazine
Nonprofit that Hosts the Best Events 2013
Richmond Magazine
Four-Star Recognition (Highest Available) for Financial Management, Accountability and Transparency 2015
Charity Navigator
Nonprofit Doing the Best Work 2014
Richmond Magazine
Best Charity in Central Virginia 2015
Virginia Living Magazine
Best Charity Event-Fur Ball 2020
Virginia Living Magazine
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of animals rescued
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Adoptions
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Our FY22 began on 10/1/21 with 279 animals in our care. During the course of the year, we brought in an additional 4,204 homeless pets, caring for a total of 4,483 pets (312 in our care at year-end).
Number of animal adoptions
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Adoptions
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
In FY 2022 (October 1, 2021-September 30, 2022), we placed 4,034 pets in loving homes. This includes dogs, cats, and rabbits; 107 pets were placed in our seniors for seniors programs.
Number of sheltered animals
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Adoptions
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Every pet arriving at our center receives a thorough examination by our veterinarians as well as all age-appropriate vaccinations and other essential preventative care, microchipping, and spay/neuter.
Number of animals spayed and neutered
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
2,675 sterilizations were performed for community cat caretakers and rescue groups. This figure includes dogs in the care of other shelters and rescue agencies. The 2021 figure is TNVR only.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The Richmond SPCA became a no-kill humane society in 2002 and created numerous innovative programs and services designed to dramatically reduce pet homelessness communitywide. We committed ourselves to increasing adoptions, transferring pets into our care from government shelters where their lives were at risk, and improving pet retention to foster a more compassionate community. As we reached milestones in our services with pathbreaking public-private partnerships, we identified the remaining barriers we faced to making our community no-kill. We recognized that we needed to provide a resource that responds to three critical challenges: (1) the thousands of pets in wonderful homes with families who love them but cannot afford the rising costs of private veterinary care; (2) hundreds of treatable sick and injured homeless pets who suffer and die in local government shelters each year because those agencies have inadequate resources to provide crucial veterinary care and; (3) the families who would provide wonderful adoptive homes, but who are concerned about the high cost of veterinary care.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
To address barriers to adoption, we launched the Susan M. Markel Veterinary Hospital to provide low-income families full-service veterinary care. This visionary program serves to prevent relinquishments due to the owner’s inability to afford basic veterinary care, increases the universe of potential adopters by making ongoing care for their pets affordable, and strengthens the healthcare network for sick and injured animals. Since we opened the hospital in 2016, we have served thousands of families and their pets, allowing families to pay what they can afford to keep their pets healthy, happy, and, most importantly, in the home.
The Susan M. Markel Veterinary Hospital developed, tested, evaluated, and modified its operation since opening first as a pilot program in 2012. We developed a sustainable model that effectively addresses the challenges previously outlined. After seven years, our management team has developed a formula of success that is proactively reducing pet homelessness.
The overall goal for the hospital is to provide, at a low cost, the treatment and care required by the most at-risk animals. The result is more lives saved through adoption and fewer animals being relinquished to shelters. Specifically, your investment will help us to:
• Prevent owner relinquishments due to the owner’s inability to afford basic veterinary care
• Increase the universe of potential adopters by making ongoing care for their pets more affordable
• Strengthen the healthcare network for sick and injured animals, while building upon the Richmond SPCA's existing relationships with government shelters. By helping government shelters treat more of their sick and injured pets, we significantly increase the number of lives they can save.
To address (and positively impact) the live-release rate of pets in the state of Virginia:
• We primarily take into our shelter dogs and cats from government shelters across Virginia where their lives are at risk without us.
• We especially focus on taking into our care those animals who are sick or injured because we know that their lives are at the greatest risk in most other shelters and that we are capable of treating and rehabilitating them.
•The Richmond SPCA partners with approximately 64 government shelters across the state to bring into our care dogs and cats—many of whom are sick or injured and at risk of euthanasia. Outside of Virginia, we strategically partner with animal welfare groups saving animals in desperate circumstances, focusing on the rural Southern United States, Puerto Rico, and assisting like-minded agencies that encounter particularly difficult hoarding or puppy mill situations.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We act on the feedback we receive
-
What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Richmond SPCA
Board of directorsas of 06/30/2023
Mr. Mitchell Haddon
Colonial Webb Contractors
Term: 2017 - 2023
Ms. Laura Windsor
Williams Mullen
Term: 2018 - 2024
Allen King
Universal Corporation, Retired
Robin Robertson Starr
Retired Richmond SPCA CEO
Marla Fergerson
MSC Industrial Supply
Cyndi Massad
US Trust
J. Broaddus
Retired
Stefanie Gordinier
Community Volunteer
Agustin Rodriguez
Altria
Elizabeth King
Ameriprise Financial
Allen King
Chairman Emeritus, Universal Corporation
J. Alfred Broaddus, Jr.
Retired President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Todd Dykshorn
Owner and Architect, Architecture Design Office
Mark Franko
Principal, Mark Franko Custom Building
Mitch Haddon
President and CEO, Colonial Webb Contractors
Tom Hamlin
Retired Vice President of Financial Analysis and Investor Relations, Dominion Energy
Deborah Hinton
Retired Principal, Chesterfield County Public Schools
Michael Hughes
President, Holiday Barn Pet Resorts
Tamsen Kingry
CEO, Richmond SPCA
Dr. Barbara Lawson
Cardiologist and Assistant Professor, VCU Health
Cyndi Massad
Senior Vice President and Client Advisor, SunTrust Private Wealth Management
Mel Miller
Owner, Thatch Winery
Cindy Payne Pryor
Community Volunteer
Julie H. Thomas
Treasurer, The Arcady Group
Laura D. Windsor, Esq.
Partner, Williams Mullen
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? No -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 06/30/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.