Stray Animal Project

Looking Back on 2020

2020 was a huge year for the Stray Animal Project team, as it was the first year since we formally incorporated as a 501(c)(3), and we grew our team to 8 members, all volunteers, and established partnerships with different animal associations to scale. 2020 was also the year that we surpassed 1000 spay and neuter procedures — in fact, our current impact is north of 1800 animals! 

Accomplishments and kudos

We published our first ever transparency report for 2020 (English, Spanish)! The full report is definitely worth a read, but some highlights include:

1. We supported spay and neuter procedures for 751 animals. About a quarter of the procedures were through shelters, a third were for stray animals, and the remaining were through our 19 community campaigns. For contrast, our goal for 2021 is an ambitious 5000 animals across a goal of 6 campaigns per month (up from 1-2 campaigns/month in 2020).

Chart showing 2020 sources of animals
Volunteer holding a dog

2. Our analysis for 2020 estimates that nearly 95% of our donations went straight towards campaign operations. The remaining funding went towards fixed costs, such as running our website and financial transaction fees.

Spayed cat
Chart showing 2020 cost breakdown by area

3. We actively invested in expanding our partnerships. We worked with community-run shelters, like that of Mr. Luis, with whom we facilitated fixing 23 animals. We also began trap-neuter-release (TNR) campaigns with a focus on feral cats; the program led to an additional 55 procedures in 2020.

Guidestar Silver logo

4. We’re further investing in transparency with our recently obtained Silver Seal of Transparency through GuideStar (up from a Bronze Seal at the time of publishing the transparency report). We look forward to working towards our Gold Seal in 2021 and beyond.

Campaigns and partnerships

Our founder and CEO, Karina Canales, was interviewed for a profile in El Comercio, one of the oldest and most influential newspapers in Peru. Karina told the origin story for her love of animals and the Stray Animal Project and raised awareness of the importance to neuter/spay and educate on responsible pet ownership. Thank you to the team at El Comercio and our partners at WUF who made this possible!

 

With the ongoing COVID crisis and rising case rates, we’ve made some adjustments to keep our target communities safe. One change that we’ve made is to pay for spay and neuter procedures directly through animal hospitals. This keeps our community members by eliminating the need to bring their animals to massive campaigns.

 

On the donation front, we recently registered through PayPal Giving Fund, bringing it alongside our other donation integrations with Benevity and Donorbox to offer convenient ways to support us.

Moving into 2021...

In February we expanded our campaigns to two areas in Arequipa, and we’re very excited to be expanding for the first time outside of Lima! Just like in Lima, Arequipa has thousands of stray animals, and we’ve identified shelters that need our help with spay and neuter efforts.

Our 1st Post and 1000th Procedure

Welcome to the Stray Animal Project blog! Thank you to everyone who has supported us since we formally incorporated as a 501(c)3 organization earlier this year, as well as those who contributed to the original GoFundMe campaigns. 

 

In this edition, we’d like to give an update on our October campaigns — the first two campaigns that we’ve held since incorporating. 

October 11, 2020: Villa El Salvador

Total impact: 119 animals (64 dogs, 55 cats)

Our first October campaign was held in Villa El Salvador, one of the poorest areas in Lima. As with all of our campaigns, our primary partnership was with WUF, through which we’re able to operate in Peru. For this campaign, we also partnered with Posta Oasis, a social animal clinic in Villa El Salvador, and Dr. Francisco Bryce, veterinarian and founder of Posta Oasis.

 

This campaign was different from some of our past campaigns because of COVID-19. Instead of walk-ins, this community campaign was appointment-based and targeted towards low-income community members. Additionally, we were able to spay over 20 shelter animals and an amazing 80 stray animals.

 

How are we able to afford a campaign of this size? We are able to reduce the procedure cost in two ways. First, our partner clinic was able to offer a discount to perform procedures at cost, taking no profit. Second, for our community members, we subsidized the cost by 25%. Together, these two measures brought the procedure cost down to about 40% of the normal cost. For strays and shelter animals, we benefit from the clinic discount while covering the remaining amount.

This campaign gave us one major milestone: we spayed and neutered our 1000th animal! This is a huge milestone for us and we’re so excited to keep going.

October 24, 2020: Yerbateros

Total impact: 36 animals (15 dogs, 21 cats)

Our second campaign of the month was also in collaboration with WUF, as well as Giovanna Puccoy, owner of the shelter “El refugio de Gio.” Our lead veterinarian was Dr. Percy Sandoval and his staff from the vet clinic MichiGuau. As always, they were assisted by an amazing group of local volunteers.

 

We held this campaign in Yerbateros, which is an area of Lima that has many truck stations and wide open areas where stray dogs and cats are able to reproduce freely. This campaign was also appointment-based, due to COVID-19 restrictions. Appointments were made available to low income families, and we were also able to spay/neuter 5 stray animals.

 

This was a big day for all of the animals, but for one of the stray dogs, it was life-changing! Vicky was one of our five strays, and while she was in a foster home for recovery, her foster family fell in love and decided to adopt her! 

Thank you to all of our supporters who helped make these campaigns possible!