Pledge Guardian is an application written and hosted by Caspio. It is a database made up of pets, shelters, rescues, vets, and people with gigantic hearts.
What is the purpose of Pledge Guardian?
Every day there are awesome, loving, great pets that are killed in shelters across the nation... just to make space for more. Most people don't care and are unaware.
For a moment let's consider just dogs, and not cats or any other pets. The true numbers are not known and reporting varies by the source, but taking numbers provided by many established organizations (such as the HSUS, ASPCA, PetSmart Charities, or the American Veterinary Foundation), generally speaking one dog is killed every 90 seconds. 40 per hour. Almost 1,000 per day. Over 350,000 per year. And the numbers for cats are far worse! This is utterly ridiculous and tragic -- and preventable.
And despite the efforts of the No-Kill movement, shelters continue to kill pets even if they have a "no-kill" status because shelters can have that designation if they maintain a certain percentage of kills compared to the number of animals they take in! So... even "no-kill" shelters do kill (just less often than "regular" shelters). ALL shelters can (and do) kill pets they see showing any kind of fear, reactivity, older age, or treatable medical condition. In the USA, 40 die every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...
Many of these shelter pets are posted online with urgent pleas for a rescue or adoption as their only means to survive imminent death. These posts are often filled with pledges to any rescue able to pull them, but these are only promises and words on a screen. Not only does a Rescue have to know about all these posts (and cross-posts), it has to find all of them and spend time contacting each person who promised a pledge to save the pet. And then they have to trust that the pledges are actually sent to them!
This method of pledging and saving pets has many problems, which the Pledge Guardian solves. The few who care (YOU) have their efforts and pledges maximized and focused on the pets they try to help stay alive and find rescues.
Pledge Guardian follows this process:
1) - Users (or "Pledge Angels" - that's you!) can search for a pet, or create a pet profile based on a social media post. Angels can create a profile as well.
2) - Once a pet profile is created or selected, Pledge Angels then can commit and actually pay their pledge to a fund which is tied just to that specific pet. And the pledge is a tax-deductible donation to a registered 501(c)(3) charity! There is no need for Rescues to chase down the post and scroll through hundreds or thousands of comments looking to find pledges, then contacting each person, then waiting to for pledge-makers to deliver their promise - it's already collected and saved and ready for the Rescue!
3) - When a pet is pulled by a certified Rescue, the Rescue notifies Pledge Guardian which in turn obtains confirmation from the Shelter that this particular Rescue did in fact rescue the pet. The Rescue is also required to have the pet seen by a veterinarian for a wellness check.
4) - The veterinarian confirms that the pet had their wellness visit and was seen by their clinic, or the Rescue provides a copy of the veterinary receipt and Pledge Guardian confirms the visit occurred.
5) - All pledges which have been collected for that particular pet are then disbursed to the Rescue. For every pledge collected, a small percentage is also set aside into the general fund mentioned below.
6) - In the unfortunate event that a pet was not rescued in time and is killed by the shelter, all funds previously pledged, collected and reserved for that pet are moved to a general fund. This fund is used to subsidize spay and neuter programs, pay for critical care for a pet in need, provide grants to shelters and organizations promoting life-saving programs for pets, and to assist in disaster efforts for pets caught in natural disasters or war zones. Your pledge STILL makes a difference to another pet in need of life-altering assistance - because all dogs do matter.
Another issue solved by Pledge Guardian is if a Rescue pulls a pet, the status is updated in the app. Shelters can also update the status on any of their pets listed in Pledge Guardian. No more chaos or digging to see if a pet was rescued or faded away to be forgotten.
And no dog will be forgotten here - all dogs that do not make it, when there are enough of them, will be memorialized with a page of sorrow for all the dogs killed just for space.
And no offense to Shelters, but we believe in using the correct word to describe killing just for space or "behavior issues" as killing. Euthanasia is defined as the hastening of death of a patient to prevent further sufferings, to end an incurably or terminally ill patient's life - NOT to make space or because of curable behavioral "issues". Calling it "euthanasia" is an attempt to hide the killing act as done for good reasons and not convenience.
All pledges made in Pledge Guardian™ are considered tax-deductible donations, held by the Against All {Dog} Odds Foundation which is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit charity per IRS guidelines. All Pet-specific donations are reserved for uses mentioned above if the designated Pet is killed before it is rescued, pursuant to the goals of the Foundation.
EIN 99-1830561