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Is your community no-kill?

We’ve reached the tipping point in our lifesaving movement. Today, nearly 2 out of 3 shelters across the country are now no-kill, a record number.

To determine where shelters need the most help, we’re using our latest data to inform our decisions and looking for new ways to save more lives. Whether you have 20 minutes or 20 hours a week, you can save lives when you dive into the dashboard. Find out how.

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What is no-kill?

No-kill means saving every dog and cat in a shelter who can be saved. This is a solvable issue, and you can be part of the solution.

It’s helpful to have a way to measure lifesaving progress as we move forward together, which is where the 90% benchmark comes in. A 90% save rate for animals entering a shelter is a meaningful and common-sense benchmark for measuring lifesaving progress.

Typically, the number of pets who are suffering from irreparable medical or behavioral issues that compromise their quality of life and prevent them from being rehomed is not more than 10% of all dogs and cats entering shelters. Therefore, we designate shelters meeting the 90% save-rate benchmark as no-kill.

Right now, nearly 2 out of 3 shelters across the country have reached this benchmark and are no-kill. The ultimate goal, however, is to ensure that every shelter has the resources it needs to save every dog and cat who can be saved — whether that exact number is 90% or something else. But first, we want to help every shelter in every community reach the 90% no-kill benchmark.

More about what no-kill means

 




Help your community’s shelters achieve no-kill

Our best friends don’t belong in shelters; they belong at home. And with your help, we can secure a better future for homeless pets. 

In 2016, around 1 million cats and dogs were killed in America’s shelters because shelters didn’t have the community support or the resources they needed to save their lives. But today, nearly 2 out of 3 U.S. shelters are already no-kill, and hundreds more are within reach of that goal.

That means roughly 1 out of 3 (or 1,400) shelters in the U.S. still need your help to reach no-kill. Together, we can bring that number down to zero, making every shelter a safe haven and creating a brighter future for this country’s dogs and cats.

No-kill is a collaboration between shelters and their community. The key is for individuals to understand the progress being made in their own community and to know how they can help.

You can see how shelters in your community are doing by selecting your state:

Understanding the data

Whether you have questions about the data collection process or how to use the tool, we’ve got you covered.

To determine where shelters need the most help, we’re using data to inform our decisions and looking for new ways to implement effective strategies. Each year, we collect the data and share this national dataset publicly.

In collecting the data for the 2024 national dataset, Best Friends conducted extensive research to explore and determine which shelter and community characteristics impact a shelter’s intake and number of lives saved. All data and analysis prepared for the 2024 national dataset were done by Best Friends Animal Society.

Data was collected via an online data-sharing platform, Shelter Pet Data Alliance, as well as directly from shelter websites, other information provided by shelters, files provided by state governing bodies, and through Freedom of Information Act requests.

This information is used to track the effectiveness of our direct lifesaving efforts, such as foster and community cat programs, and it helps us plan future strategies.  

While we were able to capture a robust and representative sample of shelters for 2024, some of the nearly 4,000 shelters in the U.S. had not yet provided data. For those, we used advanced statistical methods that took community and shelter factors into account to estimate the data, including historical collected intake/outcome data from any shelter that has provided it. This model has been externally validated and has been determined to be highly accurate and reliable for the purpose of predicting the no-kill status of shelters.

The data for individual shelters around the country can be found on the pet lifesaving dashboard and is updated monthly when possible.

About the Data

Pet lifesaving dashboard FAQs

Get answers to the most commonly asked dashboard questions.
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Dashboard methodology

Learn about the dataset, definitions and formulas for calculations.
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Update your shelter’s info

Use this form if you work with a shelter and need to update your shelter’s information.
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About Best Friends Animal Society

Best Friends is working to end the killing of dogs and cats in U.S. shelters in part by getting more pets out of shelters and into loving homes.

We’ve come a long way since the first known city reached no-kill in 1994, and now we’re closer than ever to making the entire country no-kill. Today, roughly 2,500 shelters are no-kill throughout the U.S. — and 700 more are just 100 pets or fewer away from reaching that milestone.

Best Friends is committed to working with passionate people like you to save homeless pets through adoption, volunteering, fostering, and advocacy. In addition to our lifesaving centers around the U.S, we also founded and run the nation's largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals.

Working together, we can save homeless pets in our communities and secure a better future for our best friends. Together, we will bring the whole country to no-kill.