A decade of defining moments:
A message from Julie Castle and Francis Battista
When Best Friends committed to leading the country to no-kill by 2025, we knew it would stretch us — and the movement — to find new and better ways to collaborate and advance our work.
While we didn’t fully reach that goal, the urgency of 2025 sparked a decade of innovation, collaboration, and lifesaving that changed the future for homeless pets.
Over the past 10 years, no-kill became the national expectation. With your help, shelters grew more transparent and data driven, communities more engaged, and partnerships stronger. Thanks to that collective effort, 67% of America’s shelters are no-kill today — and more than three-quarters have achieved no-kill at some point since 2016.
At the center of all this progress are pets like Zorro. His journey reminds us what these numbers truly represent: individual lives, each deserving love and a safe place to call home. Zorro is one of 40 million dogs and cats saved in shelters between 2016 and 2025 — 40 million lives saved because people like you chose to care and take action.
Looking back, certain moments defined the decade. Setting the 2025 goal changed the national conversation. Building a national team of experts enabled support for shelters in all 50 states. Opening new centers in New York City, Houston, and Northwest Arkansas helped more than double adoptions from Best Friends.
Groundbreaking data tools gave shelters and communities unprecedented insight into where help was needed most. Responses to major crises — from Hurricane Harvey to the COVID 19 pandemic to the Los Angeles wildfires — protected thousands of pets in their most vulnerable moments. And policy wins, including statewide no-kill proclamations, paved the way for even greater progress.
This past fiscal year (October 1, 2024–September 30, 2025) carried that momentum forward, and you’ll read more about it in the pages ahead. We hope you feel proud of what you helped build — not only in fiscal year 2025 but throughout the past decade. The target year may have passed, but our commitment has not. And we hope you feel inspired by what comes next: more lifesaving, more no-kill communities, and more stories like Zorro’s.
Together, we will Save Them All.
Julie Castle, CEO
Francis Battista, co-founder and board chair