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<\/a> Richard Avanzino & Merritt Clifton in 2015.<\/strong><\/em> PLEASANTON, California\u2013\u2013<\/strong>Maddie\u2019s Fund on September 29,\u00a0 2026\u2013\u2013nine days after Richard Avanzino\u2019s actual death,\u00a0 announced that \u201cRich Avanzino, affectionately and widely known as the father of the \u2018no-kill\u2019 movement, \u00a0passed away peacefully at the age of 84.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a> From left to right, then-San Francisco SPCA president and later Maddie\u2019s Fund founding executive director Richard Avanzino, Ed Duvin, and No Kill Conference founder Linda Foro, Richard Avenzino at the 1998 No Kill conference.<\/strong><\/em> Though Avanzino was indeed often called \u201cfather of the \u2018no-kill\u2019 movement,\u201d\u00a0 that term was also applied,\u00a0 beginning somewhat earlier,\u00a0 to his longtime friend Ed Duvin.<\/p>\n It was actually Duvin\u2019s 1989 AnimalLines<\/em> essay \u201cIn the Name of Mercy\u201d that sparked the nationwide wave of discussion and innovation dubbed the \u2018no-kill\u2019 movement by Doing Things for Animals founder Lynda Foro, publisher of a \u201cNo Kill Directory\u201d for several years beginning in 1994,\u00a0 and organizer of the first No Kill Conference series,\u00a0 1995-2005.<\/p>\n (See No Kill Conference & No-Kill Directory founder Lynda Foro, 74<\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Some of Avanzino\u2019s idea,\u00a0 to be sure, \u00a0may have influenced Duvin in writing \u201cIn the Name of Mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI go back a long way with Avanzino,\u201d\u00a0 Duvin told ANIMALS 24-7<\/strong>,\u00a0 \u201cas we first connected when he came to the San Francisco SPCA in the mid-1970s. \u00a0Our friendship was more professional than personal, largely based on mutual respect. \u00a0That respect was tested when he went to Maddie\u2019s Fund,\u201d\u00a0 in 1998.<\/p>\n <\/a> Ed Duvin and the elephant in the room.<\/strong><\/em> Avanzino at Maddie\u2019s Fund seemed to forget many of the principles and premises that had made his 23-year San Francisco SPCA tenure influentially successful,\u00a0 as Duvin has recently pointed out,\u00a0 though not naming Avanzino specifically,\u00a0 in his ANIMALS 24-7<\/strong> essays \u201cI saw the best minds of animal advocacy destroyed by madness\u201d<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0 Is your allegiance to movement leadership or those you serve?<\/a><\/strong>, \u00a0and Pit bulls, the humane movement, & the elephant in the room.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn my experience with Rich, \u00a0he was a man of contradictions,\u201d\u00a0 Duvin recalled to ANIMALS 24-7<\/strong>.\u00a0 \u201cHe had a healthy ego, \u00a0but when I was presented with the \u2018Voice of Animals\u2019 Award,\u201d \u00a0at the 1998 No Kill Conference in Walnut Creek,\u00a0 California,\u00a0 \u201che turned to Donna,\u201d\u00a0 Ed Duvin\u2019s wife,\u00a0 \u201cand said, \u2018Ed\u2019s one of a kind.\u201d\u2018\u00a0 That was extremely gracious, \u00a0as he likely thought that he would be the recipient.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a> Elizabeth Morris.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n In truth,\u00a0 the \u201cno-kill movement\u201d might most accurately be described as a bastard child of uncertain parentage.<\/p>\n Though both Duvin and Avanzino might be suspected of contributing the leading male voices in the matter,\u00a0 the \u201cno-kill movement\u201d was conceptualized by a succession of women,\u00a0 from Elizabeth Morris and Anne Waln,\u00a0 who founded the first animal shelter in the U.S. as an attempted no-kill in 1858; \u00a0\u00a0through Florence Kibbe,\u00a0 founder in 1903 of the no-kill Bide-A-Wee Home in New York,\u00a0 which still exists;\u00a0 Anna Briggs,\u00a0 involved in no-kill sheltering in Virginia from age 15 in 1924 until her death at age 101 in 2011;\u00a0 and perhaps most influentially,\u00a0 Elisabeth \u201cBabette\u201d Lewyt,\u00a0 who headed the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington,\u00a0 New York,\u00a0 from 1969 to until shortly before her death in 2012 at age 99.<\/p>\n <\/a> Elisabeth Lewyt.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n It was Elisabeth Lewyt,\u00a0 with 20-year North Shore Animal League shelter manager Mike Arms,\u00a0 heading the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe,\u00a0 California since 1999,\u00a0 who introduced many and perhaps most of the high-volume adoption techniques that Avanzino emulated at the San Francisco SPCA,\u00a0 and later promoted at Maddie\u2019s Fund.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (See Who invented no-kill? (It wasn\u2019t Nathan Winograd)<\/a> and Anna Briggs lived for animal rights & no-kill before the movements existed<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Avanzino formally retired as Maddie\u2019s Fund founding president Richard Avanzino in June 2015,\u00a0 but remained involved to some extent as a strategic advisor,\u00a0 according to the Maddie\u2019s Fund announcement of his death.<\/p>\n <\/a> Richard Avanzino circa 1980.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Avanzino in 1984,\u00a0 his eighth year at the San Francisco SPCA,\u00a0 rose to national prominence within the animal care and control field by challenging the concept behind 90 years of humane efforts to wrest animal control contracts away from laboratory suppliers by returning the San Francisco animal control job to the city.<\/p>\n Avanzino argued, \u00a0in part, \u00a0that the best way to keep homeless dogs and cats out of laboratories was to stop breeding a surplus.<\/p>\n Avanzino made the San Francisco SPCA a no-kill shelter, \u00a0emphasized dog and cat sterilization and adoption, \u00a0and a decade later introduced the Adoption Pact, \u00a0through which the San Francisco SPCA guarantees a good home or lifetime care to any healthy or recoverable dog or cat, \u00a0after the expiry of the requisite holding time at the city Department of Animal Care & Control.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Taking effect on April 1, \u00a01994, \u00a0the Adoption Pact was initially treated as a hoax by much of the sheltering establishment\u2013\u2013but the American SPCA, \u00a0providing animal control service to New York City since 1895, \u00a0also gave up doing animal control to go no-kill within the year.<\/p>\n Within a few years the animal control shelters serving both San Francisco and New York City were killing fewer dogs and cats, \u00a0primarily because of escalated free and low-cost spay\/neuter programs funded by the San Francisco SPCA and the ASPA, than at any time since records first were kept.<\/p>\n Humane societies giving up animal control contracts soon became a national trend.<\/p>\n But neither the Adoption Pact nor the New York success were achieved overnight. Indeed, Avanzino had contemplated ways and means of implementing an Adoption Pact from his first day on the job 18 years earlier, he said later.<\/p>\n <\/a> Rich Avanzino with rescue dog.<\/strong><\/em> Elevated to the presidency of the San Francisco SPCA in 1976 after a series of broadcast reports about high-volume shelter killing by Marilyn Baker, a pioneer of televised investigative journalism who went on to found a no-kill shelter herself in Palm Desert, California, Avanzino arrived with a background as a pharmacist, \u00a0attorney, \u00a0lobbyist, \u00a0and public health administrator\u2013\u2013and a lifelong conviction,\u00a0 shared with Duvin, \u00a0that killing animals \u201cfor their own good\u201d just because they happen to be homeless was not only wrong but destructive to the humane ethic.<\/p>\n \u201cIronically,\u201d Avanzino laughed in 1996, \u00a0\u201cI wanted to do something involving animals all along, \u00a0but I didn\u2019t want to become a veterinarian because in those days there was no avoiding having to kill animals in a veterinary course of study.\u201d<\/p>\n Early Adoption Pact critics often suggested that Avanzino was able to implement it only because the San Francisco SPCA was among the most affluent humane societies in the world, with a strong donor base, and a cooperative board of directors, who respected his already long tenure of leadership, enabling him to follow through on long-range plans.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t always this way,\u201d Avanzino said.<\/p>\n <\/a> The San Francisco SPCA held this guns-for-cameras swap,\u00a0 one of the most successful yet controversial pre-Richard Avanzino SF\/SPCA programs,\u00a0 in 1936.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Founded in 1868 with legacy money from pioneers of the 1848-1855 California Gold Rush, \u00a0the San Francisco SPCA had maintained a shelter since 1875, and had provided municipal animal control service beginning in 1888, albeit with frequent interruptions in the early years when the pound contract was frequently allocated as political patronage.<\/p>\n But the San Francisco SPCA had used up its initial endowment dealing with the aftermath of the 1906 fire and earthquake, building the former shelter (now used for the administrative offices) in 1932, \u00a0and most of all, \u00a0in subsidizing animal control from 1905, when it assumed the job for keeps after 17 years of litigation and controversy involving other claimants, until 1989.<\/p>\n Hired in 1976, \u00a0Avanzino inherited debts, \u00a0a staff demoralized by increasing amounts of animal control killing, \u00a0and a donor base of just 1,700 people.<\/p>\n And his predecessor remained on the board,\u00a0 in the most prominent office,\u00a0 muddling staff loyalties.<\/p>\n Avanzino arrived to find no parking space available for him, \u00a0no desk, \u00a0and staffers betting that because of his lack of previous animal care and control experience, \u00a0he wouldn\u2019t last ten days.<\/p>\n <\/a> Woody Allen, Richard Bonner, & Miss Pussycat 1965.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n \u201cIf I had only 10 days,\u201d \u00a0Avanzino often recounted, \u00a0\u201cI decided to make the most of them.\u201d<\/p>\n On his second day, \u00a0he abolished use of the decompression chamber for euthanasia. \u00a0The board backed him up, \u00a0even though the San Francisco SPCA had been instrumental in popularizing the use of decompression,\u00a0 introduced by Richard Bonner of the Los Angeles Board of Animal Regulation 26 years earlier.<\/p>\n The San Francisco SPCA had even formed two subsidiaries, the Northern California SPCA and the Western Humane Education Society,\u00a0 to help introduce decompression killing to other shelters.<\/p>\n Both subsidiaries were defunct,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 before Avanzino was hired.<\/p>\n Avanzino instituted other reforms, \u00a0reporting to the board president about every action.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter several months,\u201d \u00a0Avanzino recalled years later, \u00a0\u201cthe board president told me to quit bugging him and go on about my work,\u201d \u00a0a unique vote of confidence in a field notorious for board meddling in administrative affairs.<\/p>\n Eventually Avanzino inherited the big office, \u00a0shared over the years with a variety of well-fed cats and dogs.<\/p>\n The donor list grew to 64,000,\u00a0 including 80 annual donors of $10,000 or more.<\/p>\n <\/a> Rich Avanzino & friends.\u00a0 (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n The secret of successful fundraising,\u00a0 Avanzino argued, \u00a0was similar to the formula for running a successful for-profit business: \u00a0the customer is always right.<\/p>\n This was among the lessons Avanzino seemed to forget at Maddie\u2019s Fund,\u00a0 which since inception has appeared to ignore public expectations that animal shelters should always be open to accept animals in need,\u00a0 should never turn away homeless animals and animals at risk of abandonment,\u00a0 and should never put adopters,\u00a0 their families,\u00a0 and other animals in danger by rehoming dangerous dog.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we do what the public expects us to do, they respond,\u201d \u00a0Avanzino contended. \u201cThe public wants an SPCA to be taking care of animals and adopting out animals. \u00a0The public does not want an SPCA to be killing animals.<\/p>\n \u201cThe humane community correctly recognized,\u201d\u00a0 Avanzino argued, \u00a0\u201cwhen many major organizations including the San Francisco SPCA took a stand against turning shelter animals over to laboratories that surrendering animals to be used in potentially painful experiments would erode the public trust in their institutions, \u00a0and would result in people abandoning animals instead of bringing them in.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n \u201cBut for some reason they never applied that same understanding to the matter of taking over animal control contracts and euthanizing animals en masse<\/em> because of overpopulation. And the same thing happened.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps the biggest reason why animals are abandoned today,\u201d Avanzino realized early in his humane career, \u201cis that people don\u2019t want them to be killed. They would rather turn them loose on the street to fend for themselves, and pretend that they are giving the animals a chance, \u00a0than be certain that those animals will be euthanized.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 1989, \u00a0after 101 years,\u201d\u00a0 Avanzino recited,\u00a0 \u201cthe San Francisco SPCA returned the animal control contract to the city. We worked very hard to regain the trust of the community that we are not going to kill animals,\u201d Avanzino testified.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re getting the people to bring those animals in so that we can neuter them, put them up for adoption, and end the cycle of abandonment, \u00a0uncontrolled breeding, and killing.\u201d<\/p>\n Avanzino failed to recognize,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 that public opposition to killing animals due to overpopulation has never extended,\u00a0 for most people,\u00a0 to killing dangerous dogs\u2013\u2013especially after they have already injured humans and\/or other animals.<\/p>\n <\/a> Rich Avanzino & Sido on the courthouse steps.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Among Avanzino\u2019s formative experiences in animal sheltering was the Sido case, recounted in a San Francisco SPCA brochure:<\/p>\n \u201cSome years ago a San Francisco woman feared no one would be able to properly care for her dog after she passed away. As a result she stipulated in her will that upon her death the dog be humanely put to sleep.<\/p>\n That dog\u2019s name was Sido. The woman died in 1979 and the friendly 11-year-old sheltie mix was put in the temporary care of the San Francisco SPCA.<\/p>\n But the San Francisco SPCA refused to release Sido to those who wanted to carry out the terms of the will, \u00a0and instead fought for Sido\u2019s life. The public rallied to Sido\u2019s cause.\u00a0 The crusade spilled over to the courts and the state legislature. After six tense months, \u00a0a new law was passed. \u00a0The little dog\u2019s life was spared. \u00a0Sido spent another five glorious years with a loving family.\u201d<\/p>\n Remembered Avanzino, \u00a0\u201cThe legislation saved only Sido, \u00a0but the court case set a legal precedent on disposition of animals in wills, \u00a0and has been relied on in many similar cases.\u201d<\/p>\n More important, the Sido case underscored for Avanzino that the public would respond positively and generously when the San Francisco SPCA\u2013\u2013or any humane society\u2013\u2013was seen in the role of saving innocent animals,\u00a0 who had not harmed anyone, \u00a0instead of killing them.<\/p>\n <\/a> Richard Avanzino & Sido.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Avanzino entered the humane field at a time when shelters killed more than seven times as many animals as today.<\/p>\n An essay about the necessity of shelter killing authored in the 1950s by animal gas chamber inventor Raymond Naramore was posted on the wall in almost every shelter.<\/p>\n Early in Avanzino\u2019s career, \u00a0circa 1979, \u00a0the somewhat ponderous Naramore essay was superseded by \u201cWhy we must euthanize,\u201d \u00a0by Phyllis Wright, \u00a0the first companion animal welfare director for the Humane Society of the U.S.<\/p>\n Wright dedicated her life to promoting the replacement of the gas chambers and decompression chambers then used to kill upward of 20 million dogs and cats per year, \u00a0mostly unwanted puppies and kittens, \u00a0with pentobarbital injection; \u00a0to replacing the words \u201ckill\u201d and \u201cdestroy\u201d then used to describe the fate of shelter animals, \u00a0with \u201ceuthanize\u201d or \u201cput to sleep\u201d; \u00a0and to help shelter workers cope with the stress of killing animals, which had made drug and alcohol abuse, marital failure, \u00a0and suicide epidemic among shelter staff.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Today,\u00a0 fifty years after Avanzino started in shelter work, \u00a0there are more than three times as many animal shelters in the U.S., \u00a0but according to an ASPCA-funded research organization called Shelter Animals Count,\u00a0 they cumulatively killed less than 600,000 dogs and cat in 2025, \u00a0and very few of the animals killed were either puppies or kittens.<\/p>\n Almost every animal shelter today strives to become \u201cno kill,\u201d \u00a0or at least to boast of a \u201c90% live release rate,\u201d \u00a0a hugely misleading statistical benchmark that Avanzino at Maddie\u2019s Fund popularized to describe in localized terms the transition from killing upward of 100 homeless dogs and cats per 1,000 Americans to killing fewer than two.<\/p>\n While some shelters in some communities have achieved \u201c90% release rates,\u201d more than 95% of the reduction in shelter killing since Avanzino debuted in humane work resulted from reduced shelter intakes of dogs and cats, \u00a0through successful promotion of spay\/neuter\u2013\u2013and that progress has actually stalled and gone backward in recent years.<\/p>\n (See Shelter Animals Count: no mention of pit bulls, but data shows the crisis<\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Total U.S. shelter adoptions reached about four million per year circa 1984, \u00a0and have remained in the vicinity of four to 4.5 million per year ever since,\u00a0 despite astronomically increased expenditure on adoption promotion,\u00a0 much of it encouraged by Maddie\u2019s Fund and partially financed by Maddie\u2019s Fund grants.<\/p>\n Influencing and facilitating the turnabout from the high volume killing era to today,\u00a0 Avanzino furthered many of the most successful innovations in sheltering, \u00a0mostly during his tenure at the San Francisco SPCA.<\/p>\n <\/a> Emma Clifford.\u00a0 (United Spay Alliance photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Among the biggest of those innovations was neuter\/return feral cat control.<\/p>\n The San Francisco SPCA was among the first humane societies in the U.S. to have a full-time feral cat coordinator, Emma Clifford.\u00a0 Clifford went on to found Animal Balance, promoting feral cat and street dog sterilization in island habitats including the Galapagos islands, the Dominican Republic, and Cape Verde.<\/p>\n Avanzino also hired and boosted the careers of many other future organization directors of note, \u00a0perhaps most notably Brenda Barnette, \u00a0who as San Francisco SPCA development director increased the organization\u2019s revenue ninefold.<\/p>\n <\/a> Brenda Barnette.\u00a0 (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Enjoying similar success as executive director of Pets In Need, \u00a0in Redwood City, California, Barnette moved on to Tony LaRussa\u2019s Animal Rescue Foundation, where she doubled program spending, halved fundraising and administrative expense, \u00a0cut the debt owed for a $16 million new shelter from $6 million to $3 million, \u00a0and quadrupled adoptions.<\/p>\n Heading the Seattle Humane Society from 2006 to 2010, Barnette boosted adoptions from circa 4,500 per year, \u00a0already one of the highest totals in the U.S., to 6,091 in 2009, \u00a0the most in the 112-year history of the organization.<\/p>\n As director of Los Angeles Animal Services from 2010 to 2021, \u00a0Barnette cut shelter killing to the lowest volume in the then 74-year history of the agency,\u00a0 but at a catastrophic price.<\/p>\n (See Los Angeles Animal Services chief Brenda Barnette to retire in May 2021<\/a> and L.A. Animal Services\u2019 pays $31.85 million to victims of shelter dog attacks<\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/a> Ed Boks.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n After his many successes at the San Francisco SPCA, Avanzino at Maddie\u2019s Fund promoted some of the most damaging mistakes in sheltering history, beginning with fumbling attempts to replicate his San Francisco successes in other communities.<\/p>\n Popularizing the use of the \u201clive release rate\u201d as a gauge of shelter management success has been perhaps the most self-defeating of those mistakes,\u00a0 as underscored in ANIMALS 24-7<\/strong> guest columns by Ed Duvin,\u00a0 Colorado veterinarian Jeff Young,\u00a0 and Animal Politics<\/em> blogger Ed Boks,\u00a0 a 40-year veteran of shelter management,\u00a0 including having headed the animal control departments in Maricopa County,\u00a0 Arizona;\u00a0 New York City;\u00a0 Los Angeles;\u00a0 and Yavapai County,\u00a0 Arizona,\u00a0 plus the Spokane Humane Society.<\/p>\n (See We cannot adopt, warehouse or rescue our way out of dog & cat overpopulation!<\/a>,\u00a0 by Jeff Young;\u00a0 Finish the job that no-kill started<\/a>,\u00a0 by Ed Boks;\u00a0 and Hoarding: how animal shelters create the crisis they claim to solve<\/a>, by Ed Boks.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Emphasizing \u201clive release rate\u201d encourages shelters to refuse admission of hard-case animals; to release feral cats in places where their presence is unwelcome to neighbors, \u00a0property owners, and birders;\u00a0 to accept animals by appointment only,\u00a0 during restricted hours,\u00a0 practically closing their doors to found animals and emergency situations,\u00a0 such as the death of owners;\u00a0 to release animals to poorly supervised shelterless \u201crescues\u201d and underfunded no-kill shelters that lack professional management; \u00a0and to rehome dangerous dogs, \u00a0especially pit bulls.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Since the formation of Maddie\u2019s Fund, the for-profit nuisance animal control sector,\u00a0 wholly unaccountable to the public, \u00a0has grown from obscurity to a $26-billion-a-year-industry,\u00a0 possibly killing as many as a million feral cats per year,\u00a0 with no way for anyone to count the toll.<\/p>\n The numbers of animals impounded each year from failed shelterless \u201crescues\u201d and no-kill shelters have more than quadrupled.<\/p>\n Mass deaths of animals at failed shelterless \u201crescues\u201d and no-kill shelters come to light with unprecedented frequency.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (See Alleged no-killer De Anda charged; Miranda\u2019s Rescue back in business<\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Finally,\u00a0 while only two dogs rehomed from shelters had killed anyone from 1858 through 1998, \u00a0at least 108 rehomed dogs,\u00a0 74 of them pit bulls, \u00a0have killed at least 66 people and disfigured at least 361 since Maddie\u2019s Fund debuted.<\/p>\n Maddie\u2019s Fund has not developed effective programs responding to any of these issues, and indeed has barely recognized that they exist.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Originally called the Duffield Family Foundation when formed in 1994, Maddie\u2019s Fund was rededicated to specifically promote reduced shelter killing after the Duffields became acquainted with Avanzino\u2019s accomplishments at the San Francisco SPCA.<\/p>\n The Duffields, who founded the PeopleSoft and Workday business software empires, \u00a0endowed Maddie\u2019s Fund with more than $300 million.<\/p>\n Before the Duffield Family Foundation was retitled Maddie\u2019s Fund, \u00a0the Duffields funded construction of Maddie\u2019s Adoption Center at the San Francisco SPCA.<\/p>\n Opened in 1996, Maddie\u2019s Adoption Center re-conceptualized animal sheltering, \u00a0from the floor paint to the skylights.<\/p>\n <\/a> Maddie\u2019s Adoption Center at the San Francisco SPCA.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Some shelters,\u00a0 notably the North Shore Animal League, \u00a0already included design elements such as a boutique-like adoption environment, \u00a0get-acquainted rooms for visitors, \u00a0dog housing that could double as a training environment to teach dogs how to live among furniture in homes, \u00a0group housing for cats, glass instead of bars or wire for cage fronts, \u00a0and video cameras allowing potential adopters to view animals from afar, \u00a0but Maddie\u2019s Adoption Center was the first to put them all together in a single building.<\/p>\n The shelter became\u2013\u2013and remains\u2013\u2013a Mission District tourist attraction.<\/p>\n But the Duffields wanted to do more. Two years after Maddie\u2019s Adoption Center opened, they hired Avanzino to head their revamped and repurposed foundation, \u00a0which was initially headquartered just across the San Francisco Bay Bridge in Alameda\u2013\u2013in the same neighborhood where Avanzino grew up.<\/p>\n <\/a> San Francisco SPCA.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Soon many other key personnel from the San Francisco SPCA followed Avanzino to Maddie\u2019s Fund, \u00a0including Lynn Spivak, who had been director of public relations for the SF\/SPCA since 1983.<\/p>\n Retiring in June 2013 after 14 years as director of marketing and communications for Maddie\u2019s Fund, Spivak (1948-2022) was the next-to-last of the SF\/SPCA veterans on the Maddie\u2019s Fund team.\u00a0 Avanzino himself was the last.<\/p>\n Under Avanzino, \u00a0Maddie\u2019s Fund awarded more than $153 million in grants to animal welfare organizations.\u2028\u00a0 The first funded projects were mostly coalitions of animal charities and animal control agencies who were to try to move whole communities toward no-kill, \u00a0following five-year-plans based on the San Francisco model.<\/p>\n The grant application process required doing about a year of intensive demographic research, financed in part by Maddie\u2019s Fund and guided by Maddie\u2019s Fund staff.<\/p>\n <\/a> Lynn Irene Spivak.\u00a0 (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Maddie\u2019s Fund required applicant coalitions to be headed by no-kill organizations while including the animal control agencies serving their communities.<\/p>\n Coalition organizers typically had trouble holding together partnerships of agencies that did not perceive themselves as all benefiting, \u00a0or benefiting equally, \u00a0from the promised grant money.<\/p>\n In addition, one of the Maddie\u2019s Fund requirements was that shelters should increase adoptions each year, \u00a0even while greatly reducing shelter intake and therefore the incoming volume of adoptable animals.<\/p>\n Many, \u00a0especially those doing the most adoptions already, \u00a0saw this as unrealistic<\/p>\n The very first five-year-plan to receive Maddie\u2019s Fund money, \u00a0anchored by Tony LaRussa\u2019s Animal Rescue Foundation in Walnut Creek, California, \u00a0fell apart within a year.<\/p>\n Eventually Maddie\u2019s Fund reorganized the grant application process and somewhat eased the goals for coalition applicants.\u00a0 Several dozen community coalitions have markedly reduced shelter killing with Maddie\u2019s Fund help, albeit few that have actually achieved no-kill animal control or reduced shelter killing to the San Francisco rate of barely one animal killed per 1,000 human residents.<\/p>\n Maddie\u2019s Fund later started the University of California at Davis shelter medicine program;\u00a0 funded shelter medicine programs at the University of Florida, \u00a0Cornell University, \u00a0and Purdue University; and since 2010 has sponsored the annual Maddie\u2019s Pet Adoption Days rehoming drive.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n But one of the most influential Maddie\u2019s Fund programs originated in part to try to rectify a strategic mistake,\u00a0 and ended up making a bigger mistake of enduring consequence.<\/p>\n Aware that the use of the term \u201cno kill\u201d had contributed to polarization among no-kill shelters, animal control agencies, and open-admission humane societies, Maddie\u2019s Fund in 2004 hosted a conference in Asilomar, California at which Avanzino in gist offered a compromise: \u00a0Maddie\u2019s Fund would de-emphasize \u201cno kill\u201d terminology, \u00a0even though it appeared in the Maddie\u2019s Fund mission statement, \u00a0if shelters of every sort would participate in a nationwide shelter data collection project which, among other goals, \u00a0would promote standard definitions of \u201cadoptable,\u201d \u201ctreatable,\u201d and \u201cirrecoverable\u201d animals, for whom euthanasia would be the only humane disposition.<\/p>\n <\/a> Nathan Winograd & friend.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n The Asilomar Accords do not appear to have accomplished much to reduce friction between no-kill and open admission shelters.<\/p>\n This is in part because of the work of the No Kill Advocacy Center, in Oakland, California, founded and directed by Nathan Winograd.<\/p>\n Winograd in 1994-1995 and in 1998 headed the Department of Law & Advocacy under Avanzino at the San Francisco SPCA.<\/p>\n From 1998 until early 2000 Winograd held other positions under Avanzino\u2019s successor as the San Francisco SPCA president,\u00a0 Ed Sayres Jr., who went on to head the ASPCA from 2004 to 2013 and later headed the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council.<\/p>\n The No Kill Advocacy Center, \u00a0contrary to the beliefs of Avanzino and the Duffields,\u00a0 promotes polarization on the theory that protest drives progress.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n What the Asilomar Accords chiefly did was establish the \u201c90% live release rate\u201d as a seemingly accessible goal, \u00a0even though it requires that 90% of the animals entering a shelter be safely releasable.<\/p>\n As the numbers of healthy young animals arriving at shelters declines, \u00a0especially proportionate to the numbers of feral cats and dangerous dogs, \u00a0pit bulls in particular, \u00a0this is less and less realistic.<\/p>\n Pit bulls and pit mixes now make up as many as two-thirds of all the dogs admitted to U.S. animal shelters, \u00a0and have amounted to two-thirds of the dogs killed in shelters for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n Avanzino\u2019s most spectacular failure at the San Francisco SPCA may have been his 1996 attempt to rehome pit bulls by renaming them \u201cSt. Francis terriers.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Advised by Winograd and then-San Francisco SPCA chief dog trainer Jean Donaldson, Avanzino argued that pit bulls might be dangerous chiefly in response to human expectations.<\/p>\n Changing the name, \u00a0Avanzino,\u00a0 Winograd, and Donaldson contended, \u00a0might change the expectations and the dogs\u2019 behavior.<\/p>\n About 60 so-called St. Francis terriers were placed, \u00a0after extensive screening and training, \u00a0but Avanzino reluctantly suspended the program after several of the re-dubbed dogs killed cats.<\/p>\n The pit bulls involved had not seemed especially aggressive. \u00a0Like most pit bulls, even those trained to fight, \u00a0they had appeared to be of rather sweet and gentle disposition.<\/p>\n But,\u00a0 as pit bulls are notorious for doing,\u00a0 they proved to be explosively reactive, \u00a0going from calm to all-out attack without giving the series of warning signals that most dogs do, \u00a0and responding to stimuli below the threshold of human perception.<\/p>\n <\/a> (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n Like the majority of pit bulls whose attacks on humans make the ANIMALS 24-7<\/strong> log of fatal and disfiguring attacks,\u00a0 maintained since 1982, \u00a0the St. Francis terriers\u2019 purported first known attacks were lethal. \u00a0And no one knew they would attack before they did.<\/p>\n Eventually the San Francisco SPCA resumed promoting pit bulls. But pit bulls rehomed by the San Francisco SPCA have several times more run spectacularly amok.<\/p>\n Under Avanzino, Maddie\u2019s Fund joined the Best Friends Animal Society in making promoting pit bull adoptions a particular focus.<\/p>\n Whether the effort has saved more animals\u2019 lives than it has cost could be debated.<\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\nAvanzino in 23 years at the San Francisco SPCA helped to create the \u201cno kill movement,\u201d\u00a0 but in 17 years as founding president of Maddie\u2019s Fund tended to discredit the concept<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\nEd Duvin<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n\u201cA man of contradictions\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nConceptualized by women<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nElisabeth Lewyt<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nAdoption Pact<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nQuitting animal control became trend<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
(Maddie\u2019s Fund photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\nEarly career<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nArrived in crisis<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTen days<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cThe customer is always right.\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cPeople abandon animals because they don\u2019t want them to be killed\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nSido<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u00a0\u201cWhy we must euthanize\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n90% \u201clive release rate\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nAdoptions flatlined<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFeral cats & spotting talent<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBrenda Barnette<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBig mistakes<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFor-profit nuisance animal control<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nMaddie\u2019s Fund<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTourist attraction<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n$153 million granted under Avanzino<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nCommunity coalitions<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a>Shelter medicine programs<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nAsilomar Accords<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFriction continues<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nData tracking<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cSt. Francis terriers\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\nJoined Best Friends Animal Society in pit bull promotion<\/h2>\n