Grassroots advocacy is organized local action to improve decisions and practices affecting animals and the people who care for them. Best Friends Animal Society’s Grassroots Advocacy Toolkit offers a U.S.-focused starting point for residents who want to help dogs and cats through community support, outreach, collaboration, and humane policy change.
What grassroots animal advocacy means
Grassroots advocacy begins with people closest to a community issue working together to change it. In animal welfare, that can mean improving access to services, helping residents find affordable veterinary care, educating neighbors, building partnerships, or asking local decision-makers to adopt or improve a policy.
Best Friends describes animal services as connected to human services and frames pet welfare as shared work among community members, shelters, and other organizations—not a task for one shelter alone. The broader advocacy framework described by Tearfund is to influence decisions, policies, and practices to address underlying causes of a problem. In practical terms, advocacy is more than raising awareness: it links an identified issue to a decision or practice that can change.
What the Best Friends toolkit covers
The introductory page presents the toolkit as a downloadable PDF blueprint for organizing people to help dogs and cats in communities throughout the United States. Its nine chapter topics span both organizing and action:
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- Community organizing to help homeless pets
- Starting a local action team
- Supporting a lifesaving animal ordinance
- Creating petitions and gathering signatures
- Hosting a team meetup
- Tabling and canvassing
- Engaging with local schools
- Using social media
- Public relations and working with the media
Those topics are options, not a checklist every group must complete. A campaign should choose activities that reach the relevant audience or decision-maker and fit its objective and available capacity.
How to start a local animal advocacy effort
1. Name a specific local issue
Describe the condition you want to change and identify what might improve it: a service, local practice, decision, or policy. Listen to residents and others directly affected, then gather current local information to test your understanding. National figures can give context, but they do not establish what is happening in a particular community.
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2. Find people who share the goal
Invite residents, volunteers, animal shelters, service providers, and community organizations that have a relevant perspective or role. A useful coalition is not simply a list of supporters; its partners can contribute knowledge, relationships, or capacity that helps address the issue.
3. Agree on goals, roles, and decision rules
Before acting publicly, clarify what the group wants to change, who is responsible for each task, how decisions will be made, and who can approve statements or commitments on behalf of the group. National PTA’s coalition guidance recommends aligning around a shared issue, defining goals and roles, setting decision guidelines and action parameters, and checking what partners can realistically contribute.
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4. Match actions to the audience and change sought
Choose a tactic based on whom you need to reach and what response would move the goal forward. A meetup may help a team coordinate; a petition may demonstrate community support; canvassing or tabling may reach residents; school, social media, and media outreach may inform different audiences; ordinance advocacy may engage local policymakers. The toolkit names these approaches, but the right mix depends on local circumstances.
5. Review progress and adjust
Track what the group does and what changes as a result. Note whether the intended audience responded, whether the desired decision or practice shifted, and what barriers appeared. Tearfund’s advocacy cycle includes monitoring, review, evaluation, and learning so a group can adapt rather than continuing an activity that is not advancing its goal.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Choosing an approach your team can sustain
Use these questions to compare possible activities before committing volunteer time:
- Audience: Does the action reach the residents, service providers, or decision-makers who can affect the issue?
- Outcome: What observable response or change would count as progress?
- Local fit: Is the activity relevant to the conditions and relationships in your community?
- Capacity: Can the group carry it out and follow through without overcommitting?
- Learning: Can you tell whether the activity helped, and use that information to improve the next step?
Coalition size also involves trade-offs. National PTA notes that a smaller coalition may give each member more opportunity to lead but require more effort from each participant. A larger coalition can distribute work across more members, while coordination and compromise may take longer.
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Best Friends’ introduction page reports that an estimated 17 million pets were killed in U.S. animal shelters annually in the 1980s and that 396,000 pets were killed in U.S. shelters in 2025. It also displays an estimate of nearly 1,100 dogs and cats still killed in shelters every day; the page does not give that daily estimate a separate measurement year. These are figures published by Best Friends, and national totals should not be treated as a description of any one local shelter or community. Check the current page and seek up-to-date local information before using numbers in a campaign.
The page also contains an image caption stating that “2 out of 3 US shelters are now no-kill,” but its date and methodology are not established in the text reviewed. It is better not to rely on that figure without checking the underlying data.
Keep legal questions jurisdiction-specific
Rules for lobbying, petitions, and election-related activity can depend on location and on an organization’s legal and tax status. The toolkit introduction is not a comprehensive legal guide. If a campaign or nonprofit needs to know what it may do, consult current guidance applicable to its jurisdiction and organization rather than assuming one set of rules applies everywhere.
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