Second Home for Us, Forever Homes for Dogs
We have embarked upon a transformative $1.5 million project that will finally enable us to find forever homes for dogs as a core service to our community. The project will also create a surgery center exclusively for feral cats to help control their population. These expanded services will be offered at our new second home at 2120 Columbia Avenue in Lancaster, just a quarter mile away from our current building.
Exciting Donor Impact
As of January 7th, the Forever Homes for Dogs Campaign has raised $1,240,084 or 83% of our $1,500,000 goal. The funds will be used to pay off the purchase of the property, renovate the building, and support its first two years of operations. Thank you to the wonderful people and organizations that have already supported this effort to give more animals the life they truly deserve!
Lombardo $750,000 Challenge
Local philanthropists, dog-lovers, and Honorary Campaign Chairs Dena and Sam Lombardo are supporting the campaign with a $750,000 Matching Challenge. According to Dena, “We want to encourage others to support this important project. With this challenge, every new gift dollar is worth two dollars to Pet Pantry.”
The Lombardos hosted a public campaign kickoff celebration at their namesake restaurant in October. The event generated over $65,000 in new gifts and pledges! Thank you, Dena and Sam, for your generosity! To acknowledge their commitment, Pet Pantry will name our new location the Dena and Sam Lombardo Dog Rescue and Adoption Center.
How This Helps
Zoning laws don’t allow us to keep dogs overnight at our current building. Any surrendered or stray pup must go out the same day to a foster family. We just don’t have the space, staff, or volunteers to handle those turnarounds on a regular basis.
The new location is perfect for us. It is already zoned and licensed to have dog kennels. Stress-free kennels with opaque walls will house dogs until we can place them with a foster family—or their forever one.
The lower level will also feature a veterinary exam room and two quarantine kennels to ensure new arrivals do not spread disease to others. At least 200 dogs every year will find their loving forever home through Pet Pantry, repeatedly voted Lancaster’s Best Place to Adopt a Pet.
Surgery Center for Feral Cats
An operating room on the main level will enable us to dramatically increase the number of feral cats we treat. Trap–Neuter–Vaccinate–Return (TNVR) is the only proven effective method of helping to stabilize feral cat populations. They live short, hard lives and cannot be turned into adoptable pets. Addressing their needs has been one of our core services since 2013. The new site gives us the potential to go from performing 1,000 TNVR procedures a year up to as many as 5,000.
Treating feral cats only at the Columbia Avenue location will prevent the accidental transmission of diseases or pests to cats awaiting adoptions at our current home.
How You Can Help
Donors to date have made outright gifts, multi-year pledges, and even pledged a gift in their estate plan. If you have a desire to give to this new, wonderful facility and programs for dogs and cats, there is a way to do so!
Contact us if you would like to talk about making a gift.
From a Sponsor
Phil Randell, Vice President
The Irving and Phyllis Millstein Foundation for Animal Welfare
Irving and Phyllis were a successful couple who lived in New York City and Long Island. They did not have any children, but they had many beloved pets and left almost their entire estate to animal welfare. My next remark will probably be the most unusual statement that I will make when praising a client: We don’t issue grants in Lancaster County. And yet, I have been issuing grants to Pet Pantry of Lancaster County since 2019.
When the Foundation was created in 2018, we had not yet defined our current geographic giving criteria. When we did, Pet Pantry was outside the regions in which we issue grants, but we decided to keep the organization as a grantee. Pet Pantry is extremely effective, well managed, and a pleasure to work with.
We have issued Pet Pantry grants to perform vaccine and microchipping clinics, upgrade facilities, and even to purchase a truck to tow its mobile operating room.
I found Pet Pantry of Lancaster County in 2019 through a smaller organization. I can still remember standing at my desk, examining three years of their tax returns. I said to myself, “I don’t know who this Melody Sanders is, but I like her already.” (Mel is the CEO.) The documentation showed a pattern of steady growth—not too risky, not too cautious. Mel and I recently joked about the only question I had about the agency’s finances. I asked her, “You seem to be sitting on a lot of money right now. Why do you need money from us?”
She gave the perfect answer: “Well, Phil, if there ever is an economic downturn, I want to be able to pay my people, and I also want to buy the building we are in.”
Mel said that to me seven months before the pandemic, and she was able to keep her employees, the organization survived, and today it thrives. True to her word, Mel did use the nest egg to purchase the building, and then upgrade it, the latter of which the Foundation helped fund.
Then the amazing opportunity of purchasing the second building, already approved for kenneling, arrived. I am very grateful to be part of a campaign to make Pet Pantry mortgage free and to expand its services.
I live in Bucks County, six miles from the New Jersey border. I have visited Pet Pantry of Lancaster County five times so far, and I make the journey because I truly believe in the worth of the agency and the wonderful work they do.
If you wish to mail a donation to us, monetary or otherwise, you can do so at:
26 Millersville Road, Lancaster, PA 17603