With more than 800 million websites on WordPress alone, it should come as no surprise that some incredible organizations are using it to serve their communities. Here at Pressable, we are grateful for the opportunity to provide many of them with managed WordPress hosting.

Our Hosting For Good series aims to highlight some of these organizations that use technology to give back to the community. Their work is changing the world, and we’re excited to share their stories with you. We hope the series encourages you and inspires your work with WordPress and beyond. 

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Imagine the ones who are left behind… They’re the dogs still sitting in the shelters, waiting for their forever homes, after all the puppies and elderly dogs are taken.

They have injuries or health issues that make them less likely to be adopted. Just thinking about them with their noses pressed against the kennels, watching other dogs leave, makes an animal lover’s heart ache.

The 15/10 Foundation gives them a better chance of finding a loving family.

It All Started with Just One Dog

It all started with a request for help and a single social media post. A follower on WeRateDogs’ Twitter account for sharing and rating dog photos with funny comments, asked for support for their GoFundMe to get their dog a wheelchair. WeRateDogs posted the request, and the page’s followers funded the need almost instantaneously. 

Helping one dog made the WeRateDogs team want to assist others, so they started sharing fundraising accounts for dogs in need every Friday. The idea was to help the dogs’ owners afford their pets’ medical care. 

But the WeRateDogs team didn’t want to stop there. After several years of Friday benefit posts, they started wondering how to use the platform for even more good. That’s when the 15/10 Foundation was born. 

The 15/10 Foundation launched in 2020 to fill a void in animal welfare by sponsoring dogs with behavioral or medical issues, as they are least likely to make it out of shelters. The foundation is named after the highest rating a dog has ever received on WeRateDogs.

“Some dogs don’t have an owner advocating for them,” said Brian Canterbury, 15/10 Foundation board member and treasurer. “They end up in a shelter with some injury that makes it almost impossible for them to get adopted.”

Often, dogs with injuries that shelters can’t realistically afford to treat become victims of “economic euthanasia.” The 15/10 Foundation tries to stop that from happening.

The foundation partners with rescues to identify dogs that need help. The foundation’s board then reviews the applications and votes on which dogs to sponsor, including for how much and how long. To date, they’ve helped more than 200 dogs get the care they need.

“It’s easier to adopt if it’s not a financial burden immediately upon doing so,” Canterbury said. “We issue a Certificate of Sponsorship that means the foundation will pay for a specific thing that the dog needs, even if it’s like a medication that the dog will need for the rest of their life.”

These lifetime sponsorships, when necessary, mean that the dog’s medical needs should never become a burden for their owner, reducing the likelihood of them ending up back in a shelter.

The foundation currently partners with 20 rescues in 15 cities, but Canterbury said they want to continue growing the effort and filling in gaps.

“We want to expand to more cities, but we’re being measured about how we do that because we want to be sure that our fundraising can keep up,” he said.

Building the Foundation with WordPress

The 15/10 Foundation can fulfill dog sponsorship requests thanks to tax-deductible individual donations and memberships. It also has some venture partnerships, which include putting 15% of the proceeds from WeRateDogs merchandise toward supporting the foundation.

The foundation’s website, which is built on WordPress, is the hub for all of its fundraising efforts. Canterbury said having an easy-to-use website that allows for donations and storytelling campaigns is critical.

“A lot of the dogs we are sponsoring have an interesting story,” he said. “We need a place to share that story because it makes it easier for people to want to support them.”

Another critical feature the site must have is the ability to handle a sudden influx of traffic. When new content is posted on Fridays by WeRateDogs, Canterbury said the site can go from virtually no traffic to thousands of visitors at once when a dog in need’s photo is posted. 

“We might have 25 people looking at a page, then suddenly have 20,000 people viewing it, so we need that level of flexibility and scaling support,” he said. “The WeRateDogs audience is enormous, and people take action right away.”

The foundation’s website wasn’t originally on WordPress. Canterbury said the old site was problematic because it was slow and challenging for the staff of mostly volunteers to update. Moving to WordPress solved problems with the site, making it easier to update on the backend and scale to fit the ever-growing foundation’s needs.

Adopting Action

The 15/10 Foundation has committed about $1.2 million to date to help dogs that otherwise wouldn’t be adopted and might be victims of economic euthanasia. The foundation’s efforts help remove these dogs from the shelters without placing financial burdens on their new owners. 

Pressable is honored to host the 15/10 Foundation’s website and to support their important work.

You also can support dogs in need by donating to the foundation.