How to Fund Spay/Neuter Programs: Lessons from States That Got It Done

Five states found a way to fund spay/neuter programs that’s producing real results. Here’s what they did and how to bring it to your state.

Spay/neuter access is one of the most effective tools for reducing shelter intake, but in most states it’s chronically underfunded. Voluntary mechanisms — license plates, tax check-offs — sound good in theory. In practice, they generate pennies on the problem.

Five states have figured out a better way. And the funding mechanism driving real change is more politically achievable than you might expect.

In this episode, Penny Ellison shares what she learned from fellow panelists at the Humane World for Animals Animal Care Expo, where advocates from New Mexico and Delaware presented the funding models that are producing measurable results — and walks through how advocates in other states can build toward the same outcome.

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

• Why voluntary funding mechanisms like license plates and tax check-offs help get a program started but often generate only a fraction of what these programs need
• How a mandatory fee on pet food manufacturers became the funding source driving measurable outcomes in five states
• What the successful programs have in common
• How to propose and pass a bill to fund spay/neuter in your state using the Four C’s Framework
• What the PURR Act is and why advocates working on this issue need to be watching it

Key Takeaway

Five states have proven the model works. Euthanasia rates are down as much as 43%. Now we need advocates in other states to bring it home.

Episode Highlights

Resources Mentioned:

The Four C’s of Legislative Advocacy for Animals

Animal Protection New Mexico Spay/Neuter program

Delaware Office of Animal Welfare – Spay/Neuter Program

Information on the PURR Act

Related Episode:

Transcript

Welcome back to the Animal Advocate. You may have noticed there was no episode last week. That’s because I was in Pittsburgh speaking at the Humane World for Animals Animal Care Expo. And I want to start today by saying how great it was to be in that place. There were over 2,000 people who’ve dedicated their careers to making life better for animals and who could talk about this work all day and all night like I can, and who are constantly thinking about what more they can do. I came back really energized and I want to start off today by sharing what I shared with the people who attended our panel presentation because I think it’s great stuff.

 Our topic was Breaking Barriers: Expanding Access to Affordable Spay Neuter services. Specifically, how a small number of states and have figured out how to pay for comprehensive, accessible programs that reach the pet owners who need them most.

And the reason that that matters to shelter overcrowding is pretty simple math. Every year millions of animals enter shelters across the United States. And the animal welfare community has made a real dent in those intake numbers over the past several decades. We have pet food pantries, behavior support, resources that help people keep their pets rather than have to surrender them. But one of the most effective tools we have, and one that is almost never adequately funded, is spay and neuter access. Not just a low cost clinic that a motivated pet owner might seek out on their own but funded accessible programs that reach the families who just can’t get there without help. The pet owners most likely to have unplanned litters that end up in shelters are the same ones with the least access to affordable veterinary care. And in most of this country, the programs that would close that gap simply don’t exist. Yet five states have figured out how to pay for really truly accessible spay neuter services. And the way they did it is both more practical and more politically realistic than you might expect.

Welcome to the Animal Advocate where we arm animal lovers with the information and inspiration you need to become effective advocates. I’m your host, Penny Ellison, and I’ve taught animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. If you’ve ever thought someone should do something about that, I’m here to guide you on your journey to being that someone. You can find us on the web at animaladvocacyacademy.com and that’s where you’ll find show notes and resources and you can send us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you’d like to hear on future shows. So, onto today’s topic.

 Let me give you a picture of what this looks like in two states that have built these programs because the numbers tell the story better than any argument I can make. I was joined on the panel by Jessica Shelton of Animal Protection New Mexico and Joanna Miller of Delaware’s Office of Animal Welfare, andm they told the story of what happened in their states. I’ll link to their programs in the show notes so you can get all of the detail. But today I want to share what they shared at this session because it was really powerful.

New Mexico is one of the harder cases you could pick. It’s the fifth largest state geographically, but it only has 2.12 million people spread thin across some very remote terrain. It ranks 45th in population density, 43rd in median household income, and has a poverty rate of 17.6%. 60% of households there have a dog or a cat. And 30 out of 33 counties have been designated as areas where veterinary care is generally not accessible. That’s from the Veterinary Care Accessibility Project. The result? New Mexico takes in 110,000 dogs and cats into shelters every year, the highest per capita intake in the nation. 23,800 of them are euthanized. And the state spends $38 million in taxpayer money every year managing the consequences of that.

New Mexico tried voluntary funding approaches to fund spay/neuter. First, they created a specialty license plate for spay/neuter in 2009. It raises between $18,000 and $23,000 a year. They added a state income tax check off in 2015, where residents can donate part of their refund to the spay/neuter fund when they file. That raises $22,000 to $25,000 a year. Together, these two mechanisms bring in roughly $45,000 annually. So for a state with 110,000 animals entering shelters every year, that is pennies on the problem.

 In 2020, they passed Senate Bill 57, which established a mandatory annual fee on large pet food manufacturers. It took four legislative sessions to pass, took effect in 2021, and it now raises more than $1.4 million every year. That’s what changed the equation.

Now Delaware is a smaller, probably wealthier state, and notably, it has something most states don’t. It has a dedicated statewide office of animal welfare. Delaware runs its program on three funding streams. A portion of every rabies vaccination fee is remitted to the Spay Neuter Fund. That brought in $340,000 in the most recent fiscal year. So, when veterinarians administer a rabies vaccine, a few dollars is tacked onto that fee, the veterinarian sends it into the state, and that goes to help fund subsidized spay/neuter. They also have a specialty animal welfare license plate, which brought in about $7,000. But they’ve recently redesigned it, and they’re very happy about it. And so that will probably start bringing in some more money. But the real money is in that pet food manufacturer fee, which brought in $1.2 million.

So those other fees are a helpful starting point. But the real money is to fund spay/neuter comes from the manufacturers that benefit from selling pet food. It amounts to about $100 per brand per year to the manufacturer. So, it is an incredibly small fee, probably something they do not even feel. And it really makes a meaningful difference for animals in the state.

So, what Delaware and New Mexico illustrate is that layering multiple funding streams is worth doing, but that pet food fee, that carries the heavy load. The other mechanisms, especially when they’re voluntary, like the license plate, even in a state where they’ve been running for years, they generate a fraction of what the mandatory fee on pet food produces. And the results in states that have had these fees running longer are really clear.

In Maine, the euthanasia rate is now down to 4%. West Virginia enacted its fee in 2017 and saw a 17% decrease in shelter intake and a 35% decrease in euthanasia in just the first two years. Maryland saw euthanasia drop 43% for cats and 25% for dogs. And after only three years of the fee being in place. So those are the five states that have it. New Mexico, Delaware, Maine, West Virginia and Maryland. And they are having success in all of those places. They’re not projections. They’re reported outcomes from states that started exactly where most states still are today.

 So what do the states that have gotten this right have in common? A few things. They’ve built multiple funding streams rather than depending on any single source. They put one coordinating body in charge of administering the program so the money goes where it’s supposed to go, and someone is accountable for the results. They made services free to the people who needed them most, removing cost as the barrier rather than just reducing it.

 Now, if you don’t live in one of those five states, how can you get something like this in place in your state? This is where my 4C’s framework comes in. I developed it to help advocates think through how to move animal welfare legislation, and it applies directly here. We’ll apply it here to this specific bill. But the series goes much deeper into how to use the framework on any animal welfare issue you’re working on. So if you want to dig deeper, you can download the free private audio series called the Four Cs of Legislative Advocacy for Animals at animaladvocacyacademy.com/ fourcs and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

 So, what are the 4C’s? Common sense, Collaboration, Communication and Compromise. Let’s walk through those. Common sense is about removing objections before you walk in the door. A pet food manufacturer fee is not a tax. It doesn’t touch the general fund. That means the state doesn’t spend a dime from its own budget. The fee per product is modest enough that manufacturers absorb it as a cost of doing business, and the experience in Maine and West Virginia bears that out. Pet food retailers and manufacturers in those states have reported no noticeable price increases to consumers, which would probably be the chief objection you’d hear to a bill proposing a fee like this. And you can point to Maryland, which passed with bipartisan support and renewed again with bipartisan support and all the results the other states have already achieved as proof that this works. Your job is to make it easy for legislators to say yes.

 The next C is collaboration, and this is where a lot of animal advocates miss an opportunity. It’s great to partner with other animal welfare agencies, but that only gets you so far. A bill like this isn’t just an animal welfare bill, it’s a community welfare bill and you should build a coalition that reflects that. Your animal control agency can quantify what stray animals cost in field calls, shelter intake and staff time. But also, your social service agencies serve the same families who can’t afford to get their pets fixed and end up surrendering them. They can talk about how providing this service would help their clients enjoy all the benefits of pet ownership while stretching their limited budgets further. They are potential partners. Your public health department can speak to disease risk, unvaccinated strays are a disease transmission vector, and the spay/neuter visit includes vaccines. When a coalition representing diverse interests walks into a legislative hearing together, you’re not presenting just a bill about animal welfare. You’re presenting a cost management and community quality of life proposal.That’s a very different conversation.

The third C – Communication. It means choosing your words deliberately, including what you call the bill. The word fee in a title can be politically loaded. Think about framing that would emphasize what the program does for communities. And know that the same bill needs different frames for different audiences. For a fiscal conservative, the argument is that fewer births of animals mean fewer strays to manage and prevention costs far less than response. For a public safety-oriented legislator, it’s worth noting that unaltered dogs are more than twice as likely to bite. For legislators concerned with equity, the argument might be that low-income families have pets too and right now they can’t access the services that would keep those pets out of shelters. One bill, multiple conversations. Know which one you’re walking into before you sit down.

 And finally, compromise. Maryland phased its fee in over three years to reduce industry opposition. New Mexico accepted a sunset clause to get their bill passed. A sunset clause means the law expires in a certain amount of time unless the legislature votes to renew it. So that meant that the New Mexico program would have ended this year unless it was renewed. Well, advocates did their job and the legislature recently voted to remove the sunset clause based on the success they’d seen. Agreeing to a sunset clause wasn’t ideal, but it also wasn’t fatal. It forced a re-engagement moment. And re-engaging with a program that has results behind it is something you can win.

 So, what happens if you can’t get a state bill moving? What can you do in the meantime? You go local. This is a common theme for our legislative efforts, right? Some cities have built real city funded spay neuter programs, free clinics, nonprofit partners, targeted outreach in neighborhoods with the highest stray populations without any state law that required them to do it. But one thing you should bear in mind is local funding is more vulnerable than that state mandatory fee mechanism. It’s usually part of a budget that gets revisited every year, so it can be cut if priorities shift. But you can use a local program not only of course to help the people in your city, but to build the data that makes the state level case: surgeries performed, shelter intake before and after cost per surgery versus cost of intaking an animal. That’s your future legislative argument.

You can also try to get private funding. That’s the path we’re on in Philadelphia right now. We passed a three-year moratorium on unlicensed dog breeding. But that moratorium needs subsidized spay neuter access to support compliance. And so we’re building a privately funded pilot program measuring everything and intending to use what we learn to make the case for a public funding stream, hopefully at the state level down the road.

And one more thing worth flagging for anyone working on a pet food fee program, a piece of federal legislation called the PURR Act. Like many names of laws, kind of a misnomer. It was introduced in Congress in January of 2025. In its original form, it would have prohibited the kind of state fees we’ve been talking about, and it was probably introduced by industry lobbyists because they are starting to see the groundswell of support for this kind of thing, so they want to take away the state’s power to do it. But advocates went to the House Appropriations Committee and secured a modification in the fiscal year 2026 spending bill explicitly protecting these state fees that support spay/neuter. But the law is still pending, so the fight isn’t over. So if you’re working on this issue, it’s worth keeping an eye on the PURR Act and I’ll link to some information on that in the show notes.

Today’s Be the Change action is to make a phone call or send an email to your state Department of Agriculture. Ask whether your state has a pet food product registration or licensing program for manufacturers and who administers it. Almost every state does. I think Alaska is the only exception. So that system is the vehicle the successful states have used to attach this fee to support spay neuter services. So you’re finding out what exists in your state to build on. Now, I’ve already talked to someone that attended the conference and did her homework and emailed the Arkansas Department of Agriculture and she found out yes, there’s a system, but it doesn’t separate livestock feed from pet food and the fee is based on tonnage sold in the state in the year. So in that case, your bill would have to propose that that system be revised for pet food. But that’s doable and now she knows where to start.

 For extra credit, you can also call or email your state Department of Motor Vehicles. Ask whether your state has a specialty license plate program and what it takes to propose a new plate. That’s a voluntary funding stream because people have to elect to buy that plate and spend extra money. But it doesn’t require a fee bill to initiate. And as New Mexico shows and Delaware, it’s a way to start building public awareness and proof of demand while you work towards something mandatory that will fund spay/neuter on a broader basis. Write down what you learn, hold onto it, and that’s your starting point. And I want you to know that if you’re doing these things, you can always reach out to me for guidance. Go ahead and email podcasti@amaladvocacyacademy.com and I’ll get right back to you.

That’s it for today. The Animal Advocate is brought to you by the Animal Advocacy Academy. If today’s episode got you thinking about what you can do to change things for animals, I want to make sure you know about the four Cs of legislative advocacy for animals. It’s a free audio series I put together that gives you a real framework for making legislation happen. You can find it at animaladvocacyacademy.com/fourcs. and you can find all our episodes and show notes at animal advocacyacademy.com. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and if you know another animal advocate who should be listening, send this one their way. Questions on today’s topic or anything else, just email us at podcast@animaladvocacyacademy.com we’ll write back, or we’ll feature your question in a future episode.

Remember, compassion is great, but compassionate action is infinitely better. Until next week, Live with Compassion.