Big No-Kill Animal Charity Scraps $45-Million Shelter Plan

Maddie’s Fund, the animal-welfare charity founded by tech mogul Dave Duffield and his wife, Cheryl, with a goal of ending euthanasia of shelter dogs and cats, has dropped plans for a $45-million Bay Area rescue, research, and office complex, San Francisco Business Times writes.

The charity was to open a state-of-the-art, 90,000-square-foot shelter this year in a Pleasanton, Calif., building it purchased for $17-million in 2012 but decided that “[s]pending a lot of money on a model facility did not align with the best way to spend money on animal welfare,” President and CEO Rich Avanzino said. Maddie’s Fund will instead put the money into grants for existing shelters and adoption programs.

Mr. Duffield, the co-founder of software makers PeopleSoft and Workday, and his wife launched Maddie’s Fund with a $200-million endowment in 1999 and contributed another $93-million in 2005. Named for the couple’s late schnauzer, the fund is one of the country’s biggest animal-welfare grant makers.