Personal Stories of Animal Rescues Appeal to Shelter’s Loyal Donors

Leo Grillo knows the power of a good story.

It is what drew him to seek

a career in acting and movie production. And it is what drives his fund-raising appeals for the charity he started, Dedication and Everlasting Love to Animals. The shelter, in Acton, Calif., is home to more than 1,500 cats and dogs.

Known as Delta Rescue, the charity receives $5.5-million in private support each year, and roughly two-thirds of that comes from direct-mail appeals. Most of the remaining support comes from bequests from donors who were first attracted to the charity through Mr. Grillo’s fund-raising letters.

In a typical letter to donors, which he drafts with a fountain pen, Mr. Grillo tells an emotional story about rescuing an animal — usually one of his latest finds. He will spend hours photographing the animal he is talking about in the letter, trying to capture the emotion that prompted him to write about it in the first place.

In June, Mr. Grillo told donors about rescuing Petie, a dog that narrowly avoided being hit by a truck as Mr. Grillo was driving past. He couldn’t catch the dog on that day, but he wanted to see what the dog had been eating on the road. “It was a small piece of rubber from a truck tire!” Mr. Grillo wrote. “Petie was so hungry that he was trying to chew a piece of rubber to fill his painfully empty belly.”

He closes each letter with a plea for financial support.

“Petie is safe now, and he will never be hungry again…as long as you keep up your support of our mission,” he wrote in June. “Please send your best gift today. We have over 1,500 animals to feed, care for, and love.”

A Single Animal

Mr. Grillo credits a fund-raising consultant, Jerry Huntsinger, in Richmond, Va., with helping him see the value in focusing his letters on just one animal, rather than on the shelter’s operations.

“People really don’t care about the organization,” says Mr. Huntsinger, who is now retired. “They care about who the charity helps, whether it is animals, feeding refugees, or fighting disease.”

Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People magazine, says Mr. Grillo was a pioneer in raising money through the personal stories of animals. “The other kinds of appeals were talking about millions and millions, instead of personifying the individual,” he says. “They were continually trying to shame the public, rather than encourage the public. Delta Rescue broke through a barrier. Other people saw that, and adopted similar techniques.”

Mr. Grillo’s letters have hooked donors like Michelle Kampenga, a medical-billing supervisor in Santa Clarita, Calif. The notion of providing abandoned animals with a home for life appealed to her instantly, she says, and for the past decade she has sent Delta Rescue an average of $300 per year. “The humane shelters here, they just kill off the animals,” Ms. Kampenga says. “I’m such a softie — I hate to see them die.”

The only thing that bothers Ms. Kampenga — who has attended every tour held by Delta Rescue in the past year and a half — is that Mr. Grillo does not permit loyal supporters like herself to volunteer at the shelter.

Mr. Grillo knows that closing the shelter to visitors hurts his fund raising, but he maintains that minimizing the number of strangers on the premises is better for his dogs and cats.

“I am well aware of the fact that we could be making more money if I opened up the doors,” Mr. Grillo says. “It’s what I have to do to maintain the sanctity of the sanctuary for the animals. I’ll bust my ass other ways to make up for that loss.”