Big Bequest to Aid Animals Will Help Society

To the Editor:

Society is often quick to disparage charitable donations to animal charities as being eccentric at best, misplaced at worst, as your columnist Leslie Lenkowsky noted in your opinion section (“Should a Big Bequest Go to the Dogs?,” August 21). Recent criticism of the proposed Leona Helmsley bequest to be used for the care and welfare of dogs is the most recent example of this unfortunate trend.

Upon closer inspection, philanthropies realize that paying attention to animal-welfare issues actually serves to benefit human populations as well. Animal-welfare causes are, in fact, human-welfare issues, particularly in a society where more households have pets than have children, where we spend more money on pet food than on baby food, where there are more dogs than there are people in most European nations and more cats than dogs, and where pets comprise the seventh-largest retail economic sector. More significantly, with growing evidence of the benefits of animals in therapeutic applications, the connections between animal abuse and human violence, and the presence of pets in enhancing social capital, it makes good sense to include nonhuman animals in the ecologies of the communities we choose to serve.

The well-being of humanity is inextricably linked with the rest of the animal kingdom. We derive not only physical sustenance from animals, but in an increasingly urban society great emotional and spiritual sustenance from watching wildlife and from the unique bonds with our companion animals.

Extensive research documents the benefits of animals to human physical and mental health in animal-assisted therapy programs. Compelling research finds links between incidents of animal cruelty and child abuse, domestic violence, and elder abuse. Given the great number of people who resist evacuation because they will not leave their pets behind, an unanticipated outcome of Hurricane Katrina was the development of federal protocols to respond to animal victims of disasters. When charities invest in high-volume dog sterilization and vaccination programs, both human and animal-welfare problems are addressed through the reduction of stray and feral pet populations and significant decreases in zoonotic diseases such as rabies.

As a result, numerous animal charities have developed programs targeted to helping people keep their pets. Dozens of animal shelters have established “safe haven” collaborations with domestic-violence agencies to provide foster care for pets, and the American Humane Association is expanding this concept with its Pets and Women’s Shelters program to help safe houses build on-site animal-holding facilities. Humane educators nationwide teach bite prevention and strategies to incorporate pets into a home with a new baby.

Mrs. Helmsley’s bequest has the potential to be transformational to a social-services sector that has historically been woefully undercapitalized. Her dying wishes to provide funding for dogs rather than people may have been more generous to her own species than one might assume. We should recognize that Mrs. Helmsley’s bequest to dogs has the potential to benefit not just dogs, but people as well.

Peter A. Bender
Executive Director
Pegasus Foundation
Concord, N.H.

Mr. Bender is also president of Animal Grantmakers, an organization that represents donors toanimal-welfare groups.

To the Editor:

It was hard not to notice the undercurrent of disapproval in the reactions of some observers to Leona Helmsley’s declaration that her estate be devoted to the welfare of dogs. This was all too familiar to those who work in animal protection, who have seen the testamentary wishes of more than one animal-friendly person ignored or set aside by executors and trustees.

That’s what happened a decade ago with the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Parsing Ms. Duke’s language that among its activities the foundation should make grants toward “the prevention of cruelty to children or to animals,” trustees apparently relied on the word “or” to exclude the mistreatment of animals as a funding priority.

In the United States, the attitude that people who wish to leave their money to benefit animals are misguided in doing so goes back to the humane movement’s earliest days. In 1870, when Louis Bonard left his $150,000 estate to America’s first animal organization, the ASPCA, just four years old and struggling, a number of parties contested the will, attacking the dead man’s sanity.

To the extent that ambivalence concerning such bequests is rooted in the notion that animals are not a deserving object of philanthropy, it is surely wrong.

Concern for animals and opposition to cruelty stand as important moral principles in their own right. To the claim that people are more important than animals, one need only say that time and time again, investments in animal protection have brought significant dividends for human welfare.

The myriad services and functions undertaken by our nation’s humane organizations do not just happen. They are supported by tens of millions of Americans who care about animals and know that we can do better when it comes to their treatment.

Yet for all of the charity that exists in the foundation sector, the cause of protecting animals is conspicuously underfunded in comparison to other concerns.

The largest affinity group of foundations giving to animal protection, Animal Grantmakers, has fewer than 30 members. In 2006, according to the Foundation Center, only 1.2 percent of foundation giving (about $430-million) in the United States supported animal causes, with wildlife concerns receiving most of the funds. So little grant making for animals even though there are so many worthy recipients — in fact, more than 10,000 humane organizations that do work for animals every day. The needs are even greater beyond our borders. There are possibly 600 million street dogs worldwide.

Human society has a fundamental interest in a strong and vital nonprofit sector devoted to the welfare of animals, just as humankind derives tremendous benefits from the presence and the service of companion animals. Investments in animal protection enhance the goals of a good, compassionate, and healthy society. We need more, not less, philanthropy in this sector, something that Leona Helmsley, like Doris Duke before her, evidently understood.

Andrew Rowan
Business Executive Vice Presidentfor Operations

Bernard Unti
Senior Policy Adviser
The Humane Society of the United States
Washington