How to Make Pet Food Donations to Shelters

There are thousands of animal shelters across the country, and most of them rely on monetary and food donations to stay in operation. If you can't adopt a homeless animal from a shelter, you can still help out by donating pet food or supplies.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Find the nearest animal shelters. Check out the Yellow Pages or search for animal shelters in your zip code using an online search engine.

2. Phone a couple of the shelters and ask what they need in terms of food donations. This depends on if the shelter cares for cats or dogs, or both. Ask the shelters about what restrictions they have on food (such as a minimum or maximum bag size, wet or dry food) and the brands they accept.

3. Figure out how much you want to spend on purchasing pet food for the shelter. How much you donate depends on your budget; don't spend more than you can afford.

4. Purchase the pet food. Pick food that is high in nutrients, not necessarily the cheapest food available, keeping in mind the shelter's requests and rules. Homeless animals need as much nutrition as they can get as often they have lived with little food and water and no vitamins for quite a while.

5. Let the shelter know when you will drop off the pet food.

6. Ask the shelter's receptionist to write out a statement of the food you donated for tax purposes, such as the brand, size and quantity. Keep the receipt for the pet food with the tax statement, just in case you need it later.

Tips & Warnings

• Make it a regular task to donate to the pet shelter, such as twice a year or once a month (whatever works for your budget). This way you can feel that you are contributing to the shelter even if you don't have the time to volunteer or the ability to adopt a shelter animal.

References

• Donating Food to Animal Shelters
• Top Ten Things to Donate to Animal Shelters