Shelter home · Recipawsity

Increase Donations + Build community support

Send new adopters personalized pet portrait mugs. We handle the details for you.

Psst, it’s FREE for
shelters and rescues!

Your logo on
the back

Custom pet portrait mugs that turn adopters into donors

Shelters and rescues using Recipawsity

How it works (it’s simple, we promise)

Recipawsity is a service that helps animal shelters raise money from new adopters. We give your adopters a free custom pet portrait mug, complete with your shelter’s logo and an illustration of their new pet. This act of kindness creates a lasting bond between your shelter and adopters, boosting donations to your shelter through the power of reciprocity.

People adopt from your organization

Adopters receive an email with a special code to redeem a custom pet portrait mug of their new pet with your organization’s logo on it

We send them a gift

for free to say thank you for adopting from your shelter

We ask them to pay-it forward

to your shelter. Of course, 100% goes to you.

Shelters need more money.

Not because people aren’t willing to give, but because shelters lose 78% of new donors in the first year *

Today’s donors want personalized experiences.

And people LOVE their new pets.

But shelters don’t have time.

Your team is extremely busy - bottle-feeding neonates, running spay/neuter clinics, answering the phones, and locating dog owners.

* Craver, R. (2021). The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement 2021. In Donor Retention: The Ultimate Safety Net While You Figure Out the Future.

Its made for your organization

You rely on your hard-working development team to bring in donations so you can carry out your mission of helping animals, but it feels like donor dollars are becoming more scarce every year. Recipawsity was created to help you deliver the personalized experiences that millennials expect, increasing their proclivity to give at scale.

Meet a customer

The power of gifting

We’re celebrating shelters that foster community relationships, and nothing creates a more meaningful human bond than a personalized gift.

Recipawsity makes gifts on your shelter's behalf to help YOU raise money for your shelter. When adopters receive an adorable mug with their newly adopted pet as a “thank you for adopting gift”, they are more likely to donate to your shelter in the future. Recipawsity works because of the human reciprocity instinct, the universal desire to repay one act of kindness with another.

It works even better when the gift is personalized:

44%

of people are willing to donate

10%

more for a personalized experience

That increases to

62%

for millennials, who now represent the largest share of pet owners in the U.S.

Recipawsity starts the donor relationship on a high note for you.

"The mugs are a great benefit that we can offer adopters AND they have our logo. It's the best of both worlds. Implementing the program didn't take very long. It's actually very easy, and we didn't have to do much—Recipawsity did everything for us."

Jennifer Curiel, Special Projects Supervisor
Los Angeles Animal Services

"It is a fun, easy, and creative way to celebrate the adoption of a new pet! Thanks for all the hard-work you put into this! We appreciate it!"

Amber Hallberg, Development Manager
Wenatchee Valley Humane Society

“Honestly I have been absolutely loving telling new adopters about the mug. They are always stoked to find out about it. It's such an awesome and cute idea. They love it when I say "so you can be a real and proper pet parent when you have your baby's face on a mug" 🤗

Sarah V., Animal Care Specialst
LifeLine Animal Project

"People are appreciating the mugs and the program didn't add anything to our staff at all!"

Lauren Jackowiec, Director of Operations
Jacksonville Humane Society

"Recipawsity is an opportunity to make money for the Center AND give something to adopters to remember us by. We pretty much set the program up overnight. It was not very hard."

Clint Thacker, Director of Operations
Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley

"I wish I was adopting! I want one!"

A lot of people

FAQs

1. How much does it cost?

It's free. For shelters and adopters. The free part comes from our experience running Adoptimize, a shelter software that automates better intake photos for municipal shelters. We've learned that shelters need their services/products for free or they often can't participate.

We like to keep "free" free, so we have been covering shipping for adopters. BUT we are testing $6 shipping...and seeing that when we don't cover shipping people actually donate more often because they have to get their wallets out. We want to maximize donations to the shelter, so we may move to paid shippping in the future.

2. What's in it for you? Why do you do this?

Our goal is for people to love our mugs and mission raising money for animal shelters so much they come back and buy more (like why people buy from brands like Patagonia). Recipawsity is new, and we'll be expanding our product lines. The mugs are only the beginning.

3. What are the monthly logistics like?

We tried to make this program as easy as posible for shelters because you're so busy, so all you have to do is send over an export of adopters from the previous month.

On the 1st of the month, you provide us with an export of the previous month's adopters
We'll send an email to your adopters with a special code. Should they want a mug, they'll head to your landing page
We'll customize their mug with their pet and your shelter's logo. We ask them to pay it forward to your shelter. 100% goes to you
We print and ship the mugs

4. Does it work?

The secret is out...people ARE inherently good! Many adopters pay-it-forward, and the average donation is $15.

About you

About your organization