Best Friends Animal Society Nearly Doubled Its Revenue. What Do the Public Numbers Say Now?

Best Friends Animal Society is one of the most recognizable names in animal welfare, and its recent public record is a growth story. Total revenue rose from $106.9M in FY2020 to a peak of $173.5M in FY2023, then eased to $148.3M in FY2024, according to its IRS Form 990, as published by ProPublica. This is a constructive read of what those public numbers show about its donor base, and an honest account of what they cannot show. No donor-level figures here are private; where a number would require the donor file, we say so.

What is Best Friends doing well?

Three things stand out in the public record, and all three are broad-based acquisition engines rather than a single major-gift channel. The first is the mission itself: Save Them All, the stated goal of bringing the country to no-kill for shelter dogs and cats. A clear, emotional, national cause is the strongest possible reason for a first-time donor to give. The second is direct-response and digital reach, the mass channels that turn that cause into a wide base of gifts. The third is peer-to-peer fundraising: Best Friends' Strut Your Mutt walk has raised more than $13.7M for the animals across 29 years, with supporters raising money on the organization's behalf.

A national cause, mass-channel reach, and a peer-to-peer program are exactly the assets that bring donors in at scale. They are also assets a public filing can describe but never measure. The 990 shows the money that arrived. It does not show how many of those donors gave a second time, how many quietly lapsed, or how much of a strong year rested on a handful of large gifts rather than the broad base the programs imply.

What does the revenue path show?

A steady, steep climb to a record year, then a lower year. Across FY2021 through FY2024 total revenue runs $125.3M, $141.5M, $173.5M, and $148.3M. The move to FY2023 was the high point, nearly 40% above FY2021. FY2024 came in about 15% lower than that peak, and reported expenses that year of roughly $173.4M ran ahead of reported revenue. On the public totals alone we cannot confirm how that gap was funded, only that the two lines crossed.

What the table does not say is why FY2024 eased. A large gift or bequest arriving in FY2023 and not repeating would produce this shape. So would a soft year for new acquisition after several strong ones. So would ordinary attrition in the donor base that new gifts did not fully replace, paired with a planned year of heavier program spending. Those are very different situations with very different responses, and no public document can tell them apart. Only the donor file can.

Was the growth broad-based or led by a few large gifts?

This is the question the public record cannot answer, and it is the one that decides what the growth is worth. A curve that climbs because tens of thousands of new donors gave and then gave again is a durable base. A curve that climbs because a few very large gifts landed in the same years looks identical in the revenue line and behaves nothing alike the following year. The visible programs, direct response and peer-to-peer, point toward breadth, but pointing is not measuring. Our guide to donor concentration risk shows how a single non-repeating gift can read as a trend until you see what share of the year rode on the largest donors.

Breadth also raises a second question the filing is silent on: the second gift. Peer-to-peer and event donors, and disaster-driven first-time givers, arrive for a moment and a reason. Whether they are ever invited back and converted to a second gift is the difference between an acquisition spike and a growing file. That is the logic behind the second-gift window and, over time, behind donor lifetime value: the value is in the staying, not the joining, and a public filing reports neither.