Petfinder is turning 30 this year, and it’s celebrating with a promise: every shelter pet deserves a full bowl and a real shot at a home. If you’ve ever scrolled through adoptable pets on the site, your browsing is about to do a lot more good.
The campaign runs Aug. 17 through Nov. 16, 2026, and it’s built around three things you’re probably already doing on the site: favoriting a pet, creating an adopter profile, filling out an adoption inquiry. Each one now feeds a shelter pet somewhere in the country.
Petfinder has always made it easy to find a pet, and now your searching helps feed one too.
Every Click Adds Up to Millions of Meals
Stick around through Nov. 16, and your clicks could help Petfinder fund up to 6 million meals, or about 1.5 million pounds of food, for shelter pets nationwide.
The company is tying the goal to its 30th birthday, so the timing isn’t random. How close it gets depends on how many people join in before the campaign wraps.
3 Ways to Help With 1 Click
Here’s how your clicks turn into meals:
- Favorite a pet’s profile: funds one meal
- Create an adopter profile: funds one meal
- Submit an adoption inquiry form: funds a full day of meals
2 Rescue Flights Are Moving 100-Plus Pets
The meals are only half of it, and it’s where your support goes even further.
Petfinder teamed up with Greater Good Charities to fund two rescue flights through a program called Runway to Forever, moving pets to communities with better adoption odds. Together, they’re moving more than 100 pets out of crowded shelters this fall.
Sometimes the hardest part for a shelter pet isn’t finding a home. It’s getting there. Jeremy Colborn, who leads transport for Greater Good Charities, sums it up simply: every meal funded and every mile flown helps the pets who need it most.
Petfinder started back in 1996 as a simple way to connect pets with people, and it’s grown a lot since then. The company says it’s helped with 40 million adoptions across more than 12,000 shelters and rescue groups.
Petfinder’s brand director, Kristen Beckerle, says this anniversary is about more than the pets who already found homes: it’s about the ones still waiting too.
If you’ve been circling a shelter pet’s profile for weeks, this is your sign to finally hit favorite. It won’t cost you anything, and it could help fund a flight, a few meals, or someday, that pet’s own trip home.
Petfinder’s 30th anniversary campaign runs through Nov. 16, so you’ve still got time to make your scrolling count.