The 2014 Year in Review from Emancipet
Time flies, the saying goes, and 2014 was the fastest year in history, or so it seemed at Emancipet. So much has happened in 2014 – it’s hard to know where to begin!
Our partnership with Tito’s Handmade Vodka continues to be a match made in heaven. Sit Stay Day 2014 featured Tito’s Handmade Vodka for the 5th year in a row! (Incidentally, there’s still time to be part of Sit Stay Day 2015…learn more at www.sitstayday.com.) Tito’s Handmade Vodka also launched Vodka for Dog People, a unique partnership to raise funds and awareness to help Emancipet create social change for companion animals and their families on a national scale. This exciting initiative has received national attention and we couldn’t be more excited about the future of this collaboration! Look for Emancipet CEO Amy Mills and Tito’s marketing team member Beth Bellanti paneling about our unique collaboration at SXSW this spring.
Also in 2014, we celebrated the love between pets and their people on Valentines’ Weekend by opening a beautiful new Spay/Neuter & Healthy Pet Clinic in Killeen, Texas. Director Grazyna Musick and her dedicated and brilliant staff served 7,723 pets in 2014 with spay/neuter or preventive veterinary care like vaccines, microchips, or flea and heartworm prevention. Plus, this branch has the proud distinction of serving more military families than any other Emancipet branch, due to it’s proximity to Fort Hood.
In May, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our Pflugerville, Texas branch clinic. Led by one of our most tenured branch managers, the ever-joyful Carrie Voss, the team at the Pflugerville branch served more than 9,078 pets in their first full year of serving the community.
In June, Emancipet reached a major milestone – we performed our 200,000th spay/ neuter surgery. Lily was the sweet puppy who became lucky number 200,000 at our flagship branch clinic in East Austin. As our busiest and oldest branch clinic, the incredibly professional and compassionate medical staff sees and average 130 pets per day between spay/neuter and healthy pet visits.
In August, we turned the spotlight on spay/neuter by helping to lead the PetSmart Charities North American Spay/Neuter Conference – Emancipet’s senior leadership led the content committees and the Emancipet flagship branch clinic was the home of the wet labs for the visiting surgeons learning pediatric spay/neuter techniques.
In 2014 we also launched a Seminar Series to help other non-profit organizations learn how to make their work for animals more impactful and sustainable. Seminars cover topics like fundraising, organizational culture, leadership, and program strategy, and organizations from all over the country came out to take their organizations to the next level.
Plus, we logged a lot of miles travelling to conferences and events to teach other clinics how to have a big impact in their own communities – from Austin to Albuquerque, Vancouver to Vermont, we’ve been everywhere, man!
Also in 2014, Emancipet launched a new line of t-shirts, leashes and collars through our e-store. More on that here.
Oh what a year it’s been! And with the help of our generous individual, corporate and foundation partners, 2015 is shaping up to be even more exciting. Stay tuned for more big news from Emancipet….