How to evaluate an animal welfare charity

A starting point, not a checklist. It covers shelters, rescues and spay-and-neuter work. Wildlife rehabilitation and farm animal advocacy are different questions and aren't covered here.

What a shelter actually controls

1. How long animals stay, and whether they get sick while there. This is the strongest Canadian evidence on the page. Three Canadian shelters that adopted the Capacity for Care model between 2012 and 2016 cut cats' length of stay by as much as 31%, cut the number of cats in disease isolation by 56% on average, raised the probability of adoption by 15%, and reduced euthanasia by at least 13% at every site. Same cats, same communities. Practice moved every number, not intake.
2. Whether every animal leaves sterilized and identified. It's the one thing Humane Canada makes mandatory for accreditation. Canada's veterinary shortage means some shelters adopt out with a sterilization voucher and a follow-up rather than the surgery done, which is a capacity problem rather than a choice, so ask which, and how they follow up.
3. What happens to the animals it can't take. The honest companion to the save rate, covered below.
4. Whether it publishes euthanasia numbers and the reasons. National rates have fallen for years and now sit around one admission in ten, most of it medical and behavioural. A shelter that names its reasons is being honest, and one reporting zero should be asked how.

Something to notice rather than ask: how the volunteers are treated. Shelters run on them more than any other cause here, and whether they're trained, kept and trusted with real work tells you a great deal about the place.

The save rate, and how to read it

The sector's headline number is the live release or save rate: live intakes minus animals euthanized, died or lost, divided by live intakes. A rate of 90% is the usual threshold for calling a shelter "no-kill." It's a real number and a useful one, and it's also meaningless on its own, because it depends entirely on which animals came through the door.

Managed admission, where a shelter schedules intake and declines animals it can't properly house, is recommended practice. It keeps crowding and disease down, and the Capacity for Care model above depends on it. So the problem isn't managed admission. The problem is quoting a save rate without saying what the admission policy was. Open-admission shelters take everything and carry the hardest cases, while limited-admission shelters and most rescues select. Their save rates aren't comparable, and neither is wrong.

So ask: are you open, limited or managed admission, and what happens to the animals you can't take? A good answer names the open-admission partner and can describe the handoff. A weak answer quotes the rate and stops.

Shelters and rescues

• How long do animals stay, by species, what has that done over three years, and how does it compare with shelters like yours?
• What share got sick in your care?
• How many lost cats get back to their owners? Nationally, most stray dogs go home and only a small fraction of stray cats do, and that gap is mostly what the shelter does: scanning for microchips, holding periods, outreach to the neighbourhood the cat came from.
• Which animals wait longest, and what do you do about it? Seniors, black cats, large dogs and medical cases, usually.

Good: length of stay by species, a disease rate, and the admission policy in the same breath as the save rate. Weak: a save rate alone.

Veterinary access and spay and neuter

Upstream, inexpensive, and the thing that shrinks next year's intake.

• How many procedures, and in which neighbourhoods? Unowned cats come from specific places.
• Is care accessible to people who can't pay, and how do you know it's reaching them?

Good: can say where the animals come from and whether the program is aimed there. Weak: counts surgeries.

Accreditation

Humane Canada runs a national accreditation covering governance, sheltering and programs, built on the Five Freedoms, verified by peer document review and a virtual site visit, and granted for five years. As of 2026, three organizations hold it: Ottawa Humane Society, Edmonton Humane Society, and Hamilton/Burlington SPCA. Not being accredited is the norm and no mark against anyone, but being accredited is a real signal. Ask, and if the answer is no, ask what they measure themselves against instead.

What the questions don't reach is whether the animals are treated with care. Whether staff know their names, and whether the place smells of fear or of bleach. The Five Freedoms are on a poster in every accredited shelter, and ten minutes on the floor tells you whether they're practised. Ask for a tour. Most shelters will give one gladly, and the ones that won't have told you something.

If the program holds up, the organization behind it is the next thing to check.

Questions people also ask

What is a good save rate for a shelter?

It depends entirely on admission policy. An open-admission shelter at 85% may be doing harder and better work than a limited-admission rescue at 97%. Ask what happens to the animals they can't take.

What does "no-kill" mean?

Usually a save rate of 90% or higher. It says nothing about admission policy, so ask that next.

How many animals do Canadian shelters euthanize?

In 2021, the most recent national figures, 11% of cats and 10% of dogs taken in, the lowest cat rate on record.

Why is return-to-owner so much lower for cats?

In 2021, 85% of stray dogs were reclaimed and 16% of stray cats. Cats are rarely microchipped or licensed, so the shelter's own scanning, holding and outreach practices make most of the difference.