7 Celebrity-Backed Animal Foundations Worth Knowing

Miranda Lambert launched MuttNation after watching shelters get blindsided by natural disasters. The foundation funds things like shelter upgrades and emergency response efforts (including Lambert's own hands-on work coordinating rescue and transport after Hurricane Harvey). Her concert tours are also fundraising machines with her Fill the Little Red Wagon donation drive, proving you can save lives and sell out arenas at the same time.

Farm Sanctuary rescues abused farm animals and gives them lifetime care at sanctuaries where visitors can meet them and rethink their dinner plans. Jon and Tracey Stewart liked the concept so much they built their own 45-acre refuge in New Jersey. The Stewarts use their platform to push for better farm animal welfare laws and get people thinking about where their food actually comes from.

Paw Works pulls animals from high-kill shelters, stepping in with medical care, fostering and a real shot at adoption. Kaley Cuoco sits on the board and routinely covers vet bills for the seniors and special needs cases that make shelter accountants nervous. She's also built her own property from the ground up turning it into a full-blown farm sanctuary where "everyone is welcome". Yes, that means you dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, chickens, goats, cows and pigs.

You really can’t mention animal welfare without talking about the late, great Betty White. She was a longtime supporter and trustee of the Morris Animal Foundation, which focuses on funding scientific research to improve the health and longevity of animals before things turn into emergencies. This is the less flashy side of animal advocacy, with fewer rescues and more lab coats.

Beth Stern partners with North Shore Animal League America and has fostered over 1,000 cats since 2014, taking on the harder cases like neonatal kittens, seniors and special needs cats. She even converted parts of her home into legit foster spaces with proper equipment and shares the whole messy, exhausting, rewarding process online to show people that fostering is doable, even when it's 3 a.m. and a kitten needs feeding.

The Gentle Barn provides lifelong sanctuary for rescued farm animals and lets visitors actually hang out with them...because nothing changes minds about factory farming faster than making eye contact with a cow lazily grazing on grass. Alicia Silverstone has been championing the organization for years, fundraising and using her platform to keep the spotlight on their work.

The Hilaroo Foundation pairs at-risk youth with rescue animals, letting two groups who've been overlooked find stability in each other. Kids navigating foster care, housing instability or family chaos work with shelter animals who need just as much patience and second chances. Hilary Swank built the program on a brilliant premise: sometimes you need someone who gets it and trust that builds on both ends of the leash.