We created the 2025 Action Team to engage and mobilize everyday animal lovers around no-kill shelter advocacy. As a nuanced and often controversial topic, we knew continued education around the purpose and policies of no-kill animal sheltering would be crucial to cultivating an informed and effective advocate base. This is where the idea of an advocacy-focused newsletter came in. Rather than our advocacy team only emailing Best Friends supporters when there was an advocacy ask to be distributed (e.g., an occassional statewide legislative alert), we would start offering consistent, curated content to help nurture these everyday animal lovers into confident advocates for animals, proactively equipped with the knowledge and resources to push for no-kill policies in their own communities.
The "Action Team" is Best Friends Animal Society's advocate base — people join by taking action on legislative alerts, attending an advocacy training, or by subscribing directly to our 2025 Action Team newsletter. This newsletter is distributed every week (with some exceptions), creating a constant line of communication with advocates, rather than us only engaging our advocate base when we have an action alert.
With clarity and brevity always in mind (people are busy!), we took careful effort to make this newsletter stand apart from other emails our supporters receive, both from other organizations and other departments at Best Friends. By excluding a header image, for example, our Action Team emails are more easily recognizable as NOT being a fundraising appeal, reinforcing for new subscribers that they have a way to contribute to the cause whether they donate or not. This is extremely important as we work to reach people beyond the traditional animal welfare bubble.
As for messaging itself, we keep the tone hopeful but direct, taking extra care to avoid marketing language or industry jargon. As a rule, the 2025 Action Team newsletter leads by example — we talk to our advocates how we would want our advocates talking to neighbors or decision-makers, i.e., with an approachable, non-judgmental tone that welcomes people into the no-kill animal shelter movement rather than driving them away because they don’t know or 'care enough' about pets in shelters. This strategy has resulted in a more informed and effective advocate base, boosting the trajectory of our FY25 legislative campaigns. With a whole quarter remaining, the advocacy team has already surpassed its yearly goal of 25 legislative wins and our average action rates from alert emails are several points above industry standard.
Action Team subscribers have been mobilized to support numerous campaigns this year, including the signing of three pet-related state bills in Georgia (HB 331, HB 177, and SB 20) and our effort to stop a puppy mill bill from advancing in Oklahoma (HB 1421). Keeping advocates proactively engaged before we needed them, as well as using the newsletter to recruit for our alerts-by-text list (now over 10k strong), has primed our advocate base for more time-sensitive actions. This enables our team to be nimbler and more responsive, knowing we have advocates at the ready when needed.
This newsletter has also generated more interest in advocacy topics in general. While average clicks on Best Friends’ general monthly e-newsletter trended downward, for example, clicks on the advocacy section within that newsletter increased. And as our Action Team continues to grow (recently crossing 200k total members with ~165k subscribed to the newsletter) we are seeing more people raise their hand to get help and guidance with their local advocacy efforts, distributed organizing being an integral piece of our no-kill 2025 campaign.
Overall, the thoughtful and consistent guidance we provide in the 2025 Action Team newsletter has prepared our entry-level advocacy audience to take more substantial actions this year, increasing our advocacy team's capacity to effect pet-positive legislative change.
The Action Team newsletter has been praised by Best Friends staff and subscribers alike. Readers frequently reply with appreciation for the approachable context it provides on complex topics, often expressing interest in further advocacy coaching and addressing Kaitlyn, the signer, directly — the latter a testament to its consistent voice and authenticity in a time of over-automated, AI-generated newsletter campaigns. This newsletter created a consistent and welcoming line of communication between aspiring animal advocates and the Best Friends advocacy team, resulting in a more engaged and proactive base that we can mobilize to take action for pet-friendly laws and ordinances. We've seen tremendous growth in our subscribers' eagerness, confidence, and compassion this year, due in large part to the thoughtful guidance we distribute weekly.
Best Friends crossed 200,000 total Action Team members this year, having organically doubled our advocate base in one year (100k was reached in July 2024) without a respective decrease in clicks per unique open nor an increase in email unsubscribe rates. Most importantly, we consistently hear from animal advocates who feel more prepared and energized to speak on behalf of dogs and cats in their communities!
