We have been treating the symptom for decades.

Build more shelters. Recruit more foster families. Run more adoption events. Move animals faster. And yes, all of that matters. But here is the truth that the animal welfare sector has been slow to say out loud:

We will never adopt our way out of this crisis.

Not because people don’t care. They do. Not because shelters aren’t trying. They are — harder than most people know, with fewer resources than anyone should have to work with.

But shelters are full because litters keep coming. And litters keep coming because millions of pet owners across this country want to do the right thing, and simply cannot afford to. A spay or neuter surgery at a private veterinary clinic can cost $400, $500, sometimes more. For a family with three or four pets, that’s not a medical decision. That’s an impossible one.

So, the litter happens. And then another. And those animals end up at a shelter that is already full. And the cycle continues.

This is an access problem. It has a solution—and we built it.

BISSELL Pet Foundation created Fix the Future® as a national disruptor model to address the root cause of pet homelessness—lack of access to affordable spay and neuter care. While traditional animal welfare efforts focus on adoption after pets enter shelters, Fix the Future shifts the system toward prevention, delivering high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter services—alongside vaccines, including rabies, and microchipping—to stop overpopulation before it starts.

What Prevention Actually Does

Prevention is not a feel-good concept. It is math.

One unspayed female cat and her offspring can produce hundreds of kittens in just a few years. One surgery made possible by affordability and access breaks that chain entirely.

Every surgery prevents a litter. Every litter prevented means fewer animals entering an already-strained shelter system. Fewer animals euthanized simply because there is no room.

The downstream impact is not one animal. It is generations of animals that are never born into a life of suffering and homelessness.

That is the power of prevention. Not responding to the crisis after it arrives, but stopping it before it starts.

The Gap That Nobody Was Filling

When I started looking hard at why access to spay/neuter care was still so out of reach for so many communities, I kept finding the same wall.

The places that need it most — rural communities, underserved towns, areas without a single affordable veterinary option — are also the places least equipped to navigate the existing system. They don’t have grant writers. They don’t have clinics. In many cases, they don’t have any vets at all.

Traditional funding models weren’t reaching them. The money would flow through organizations, through infrastructure, through applications and approval processes — and by the time it got anywhere near a pet, it had lost most of its force.

We decided to do it differently.

Why BISSELL Pet Foundation Built Fix the Future

Fix the Future was not built to be another spay/neuter program. It was built to be the one that works where others don’t, and to work at a scale that actually moves the needle.

Instead of waiting for communities to build infrastructure, we bring the infrastructure to them. We contract directly with veterinarians and deploy them into the communities where the need is greatest. No grant applications standing between a pet owner and a surgery. No overhead absorbing the donation.

100% of every dollar given to Fix the Future goes directly to pets.

Every animal served—owned pet, shelter pet, feral cat—is taken care of regardless of income, zip code, or circumstance. And no one ever pays more than $35 for a dog or $25 for a cat. Because removing the barrier entirely is the only way prevention actually works.

What We’ve Built — and What It Proves

Since launching in November 2023, Fix the Future has performed more than 390,915 spay/neuter procedures across 28 states.

In 2025 alone, we performed more than 211,000 surgeries. We are now averaging 19,000 every single month.

No comparable program in this country is doing this at this scale. No one.

But the number I want you to hold onto is not 390,915. It’s the multiplier behind it. Because every surgery prevented a litter. And every litter prevented means animals that will never know a shelter, never be euthanized for space, never end up in that box on the doorstep.

We are not just counting surgeries. We are counting futures.

This Is What Stepping Up Looks Like

The conversation in animal welfare is changing. The sector is finally waking up to the fact that prevention has to be the priority. And I welcome that.

But awareness is not action. And funding without the right delivery model doesn’t reach the animals who need it most.

BISSELL Pet Foundation has spent three years proving that this model works. We have the relationships. We have the contracted veterinarians. We have the reach into communities that have never had this before.

If you believe that the most humane thing we can do is stop the suffering before it starts — please support Fix the Future.

Because every dollar you give doesn’t save one animal. It saves the ones that will never have to suffer at all.

Until every pet has a home, 

Cathy Bissell, Founder
BISSELL Pet Foundation