Normally on Giving Tuesday we remind folks that there are many ways to help your local animal nonprofits beyond making a financial donation. In the past we’ve shared a long list of ways you can give back by sharing of your time and talents. However, there is nothing normal about 2020. This year animal shelters, rescues, pet food pantries, pets for vets programs and other animal related nonprofits need your help more than ever. Our message that it doesn’t necessarily require donating money still holds true, but we all need to think outside of the box on how we can help.

With so many shelters, rescues and other nonprofits having to restrict visitors or even closing their doors to the public, our normal message of volunteering can be a bit problematic. However, the important work of these nonprofits continue, and they still need our help with their daily operations, fundraising, and getting their message out in other ways to aid their mission to help animals.

We urge you this Holiday season to think about what skills you have or creative ideas that could help. We also ask that you contact your local animal nonprofit to find out what they need to make this a brighter day for the animals in their care. Whether it’s learning their new guidelines for volunteering, offering to do fostering or administration work from home, helping to organize an online fundraiser, or simply asking what is on their wishlist and shipping those much needed supplies directly to them, we can all do something to help in 2020.