About

The mission of Santa Paws Drive is to bring holiday cheer to shelter animals around the world. We know pets with homes are often showered with gifts and treats for Christmas, and we believe that shelter animals deserve a little holiday love, too!

Now in our second year, Santa Paws Drive is the first-ever online Christmas toy drive dedicated to pets. The inspiration for our drive was "Toys 4 Tots" and other similar programs that collect donations and then distribute them all around to the needy – and we wanted to do the same for animals.

Our ultimate hope is that each of these dogs and cats finds a forever home, but if that doesn't happen, we want our furry friends to wake up on Christmas morning to gifts and toys and treats… and a little extra cash to help the shelters out. And so we created Santa Paws Drive, and set out to make it as simple as possible to for everyone to be able to make a difference for shelter animals all around the world.

Santa Paws Drive is the dream of Dorian Wagner, founder of YourDailyCute.com. She had the idea for the program, but no idea how to actually pull it off. She reached out from her home in Deerfield Beach, FL to several friends around the world with difference expertise to make it a reality. (See the Elves page for a little bit about each of them!)

Together, we are just a bunch of animal-lovers who are dedicated to doing what we can to be the change for less-fortunate animals. We met online (and had never even met in person when Santa Paws Drive was launched last year!) and have all worked long hours in our free time to make this drive a reality.

Last year's Santa Paws Drive raised approximately $7,000 in toys, treats and donations for six shelters worldwide. It was a huge success, and we were able to mail off huge gift packages and a check to each of them!

This year, we opened up nominations and selected six more shelters – three in the U.S., one in Canada, one in the UK and one in Tenerife, off the coast of Africa – based on need, location and the short notes people submitted about them. We wanted to help smaller charities who don't otherwise have much opportunity for funding, and wanted to make sure we covered the globe as best we could. Each of this year's shelters are non-profit, no-kill organizations who rely solely on donations to survive.

To support Santa Paws Drive, you can choose to donate toys and treats or cash; the choice is up to you. At the close of the drive, we'll divide up the donations equally, box them up and ship off huge holiday gift packages to each shelter in time for Christmas!

To be sure that every single penny that is donated goes to the shelters, the Elves will pay for the shipping costs as part of our personal donations. (Shipping large boxes across the globe can be expensive, we know!)

This holiday season, we want to put a smile on as many furry faces as possible. We want to make their days a little brighter, to shower shelter animals with love and gifts at a time when they might otherwise be forgotten and, well, we want them to have the special Christmas they deserve.

Every animal should get extra love and kindness, whether they have a home or not. We hope you'll help support our dream!