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Richard Avanzino

Richard Avanzino has had a major influence on the nation's animal welfare movement. As president of the San Francisco SPCA from 1976 to 1999, Avanzino led San Francisco to become the first (1994) city and county in the nation to offer an adoption guarantee for every healthy shelter cat and dog. The vast majority of the city's sick and injured shelter animals were saved as well.

In 1998, Avanzino revolutionized animal sheltering with the opening of Maddie's Pet Adoption Center, the first facility in the country in which cats and dogs awaiting adoption were housed in cozy home-like settings rather than cages. During his 22-year tenure as president of the SF/SPCA, Avanzino brought euthanasia rates down to the lowest of any urban center in the nation. He also created adoption, animal behavior, feral cat, and spay/neuter programs that have become models for the nation. Avanzino's demonstrated leadership prompted Maddie's Fund founders Dave and Cheryl Duffield to hire him as the foundation's first president in 1999. The first goal of the family foundation is to help fund a nationwide adoption guarantee for all healthy shelter cats and dogs. The next step will be to save the sick and injured pets in animal shelters nationwide.