In the 1800s, New York City wasn’t a pleasant place for most animals: horses were whipped on the street, and dogs were forced into fighting matches, or thrown into cages and drowned. But one man, Henry Bergh, was horrified by the barbaric treatment of animals he witnessed every day, and in 1866, he convinced the New York State Legislature to establish a law that would prevent cruelty to animals, and set up an organization to enforce it: the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

More than 140 years after Bergh convinced New Yorkers that animals deserved kindness and compassion, the ASPCA is going strong across the country with more than a million supporters. The organization offers a wide range of resources to help people care for animals, including an animal hospital, a fleet of mobile spay/neuter clinics for low-income families, an 8,000-square foot adoption center in New York City, and a disaster readiness program that helps people find suitable accommodations for their pets when they need to evacuate their homes. The ASPCA also provides help to victims of animal cruelty, through advocacy, animal cruelty education programs, and a state-of-the-art Anti-Cruelty Center where forensics experts can compile evidence to use against animal abusers, scheduled to open in 2010. Your contribution to this powerful organization will help prevent brutality against our best friends.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) believes that animals shouldn’t be made subject to unnecessary pain and suffering. Whether by working to create humane conditions for laboratory animals, enforcing the ban on commercial whaling, or taking steps to reform the barbaric methods of factory farms and slaughterhouses, the organization has done much since its 1951 founding to create a better world for animals of all types.

The AWI has five specific branches: Animals in Agriculture, Animals in Laboratories, Animals in the Oceans, Animals in the Wild, and Government and Legal Affairs, providing education and advocacy on all five fronts. The group’s sister site, Animal Welfare Approved, helps to promote farms that treat animals ethically, and their Compassion Index features a scorecard for federal legislators to show who has consistently supported legislation favoring humane animal treatment. A donation to the group can help AWI to spread their message further and create lasting changes in the way animals are treated, both in the United States and the world.

A year ago, authorities discovered that football player Michael Vick had been running an illegal dog-fighting ring out of his Virginia home. Many of the dogs had died in the fights, and others were seriously injured, and were violent and distrustful of humans as a result of the abuse. After Vick was sent to prison, it seemed likely that the surviving dogs would have to be euthanized — but instead, Best Friends Animal Society decided to take the dogs to their sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, and rehabilitate them so they could be adopted into loving homes.

Best Friends’ work with the “Vick-tory” dogs is now featured on a National Geographic TV show, Dogtown, but that’s not the nonprofit’s only claim to fame. Soon after Best Friends’ launch in the late 1980s, they established a “No More Homeless Pets” campaign, focusing on spay-and-neuter programs and grassroots efforts to find homes for traditionally “unadoptable” pets. Since then, the number of cats and dogs euthanized in the United States each year has gone from 17 million down to 5 million — a striking advance, though there is still work to be done.

Best Friends’ no-kill animal sanctuary provides care to more than 2,000 special-needs pets, and the organization’s national network works to establish spay/neuter programs and adoption programs in cities around the country. Best Friends also steps in to rescue pets during tragedies like Hurricane Katrina, and to provide support and training for people working to set up their own animal care and adoption programs. A contribution to this wonderful organization will bring them one step closer to their ultimate goal: finding a loving forever home for every animal.

Factory farming can be a cruel and barbaric practice, and many livestock animals spend their lives in agony, crammed together inside filthy cages, forced to eat other animals’ waste, and physically abused by the farm workers. The Farm Sanctuary is working to stop the abuse of farm animals, carrying out investigations on inhumane treatment, and rescuing abused animals whenever possible.

All rescued animals are taken to one of two Sanctuaries—a 175-acre shelter in upstate New York, or a 300-acre shelter in California. There, the animals will have ample room to wander around, and nutritious food to eat. They’ll be able to live out the rest of their natural lives in comfort on the farm, or even be adopted into a loving family—so if you’ve ever wanted a pet pig or chicken, here’s the place to find one. The Sanctuary allows curious animal-lovers to visit the farm and spend time learning about the brutality of industrialized agriculture. The organization has also worked hard to pass legislation that enforces the humane treatment of livestock, such as the recent ban on meat from animals that are too sick to stand. If you believe that it’s time to put an end to the factory farming process, a donation to Farm Sanctuary will help to ensure that all animals, livestock or not, are treated with compassion.

With more than 10 million members, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is America’s largest and most powerful advocate for the humane treatment of animals. The organization was founded in 1954, to provide a national voice for Congressional reform in the treatment of animals, and to unify and lend support to smaller local humane societies. After an HSUS investigator’s shocking photographs of a dealership that bred dogs for laboratory research made the cover of LIFE Magazine, Congress passed the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act to ensure that laboratory animals would be treated humanely. The HSUS has also played an essential part in banning dogfighting and cockfighting, establishing laws to protect endangered species, and shutting down puppy mills, among many other notable accomplishments. Recently, the HSUS came to the rescue of New Orleans pets that had been abandoned during Hurricane Katrina, saving the lives of around 10,000 animals.

From advocacy to education to rescue missions, the Humane Society of America is a leader in a wide range of animal welfare issues. Your donation will help them continue to transform our society into a more animal-friendly place.