As you can imagine, I am familiar with a lot of animal advocacy organizations. Below are my favorites. They are good people doing good work for animals. If you hear otherwise, let me be the first to know. I support them, and I hope you will too. Whatever you do, support your local animal rescue organizations and support no-kill shelters. Rally4Animals!
Animal Legal Defense Fund 
“For more than three decades, the Animal Legal Defense Fund has been fighting to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system.” The only way to make lasting changes that improve the lives of all animals is by changing the laws that affect them through our legal system. ALDF is doing that, state-by-state, “encouraging the federal government to enforce existing animal protection laws.”
Best Friends Animal Society
Best Friends Animal Society is a nonprofit organization “building no-kill programs and partnerships that will bring a day when there are No More Homeless Pet®” They are committed to “a better world thorough kindness to animals.” Words I try to live by. Click the icon for more information. They have the largest no-kill animal sanctuary in the world, located in Kanab, Utah.
Farm Sanctuary
Farm Sanctuary is the “founding sanctuary” for farm animals in America, established in 1986 in Watkins Glen, NY “to combat the abuses of factory farming, advocate for institutional reforms, and encourage a new awareness and understanding of farm animals and the benefits of cruelty-free, plant-based living.” Now with another sanctuary site in Los Angeles, Farm Sanctuary has “nearly 1000 rescued animals—each with an individual story to tell. These survivors are ambassadors, representing the billions of farm animals currently in the system. They, and others like them, have changed the hearts and minds of a generation.”
Friends of Animals
Founded in 1957, FoA is a non-profit, international animal advocacy organization that “works to cultivate a respectful view of nonhuman animals, free-living and domestic” with the goal to “free animals from cruelty and institutionalized exploitation around the world.” FoA is supported entirely by membership contributions.
In Defense of Animals
IDA has been “fighting for animals, people, and the environment… since 1983.” They defend animals with numerous campaigns including those that protect farm animals. IDA most notably provides unprecedented support to animal activists who face “compassion fatigue, burnout and secondary traumas. IDA provides “emotional and spiritual resources including a support line, an online support group, and webinars with experts in animal protection and activist self-care.”
The Humane League
In 2005, The Humane League was a “tiny grassroots organization,” with ane
important goal: “end the abuse of animals raised for food.” A critical mission given that farm animals suffer more abuse than any animal on earth. In the U.S., approximately 25 million innocent animals are tortured and slaughtered daily in food production, primarily in factory farms. THL focuses institutional change and has become a global advocacy organization. From the early days of protesting foie gras in restaurants, THL has become “one of the most important and effective voices for animals.”
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, was established in 1977 by Dr. Dame Daphne Sheldrick, in memory of her husband, David Sheldrick, a naturalist and the founder of Kenya’s Tsavo National park. It exists to protect wildlife in Kenya and has become famous for rescuing and hand-rearing orphaned elephants and rhinoceros to return them to the wild. You have no idea what a challenging endeavor this is, involving identifiying and producing special formulas and a trained team of “keepers,” who rotate sleeping overnight with the orphaned babies, whose size belies how fragile and vulnerable they are. The Trust is a registered charity in the UK, a Kenyan non-profit, and a 501(c)(3) in the United States. Their work is too broad and too important to try to capture in a few words here. In addition to saving those precious creatures, the Trust manages anti-poaching teams, mobile veterinary units, and community outreach programs. Please visit their website. They take “homeless no more” to a completely new level. I get chills just thinking about their work. National Geographic wrote about the Sheldrick Trust in September 2011.
Vine Sanctuary
VINE is an LGBTQ-run sanctuary for farm animals with a community of 
more than 700 animals enjoying the refuge, peace, and freedom they deserve. Working from “an ecofeminist understanding of the interconnection of all life and the intersection of all forms of oppression,” VINE envisions a plant-powered future and works not only for animal liberation, but also social and environmental justice. VINE was the first sanctuary to figure out how to rehabilitate roosters exposed to cockfighting. “Most of the animals escaped or were rescued from the meat, dairy and egg industries or other hurtful circumstances, such as cockfighting, pigeon racing, vivisection, and zoos. Sanctuary residents include chickens, cows, pigeons, ducks, doves, geese, sheep, peacocks, emus, guinea fowl, and one exceptional pig.” I simply love VINE, but I’m certainly not the only one. See here what icon Carol J. Adams has to say about why she supports VINE. Co-founder pattrice jones only changed my life when our paths crossed at an Animal Rights Conference, and later led me to cow-sheep-chicken-turkey-alpaca-people whisperer Anna B. I am so honored to be a part of the VINE herd. VINE: Veganism Is The Next Evolution; Veganism Is Not Enough
Quote marks represent information taken from organization’s public websites.
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