It’s the last day of 2015. Six years ago The Pongo Fund opened our doors for the first time. Pam Bartel was the first guest to receive food that day.

She and her husband had lost good paying jobs and were facing foreclosure. They’d already given up so much. But giving up their pets Fuzzy the dog and Spaghetti the cat, pets they had adopted years earlier from a local shelter, was even more frightening.

And that’s what brought them to our door. To stand in line for free pet food. Super high-quality pet food. No corn. No soy. No weird fillers. A few minutes later while loading the large bags of food into the trunk of her car, Pam cried tears of happiness.

Since that day we’ve been there another 9,000,000 times. NINE MILLION! To provide nutritious meals for 80,000 hungry and starving pets. Pets that are family. Pets that stayed out of the shelters. Pets that are deeply loved by people that turned to The Pongo Fund for the help they could not get anywhere else.

And we’ve helped provide veterinary care and spay and neuter for more than 1,000 of them, too.

Six years later we’re still here doing the work that no one else does. Staying focused and true to our mission while embracing new opportunities to expand our vision. Making an impact beyond expectation. Saving lives, reducing shelter populations. Helping both people and their pets. Simultaneously. Because by helping one, we really do help both.

We do our work quietly. We do not spend money on marketing and advertising and fundraising like the big groups too. Gosh, some of them right here spend millions of dollars telling people what they do. We do it differently. We don’t talk about it much, we just do it. That means no big parties, no extravagant dinners, no auctions or other fancy shindigs.

We stay pretty quiet about our work. And because of that we know it’s sometimes hard to let people know what The Pongo Fund does. To explain what The Pongo Fund means. To describe the work we do and why we do it. We’re a small-but-mighty volunteer driven group and we operate with just one paid employee and many dedicated volunteers.

We help animals when their own families are temporarily unable to keep them fed. Dogs. Cats. Feral cats. City cats. Horses sometimes, too. Service dogs. Seizure dogs. Hearing dogs. Even Guide dogs.

We help them all, including beloved animals that belong to seniors and veterans and the mentally and physically disabled. To both the employed and the unemployed. We help young children whose only reliable friend is their dog or cat. And we help street kids all across the community. Because their pets are frequently the only family they have left. And so many more.

We work with caseworkers from the Department of Human Services and many other agencies to aid their most fragile clients. We help single moms, couples, families and far too often we’re called upon to help victims of domestic violence that sometimes have had almost everything beaten out of them save for the love of their animals.

We rescued a dog named Dutch unintentionally left locked inside a truck when his truck driver dad Francis faced emergency surgery. Reuniting both 10 days later in a heartwarming story followed by nearly one million people.

We paid the bills to help Bella the pitbull when she was tragically shot in the head. And we continue to be there for her and her brother Bugsy and the entire family that loves them both.

We were there to comfort a broken-hearted octogenarian when both his elderly wife and elderly cat died within days of one another. He said he wanted to honor them but could not afford to donate money. So we brought bags of kibble to his home and worked with him so he could honor their memories by being part of our kibble packing team. Maybe the most loved kibble we’ve ever packed.

We helped a young homeless couple make the tough decision to give up a momma dog and her four-week old puppies. A doting momma and four little tiny pups all living together inside a cardboard box inside a shopping cart. We helped them understand that selling their puppies on a bridge ramp was not the right thing to do. The momma dog, all of 14 months old at the time and still really just a puppy herself, now lives in the lap of love seven days a week. And each one of those puppies was adopted into new loving homes.

We helped a woman 1000 miles from Oregon who called just a few days before she died. She was the feral cat caretaker for oodles of cats in her trailer park and she had no one else to take over for her. She called out of fear. We learned everything we could learn about who liked what and who got along and who might come inside once in a while and who was still waiting to be spayed and neutered. And we then organized a posse of people to help, including the trailer park manager who had no idea any of this was going on. Because, as he said, they all pretty much just kept to themselves. The woman who called, she died a few days later.

We were there to hike into the forest to bring much needed food and hope to a group of veterans who had given up on everything except their wits and their pets. Angry and suspicious, they still welcomed us with hugs and smiles.

We were there for the young girl who desperately needed to hug her dog while in the hospital. We made the call that led to another call that led to another call and the smile on her face as her dog lay on the bed next to her said it all.

We were there when one of our guests suffered a seizure on one of our Pongo Sundays, right there in our lobby. And in the blink of an eye one of our team, an experienced physician’s assistant, rushed to stabilize, treat and comfort the stricken guest. She stayed with her until she was ok and then quietly returned to her other Pongo duties.

We quietly rescued several dogs that didn’t have a chance otherwise. Doing whatever we needed to do to get them out of horrible situations. And when we say whatever, we mean whatever. We don’t talk about this work but we do it nonetheless. And our Whisper Network of caring friends made sure that each one found a happy new home.

We pulled out every stop imaginable to help a woman on her way to commit suicide after giving up the dog she loved but could no longer afford to feed. We knew she was serious when she told us exactly how she was going to end her life. But thanks to the crisis training of one of our volunteers, we were ready to help because we knew there would not be another chance. And both are doing well today, happy and healthy together.

And on a personal note, we celebrated the 21st birthday of my best friend, Scooby. Himself freed from a tough life four years ago, together with me ever since. He could be the poster child for The Pongo Fund. Living in the doorway of a building on a busy street. Sick, covered in tumors, missing teeth and more, yet he climbed into my lap to lick my face when we met. Even with all the pain he was in, he still wanted to properly say hello. And every Friday we share French Fries.

We’ve set up pet food bank distribution in dozens of locations, near and far. And numerous groups including Oregon Food Bank, Meals-On-Wheels, Oregon Humane Society, Dove Lewis Emergency Animal Hospital, Oregon Department of Human Services, Home Forward, Central City Concern, Department of Veterans Affairs and dozens more all rely on us when their own clients need pet food. Even suicide crisis lines turn to The Pongo Fund for help when their callers have pets.

That’s six years of doing the lifesaving work that no one else is doing. The very work we were told we would never be able to do. Saving more lives than anyone ever thought possible. Work that we’ve been fortunate to do only because of you.

And what began in the back of a Chevy Trailblazer now helps more animals than any other group in Oregon. Becoming a national model along the way for new ways to save lives and reduce shelter populations. Even Best Friends Animal Society honored us when they said: “The best way to reduce shelter populations is to keep animals out of the shelters to begin with. The Pongo Fund has developed that very program. They’re doing something innovative in Portland that’s making a huge difference.”

Together with you, The Pongo Fund has given a chance to animals that might not otherwise have a chance and given hope to families that have little else to be hopeful for. Because sometimes a simple bowl of kibble is the force that both keeps a family together and saves the lives of the animals they love.

Being there. Just being there. And we thank you for being there with us. Because we couldn’t do it without you.

And this is why we Pongo.

Today is the last day of 2015. The last day you can make a charitable donation and receive a 2015 tax deduction. The last day of the year to make a difference.

And we hope that you will help us prepare for 2016 with your gift today. Even better, by giving today your gift will be DOUBLED by a group of generous donors.

We have two secure giving links:

• http://bit.ly/1MQ3Hn5
• https://www.thepongofund.org/contact/donation-page/

“If you cannot feed 100, then feed just one.” — Mother Teresa

With gratitude from all of us at The Pongo Fund, we thank you.

Because YOU are why we Pongo!

Sit. Stay. Eat. Live. thepongofund.org

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