2025 a Milestone Year for St. Hubert’s

Dear St. Hubert’s friends and family,

2025 has been a milestone year for St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center. We have continued to care for animals in our shelter, while simultaneously strengthening programs and initiatives which prevent animals from ever having to enter shelters. These programs are designed to give community members additional support and resources to keep their pets safe and healthy in their homes, with families who already love them. I am proud to share that through your steadfast support, and the incredible work of our team, we have brought this approach to life with tremendous impact.

For more than 85 years, we have served communities in northern New Jersey with a simple core principle: to care for and protect animals. And we have always known that animals of all species are connected to the people who live here: the families who give them loving homes, the protectors who keep them safe from neglect or cruelty, and the advocates who help give them a voice. We came to realize long ago that any initiative that has real, lasting impact for animals must also be aimed at the people who care about them. Our entire community is enriched when people share space with animals and have the opportunity to bring that bond into their lives.

To help achieve these priorities, we have strengthened the vital safety net programs we offer through our Pet Resource Center, within three primary pillars of support: to Prevent, Provide and Protect.

This past year, St. Hubert’s has doubled down on implementing this approach and you can see the results of our team’s amazing work in the attached impact report.

In 2025, we have continued to expand our community programs, supplying more pet food and toys, holding more low-cost vaccine clinics, and offering veterinary care to pet parents in need across New Jersey. Last year, we hosted 6 low-cost vaccine clinics, vaccinated 1,170 owned dogs and cats, and performed 285 low-cost spay and neuter surgeries at our medical center at St. Hubert’s. We also provided 81 additional medical procedures to pet owners in need throughout the year and 130,895 pounds of free pet food was distributed at pet supply events in multiple cities. Each and every one of these numbers represents an animal who is safely at home today and a loving pet parent who does not have to make the impossible decision to surrender their family member to a shelter.

The Behavior and Training Center has continued to extend valuable resources, education, and training to the public. The tools they receive help to improve the behavior of their pets and correct acute behavioral issues that otherwise can lead pet owners to become overwhelmed and feel forced to relinquish their pet.

Advocacy is central to lasting impact for animals and animal lovers. In 2025, we launched a Policy Lab to engage like-minded community members whose goal is to push forward legislation that will create positive change for the animals and people in our region. If you are interested in joining this effort, we would love to hear from you! Even as we speak, we are actively collaborating with local advocates and lawmakers in the state on groundbreaking legislation to ban the use of inhumane traps on wildlife.

Going beyond our local community, St. Hubert’s has put significant effort into growing our WayStation Transport program, which celebrated its 30,000th animal transported in 2025. This lifesaving initiative will mark its 10th anniversary in 2026. Last year alone, we transported a total of 2,996 animals from shelter partners up and down the eastern seaboard to communities in New Jersey where they were quickly adopted. 203 of these pets were brought in through our Save-A-Heart Program, which provides transport and treatment for heartworm-positive dogs, protecting them from an otherwise fatal outcome. With our innovative Give-Back initiative, we were also able to invest $78,150 from the adoption fees of these animals back to the partner shelters they came from. This program helps these shelters to bolster their own local programs and move one step closer toward solving the community-wide issues that lead to pet relinquishment.

We also know that our shelter is an important resource to our community, for animals with nowhere else to go or people looking to bring a pet into their family. We continue to be a safe haven for homeless animals who need a second chance. For these reasons, we have strengthened our Adoption, Foster, and Shelter services in 2025 so that we help as many animals as possible. As a result, 2,773 dogs, cats, and other pets found loving homes this year.

Community foster homes expand the walls of our shelter and give homeless animals an opportunity to live in loving homes as they await adoption. Last year, 45% of the animals we cared for lived with foster caregivers, and we are eternally grateful to them for opening their homes and hearts. These homes are particularly important for the most vulnerable kittens and puppies who are too young to be adopted and who need special care before they are medically cleared.

These are just a few examples of the incredible progress made in 2025 to solidify St. Hubert’s position as a community-centered organization dedicated to preserving the human-animal bond and creating a more compassionate community for animals in New Jersey.

You can expect to see more growth in cornerstone programs such as Community Outreach, our Policy Lab, the WayStation, and Behavior and Training Center in the coming year. In

addition, we will be adding new initiatives to widen our safety net of pet support services because we firmly believe that the best shelter is a humane and properly resourced community.

We hope you will be by our side for the next stage of our journey and are so grateful to you for your support. Our St. Hubert’s family – volunteers, foster caregivers, supporters and staff – form the backbone of our organization. Without you, we could not stand or move forward – and you help change the lives of people and animals every day.

With deepest gratitude,

Lisa LaFontaine, President & CEO, St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center