Paws Up for Philanthropic Prizes A Case Study of the ASPCA Rachael Ray $100K Challenge

From Raymond Orteig's reward for the first aviator to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1919, to the Ansari X-Prize's hefty payout for the first manned private spacecraft in 2011, the use of prize competitions to fuel innovation has a rich history. Prizes can be powerful tools for achieving lasting impact in any given field with their capacity to raise awareness, shift public opinion, attract previously untapped resources, and positively influence communities. Today, according to recent research, we are in the midst of a prize competition "renaissance," as the aggregate value of prizes over $100,000 have tripled in the last decade to reach more than $375 million dollars.

But how do foundations decide if and when they should use prize competitions to work toward their missions? How should they design these incentives to actually achieve desired outcomes? This case study details how the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) approached these questions with the goal of driving innovation through the ASPCA Rachael Ray $100K Challenge. It offers four key takeaways for other funders considering the use of philanthropic prizes.

Founded in 1866, the ASPCA is the oldest animal welfare organization in the United States, and it works nationally as a grantmaking public charity, rescues animals from abuse, shares resources with shelters across the country, and advocates for humane law. One of the biggest issues that the U.S. animal welfare field faces is the staggering number of animals that are euthanized in shelters nationwide every year—approximately 2.7 million or one every 11 seconds.

In 2009, there was a growing idea that an “adoption ceiling” had been reached in the animal welfare sector, and that the numbers of animals being adopted on whole had peaked. Some thought leaders had started to suggest that there were simply too many animals and not enough homes, and resources should be diverted away from intervention towards prevention. While prevention is critical, with millions of lives in the balance, the ASPCA wasn’t willing to compromise.  Animal welfare is a diverse field with over 13,600 shelters operating across the country in different communities, facing different issues, with different types of admission policies, adoption policies, and local laws governing their operations. These manifold organizations rely heavily on informal, peer-to-peer learning to improve operations and develop best practices. As a national organization concerned with a local problem, this diversity and informality made it difficult for the ASPCA to find a direct mechanism to effect change. Complicating the situation further, philosophical differences had led to serious acrimony in many communities. As Bert Troughton, the ASPCA’s Senior Vice President of Strategy observed, the field as a whole was losing track of what we all had in common: a desire to save more lives.

In response to this situation, the ASPCA designed a prize competition that could address the unique needs of diverse local communities, refute the idea that an "adoption ceiling" had been reached, and create a greater impetus for the field as a whole to innovate and widely share new solutions to save the lives of homeless animals. By its close, the competition needed to: enable shelters to better save lives, last long enough to sustain real change within each organization, and strengthen shelters’ relationships within their communities. The design of the competition was largely inspired by McKinsey & Company’s research on the structure of successful philanthropic prizes, especially the key functions of identifying excellence and strengthening community, which emphasize elevating outstanding practices and sharing those ideas with myriad others in order to drive sustainable change.

Informed by these influences and requirements, the $100K Challenge was launched in 2010 and dared 50 shelters across the country to compete to break their own records of saving the lives of homeless animals. Throughout the months of June, July, and August, participating shelters were asked to save more dogs and cats than they did during the same three months in the previous year. Each participating organization was placed into a division so that they were competing against similar organizations as determined by geography or animal intake capacity. They were also asked to chronicle their efforts on social media to raise awareness of their campaigns, underscore the plight of homeless animals, and share their innovations throughout the process. The prizes included those given for saving at least 300 more animals during the three month time frame, and for doing the best job of getting the local community directly involved in the competition. The grand prize of $100,000 was reserved for the shelter that achieved the largest increase in the number of lives saved over its baseline numbers from the previous year.

In the first year, the 41 shelters that finished the competition cumulatively saved 7,362 more lives than they had at the same time the year before. By year five, that increase had more than doubled to 16,789.  Over the last five years, 282,679 lives were saved through this competition, an increase of nearly 60,000. One of the more successful innovations to come out of the Challenge is an "Adoption Ambassador" program where an animal is placed into a foster provider's care who then takes responsibility for finding the animal a forever home. This program allows the animal to live in a home environment rather than a shelter, and taps into a larger population of people that might not be able to adopt but have a network that they can engage in finding a forever home for the animal. In its first inception in Louisiana, 70 percent of people participating in this program had never adopted before. This program led to increased adoptions, volunteer recruitment, and bolstered community support for the organization. The “Adoption Ambassador” program has since spread to hundreds of other shelters nationwide.

Troughton observed that the competition as a whole succeeded in changing the mindset internally in many participating shelters about what was possible for them to accomplish, and how they might engage others in the effort to save more lives. She also highlighted that it helped the public to see animal adoption as a positive and rewarding experience. The ASPCA will be tapping contestants from all five years, as well as reviewing the aggregate data to glean further insights about the competition’s overall impact. In advance of that effort, they shared some key takeaways for other funders looking to explore a philanthropic prize model:

1. Mission comes first. You must have a clear problem to solve, with a simple goal. After the first year’s success, many people wanted to add new components to the competition, but the ASPCA kept the focus on saving more homeless animals’ lives. Any change to the contest had to contribute significantly to helping shelters increase their lives saved; if it didn’t, it wasn’t added.

2. Set a really high bar. There were many conversations within the ASPCA about what number of lives saved (more than the prior year) would constitute a realistic goal for the division competition prizes. After settling on a minimum increase of 300 lives, there was some concern that the competitors would not reach such a lofty number. However, of the 239 total shelters over five years, 80 met or sailed past that mark, and half increased lives saved from 25% to more than 200%. Troughton states that the best part of setting a high bar is the morale payoff: "Now that they’ve seen just what they’re capable of, no one will ever convince those organizations that they can't succeed at something."

3. Anticipate every possible criticism in the design phase, and address it. Everyone suspects wrongdoing in competitions, so you need to make sure you are rigorous about your data collection and compliance processes. Make sure you can demonstrate that your participants are operating fairly and that the mission-based goal of the contest is being achieved.

4. Make space for debriefing and learning. One of the most valuable aspects of the Challenge is its focus on sharing the innovations and knowledge gleaned during the competition cycle: the ASPCA hosts a yearly debrief on the competition where participants can discuss their challenges and successes; they compiled a "playbook" of winning tactics, engagement strategies, operational tips and other resources to help participating shelters plan in the months leading up to the Challenge; and they share the lessons and activities of the Challenge widely across social media to spread these ideas throughout the field.

All in all, the ASPCA found that a prize model helped spur innovation in a way that their traditional grantmaking couldn’t; it allowed them to build the capacity of many local organizations working in different ways to impact a specific problem, to identify promising new program models to fund in the future, and to build the strength of the field as a whole by raising awareness of those effective programs and practices.

For more information on the $100K Challenge please visit http://challenge.aspcapro.org/

To learn more about using competitions, read our GrantCraft guide.

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Manager of Stakeholder Engagement
Foundation Center