ASPCA Announces New Round of Grant Funding to Support Cutting-Edge Research to Benefit Animals

NEW YORK - The ASPCA^® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) has announced $460,000 in grant funding available to U.S. and Canadian organizations to support research that either directly or systemically benefits animals, with a focus on projects that examine cruelty, access to veterinary care, applied behavior, psychological trauma, shelter research, and farm animal welfare. As the nation's leading voice for animals for more than 150 years, the ASPCA is deeply committed to improving the lives of at-risk dogs, cats, equines, and farm animals, and research is a key element to addressing animal welfare.

"Research is critical to understanding the full scope of an issue and determining how we can most quickly and effectively take action, however most animal welfare issues are unsolved and underrepresented in both research and practice," saidDr. Maya Gupta, vice president of research at the ASPCA. "By fostering high-quality research on some of the biggest issues facing animals in our society, we can help inform innovative strategies on how the animal welfare community and its partners can enhance access to veterinary care, adoption and behavioral rehabilitation programs, partnerships with law enforcement and shelter professionals, and increase public awareness to improve the lives of both companion and farm animals."

Billions of animals across the U.S. face challenges to their wellbeing each year, from cruelty to homelessness and lack of access to veterinary care, as well as those suffering on cruel factory farms. To address some of the most urgent issues facing the animal welfare community, the ASPCA is seeking proposals for Research Grants in the following categories:

• Access to Veterinary Care (AVC) Research: Research that addresses access to veterinary care, ideally establishing tools or guidelines that professionals or organizations can use to make veterinary care more accessible.
• Applied Behavior Research: Research that informs the development, refinement, or validation of evidence-based shelter behavior protocols.
• Cruelty Research: Research that builds understanding of key stakeholder perspectives, evaluates the effectiveness of cruelty prevention/response efforts, or heightens awareness of cruelty.
• Farm Animal Welfare Research: Research supporting a transition from modern conventional broiler chicken breeds to alternative chicken breeds with higher welfare outcomes.
• Psychological Trauma Research: Research related to developing novel approaches to the documentation of animal cruelty and neglect in the absence of physical trauma, with an emphasis on objective measures, including biomarkers and quantitative behavioral phenotyping.
• Shelter Research: Research related to the well-being and care of animals, including equines, in a shelter environment, including management and operations, population management, adoption outcomes and medical care.

For years, the ASPCA research grants have awarded funding to organizations nationwide to support groundbreaking and thought-provoking research. Some of last year's grant recipients include:

• University of Nebraska at Omaha: Studying the long-term psychological trauma in pets with human-animal broken social bonds
• Regents of the University of California, UC Davis : The impact of pair housing on the behavior of bonded and non-bonded adult shelter cats
• Innovate Animal Ag: In-ovo sexing market research as a tool to influence industry and consumers
• Regents of the University of California, UC Davis: The validation of companion cat health measurements during virtual veterinary appointments
• Colorado State University: Ascertaining the barriers to effectively addressing animal cruelty and neglect and applying lessons learned from Colorado throughout the U.S.
• Marymount University: Evaluation of the Virginia State Police Training program for animal service officers on reporting animal cruelty to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

"The ASPCA Research Grant has been instrumental in advancing our collaborative study with the Virginia State Police, examining how animal cruelty cases are reported in Virginia through the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)," said Dr. Holly Hargreaves-Cormany, Associate Professor of Forensic and Legal Psychology, Marymount University . "Thanks to the ASPCA's support, our findings will help raise awareness of the challenges involved in enforcing animal cruelty laws, highlight current trends in the animal control field, and inform best practices for training animal service agencies to use the NIBRS database effectively. Ultimately, with the insights of this research, the Virginia State Police training program could serve as a national model for other state law enforcement agencies."

Applications for the 2025 ASPCA Research Grants will be accepted from May 15 to July 31, 2025. The ASPCA Research Grants team will be hosting one-hour open house sessions on May 15 ^th at 3:00 p.m. ET and June 25 ^th at 2:00 p.m. ET to answer questions related to the submission process and criteria. Proposals can come from investigators or research teams affiliated with U.S. public or private entities, as well as eligible Canadian organizations that can demonstrate the applicability of the research to improve the welfare of animals in the U.S. Proposals will be evaluated based on their significance and relevance, approach, potential impact, generalizability, credentials, and budget. The ASPCA does not engage in or support research that involves induction or creation of disease, or physical or psychological injury to any animal.

Grant funding is only one of many ways the ASPCA supports organizations and communities across the country. The ASPCA is one of the nation's largest animal welfare grant makers, and since 2001, the ASPCA has provided more than $200 million in grant funding to over 3,500 animal shelters, municipal and governmental agencies, rescue groups, universities and other mission-aligned organizations and programs nationwide. These funds support a variety of programs ranging from increasing pet adoptions to helping communities build strong programs that assist animals during natural disasters, improving access to veterinary care, and partnering with food banks to serve more than 4.3 million pet food meals since 2017.

For more information about the eligibility requirements or to submit a proposal, please visit www.aspcapro.org/researchgrants. If your organization is interested in research but does not currently have the capacity to conduct formal research on its own, the ASPCA may be able to offer networking or guidance. To learn about ways to pursue your research ideas, please email [email protected].