Pet Partners
Sector: Non Profit

Pet Partners is the national leader in demonstrating and promoting the health and wellness benefits of animal-assisted therapy, activities, and education. With thousands of registered teams making millions of visits annually, Pet Partners serves as the nation’s largest and most prestigious nonprofit registering handlers of multiple species as volunteer teams. Pet Partners teams visit with patients in recovery, people with intellectual disabilities, seniors living with Alzheimer’s, students, veterans with PTSD, and those approaching end of life, improving human health and well-being through the human-animal bond. We would like to be certified in an effort to reaffirm our DEI efforts and ensure our organization is proven to be inclusive, accessible, and is able to serve all audiences and celebrate our diverse network of volunteers.

Why signing up to Pride 365 is important to us?

This is important to us as our organization is driven by community. Our volunteers should represent and serve their communities and we have a goal of ensuring all populations can benefit from a visit from a therapy animal. We want to embrace all people from all communities and be very public in those efforts, hence why we are pursuing this certification.

How does the Pride pledge fit in with our values and authenticity?

Pet Partners prides itself on being a leader and visionary in the field of animal-assisted interventions (AAI), delivering hope and healing to communities across the country and around the world. We paved the way to recognizing the importance and benefits of the human-animal bond. We presented the first comprehensive, standardized training in AAI for volunteers and healthcare professionals.

It is imperative that we now recognize and acknowledge health equity and disparities in marginalized communities and ensure that we are purposeful in our efforts to improve the field of AAI. We have focused these efforts into three pillars for our DEI work:

  • Addressing issues of program accessibility for marginalized communities.
  • Increasing our cultural competency and the capacity for allyship within our staff and volunteers at all levels.
  • Grounding our goals through the lens of our real-world impact.

The Pledge

We pledge to play our part in improving inclusivity in the workplace and society and be instrumental in bringing about an end to the corporate appropriation of the LGBT+ community (pink-washing) to help create a world of inclusion for all.

We have made the following commitments:

Commitment 1:

We will be public and open in support of LGBT+ inclusion 365 days a year by promoting our partnership with Pride 365.  We will apply the Pride 365 designation across company websites, social media, corporate communications and public relations activity. We will do this 365 days a year and not just during Pride season.

Commitment 2:

  • Issue press releases to support the partnership with Pride 365; raise awareness for the work of nominated charities; and promote inclusivity in the workplace and society.
  • Conduct interviews with the CEO and senior leadership detailing the importance of, and commitment to the Pledge and the partnership.
  • Release a CEO statement expressing commitment to inclusion and the partnership with Pride 365.

We pledge that these commitments will be carried out by Q3 2022.