I’m an animal lover. Unfortunately for me, my 13-year-old dog has entered the phase of life where her hobbies consist primarily of sleeping, relocating to a different sleeping location, and occasionally finding a sunbeam to sleep in.
So while I still spend plenty of time spoiling my old pup, she doesn’t exactly provide the outlet for all my animal-loving tendencies. Thankfully, my work at F3 connected me with the Peoria Humane Society, giving me another way to support animals and the people who care for them.
The Peoria Humane Society (PHS) is led by Kitty Yanko, who has served as Director for more than 34 years. She’s exactly the kind of person you hope is running an organization like this, deeply committed to the mission, incredibly knowledgeable, and willing to do whatever needs to be done. Behind her warm and bubbly personality is a level of determination that’s helped keep the organization moving forward through decades of challenges.
Like many nonprofits, PHS faces a familiar set of obstacles. Resources are limited, staff capacity is stretched thin, and the work never stops.
When we started working together, we saw an opportunity to apply the same strategy, structure, people, process, and technology framework we use with our other larger business clients. Peoria Humane Society’s mission was different, but the operational challenges were remarkably similar to what we see over and over in our typical PE-backed enterprise clients.
What happened over the last six months reinforced our belief that when good organizations combine meaningful work with clear strategy and disciplined execution, results follow. And in the nonprofit world, those results often show up faster than you might expect.
PHS’s Challenges
At the time we began working together, PHS had one part-time employee in addition to Kitty. Despite having incredible initiative and energy, neither Kitty nor her support staff were marketing experts and there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to figure everything out.
The team was managing daily operations, supporting the shelter, coordinating volunteers, planning fundraising events, processing donations, handling community outreach, and somehow still trying to market the organization.
As often happens with small nonprofits, urgent work consistently pushed important work to the back burner.
Like many nonprofits that operate with limited staff and resources, some important infrastructure hadn’t received the attention it deserved over the years.
The website, for example, contained outdated information, redundant pages, and a structure that made it harder for visitors to find what they needed. More importantly, it wasn’t intentionally organized around the actions PHS wanted people to take, such as donating, volunteering, attending events, or learning more about the organization’s impact.
Marketing efforts faced a similar challenge. Most communication was driven by immediate needs. A fundraiser would come up, and it would be promoted. A need would arise, and a post would go out. Every effort was well-intentioned and served a purpose, but there wasn’t a broader strategy connecting those activities together. We often refer to this as “random acts of marketing”—lots of good work happening without a framework to maximize its impact.
The donor management platform presented another opportunity for improvement. Like many legacy systems, it had been in place for years and no longer aligned with the organization’s needs. It was difficult to navigate, required significant manual effort, and created unnecessary administrative work for an already stretched-thin team.
None of these challenges were unique to PHS. In fact, they’re incredibly common among nonprofits where limited resources mean the mission understandably takes priority over operational improvements. The opportunity wasn’t to fix what was broken—it was to build systems and processes that better supported the great work that was already happening.
Perhaps the biggest challenge, though, was one of storytelling.
The Peoria Humane Society was doing incredible work throughout the community, but they weren’t consistently telling that story. They hosted events, supported local animal welfare efforts, and positively impacted countless lives, yet much of that impact remained invisible to the broader community.
People can’t support work they don’t know about.
What We Did
Besides making an unhealthy number of dog puns that I personally found hilarious, we focused on building a foundation that would make marketing and fundraising easier, more consistent, and more effective.
While this isn’t an exhaustive list, it represents the major initiatives we tackled together.
Our first priority was creating a more consistent outreach strategy built around themes and campaigns.
Fortunately, PHS already had a strong calendar of community events, which gave us a natural framework to build from. Instead of treating each event as a standalone effort, we developed coordinated messaging that connected multiple touchpoints and reinforced key themes over time.
Their largest annual fundraiser, Wine & Whiskers, was approaching, and registrations were lagging behind expectations. We created a more structured promotional campaign that included consistent messaging, multiple outreach channels, and clearer calls to action. The result was their strongest fundraising performance since before COVID, generating the highest event revenue they’ve seen in years.
That success wasn’t just about one event. It demonstrated what can happen when communication shifts from sporadic promotion to intentional campaign management.
At the same time, we launched an ongoing community education initiative.
Rather than only asking people for donations or event participation, we began highlighting the work PHS was doing throughout the year. We focused on telling stories, showcasing impact, and helping community members better understand the role PHS plays in animal welfare across the region.
Those educational touchpoints created more visibility, stronger engagement, and ultimately greater support.
We’re currently working through a complete website overhaul designed to simplify the user experience and focus visitors on the actions that matter most: donating, volunteering, attending events, and learning about the organization’s impact.
We’ve also replaced their overly complex and costly donor management platform with a modern, streamlined solution that is easier for both donors and staff to use. The new system improves the donation experience, reduces administrative burden, and gives the team more time to focus on the mission instead of wrestling with software.
Collectively, these improvements have increased donations, reduced administrative headaches, strengthened community awareness, and given Kitty and her team valuable time back to focus on the important work. For a mission-driven nonprofit operating with limited resources, that’s a meaningful outcome.
What This Taught Us
One of the reasons we enjoy supporting organizations like the Peoria Humane Society is that the feedback loop is incredibly short.
In many B2B environments, sales cycles can stretch for months. It can take significant time before strategic improvements translate into measurable business outcomes. Nonprofits often move faster.
A stronger fundraising campaign can generate results within days, improved communication can increase event participation almost immediately, and better donor experiences can lead to more contributions and stronger engagement in a matter of months. Because of that, our work with PHS has provided a unique opportunity to validate the F3 approach in real time.
The Peoria Humane Society was already doing important work long before we arrived. Our role wasn’t to change the mission. It was to help create the systems, structure, and consistency needed to amplify it.
Seeing that impact—in increased donations, improved operations, and ultimately greater support for animals throughout the community—has been one of the most rewarding projects we’ve worked on.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t take this opportunity to shine a spotlight on the Peoria Humane Society. If you’d like to support the incredible work they’re doing for animals throughout our community, consider making a donation, volunteering, or learning more through the link here.
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