We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amy Dixon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy , thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Helping people and pets in need has always been my passion, but for a very long time I viewed them as mutually exclusive endeavors. Volunteering with children as a mentor, at an orphanage in Vietnam, raising funds to build wells in underserved communities, volunteering with organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Junior Achievement, and the ASPCA to educate children on compassionate animal care, to name a few, have all been extremely meaningful experiences. However, volunteering with animals in shelters, with rescue groups, and internationally over the past 30 years had been my main focus.

After working with numerous animal shelters around the country, obtaining certifications such as Animal Shelter Management, and recently completing a masters degree with a focus on Contemporary Animal Services Leadership, I had planned to transition from a full-time career in Environmental Program Management to working as a director at an underperforming shelter to create a life-saving space for animals, built on community partnerships.

However, my entire trajectory changed while volunteering at my local shelter in Temple, TX. Volunteering here I saw countless practically perfect pets be surrendered, not because their families didn’t love or want them, but because they lacked access to affordable pet-related resources. Simultaneously, the shelter management did not endeavor to work with the community, offer resources, or create any of the programming that would have reduced the over 1,000 healthy and adoptable animals that were euthanized every single year.

It was then that I decided if they shelter wasn’t willing to work with me to save lives, the next best thing I could do was to create a community safety net to keep animals out of the shelter in the first place. So in 2024, that’s what I did by creating the Human-Animal Support Coalition with a mission of keeping pets in the homes where they are loved and out of shelters. Since August of 2024, we have supported over 2,800 pets in Bell County with everything from pet food, supplies, basic grooming, microchips, vaccines, spay and neuter, limited vet bill assistance, behavior support, temporary foster, re-homing help and being available to help pet parents troubleshoot and find solutions.

We are the first of our kind nonprofit in our area and are actively working to open and operate a pet resource clinic where we will combine all of the services we currently offer with low-cost spay and neuter to fulfill our mission and save countless lives.

Amy , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My nonprofit organization is a first of its kind response effort in Central Texas. We are working proactively to keep pets in their homes and out of shelters while working to reduce pet overpopulation and unnecessary euthanasia in shelters. What I am most proud of is the brand we have built. We support our community through non-judgement. We know that creating meaningful social change will require our community’s trust. We establish that through meeting people where they are. Our success is due in large part to our volunteers. Currently we are 100% volunteer run and we’ve essentially had the same group of 20-25 active volunteers since we started. We’ve worked hard to create a culture where our team feels supported, feels like they are doing meaningful work, are appreciated, and likes being together helping people and pets. The other secret to our success is community partnerships. We are extremely grateful to have the support of so many in our community who are critical in helping us achieve our mission. From individuals, to businesses, to government, and fellow nonprofits we have had an outpouring of assistance around the work we do. I love to highlight the great work others are doing, value collaboration over competition, and all achievements feel better when we achieve them together.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

No matter how important, positive, or impactful what you intend to build, are building, or have built is, there is likely to be some friction because change it hard. When my nonprofit organization started to create a culture and community by providing free and low-cost pet-related services to our community, we fell under attack by a small group in the local nonprofit sector who benefited from things remaining status quo. Although it was challenging and frustrating when they effectively did cause us to lose supporters at first, it ended up being the exact “house cleaning” we needed. We stayed the course and focused on the mission, which allowed us to attract all of the right people who have only continued to multiply. When you’re doing something new, something good, something big, expect it to scare people and threaten social identities. Do it anyway.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I’ve taken several courses on social media management, which have been helpful in understanding things like brand, voice, tone, vanity metrics, and works well, and what doesn’t, across the different social media channels. What has worked for our brand is to stay positive and professional, but not shy away from controversial issues in our industry, which are many and often heavy around people and pets living in poverty and animal welfare in general. As a nonprofit we thank, thank, thank and thank some more. Our supporters are our lifeblood and we want to make sure they know how grateful we are that they chose to support us. I try to make our voice compassionate, fun, and create an environment that rallies the community together. We use (only) quality pictures and respond to every post. Although we all want a large following, it’s been important to me to build our brand organically- slowly and methodically by adding value with each post. I wish I could say I follow the recommended posting formulas and use all of the analytics, but in reality, some days I don’t get a chance to post at all and other days I may post four or five times. I authentically care about my community and I think that translates through our social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://humananimalsupportcoalition.org
• Instagram: @hascoalition
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557584783058

Image Credits

None.