What happens with animal rescue site click?

I’m gonna be straight with you. The first time someone told me about clicking buttons to feed shelter animals, I thought they were pulling my leg. Like, seriously? Clicking a button on a website somehow translates to food in a bowl for a dog in Kentucky?

But here’s the thing—it’s actually real. Sort of. Well, mostly. It’s complicated.

The click heard ’round the shelter world

So here’s how this whole thing works, and honestly it took me way too long to figure it out. These sites—The Animal Rescue Site is probably the most famous one—have these big purple or orange buttons that say something like “Click Here to Give – It’s Free!” And you click it. That’s it. That’s the whole interaction.

Now, you’re probably thinking what I thought: “Cool, so… what just happened?”

The answer is advertising money. When you click that button, you’re shown ads. The companies paying for those ads are essentially funding the donations. Every click generates a tiny amount of revenue, and the site’s sponsors (usually pet food companies, which, yeah, makes sense) match or contribute to the donation pool. Your click basically unlocks their money.

GreaterGood, the organization behind The Animal Rescue Site, claims that one click provides 0.6 bowls of food to shelter animals. Not exactly one bowl. Not even a full bowl. But .6 of a bowl, which feels weirdly specific and also kind of honest? Like they did the math and were like “yeah, it’s not quite a full bowl but we’re not gonna lie about it.”

The skeptic’s take (and why I was wrong)

When I first heard about this I was super skeptical. I mean, come on. It feels too easy, right? Like one of those “share this post and Facebook will donate $1” things that are always fake.

But I actually dug into it—because I’m annoying like that—and GreaterGood is a legit 501(c)(3). They’ve been around since 1999. They publish financial statements. The food and supplies actually do go to shelters and rescue organizations. I found shelters that have received grants from them, talked to a rescue coordinator in Ohio who gets regular shipments of food funded through the program.

So yeah. I was wrong. It works.

The catch, if you can even call it that, is that it’s not some magical money-creating machine. The funding comes from actual sponsors who pay for the advertising space you see after clicking. Purina, Halo, companies like that. They’re buying ads, and part of that ad buy goes directly to donations. You’re basically the middleman in a very efficient corporate giving program.

But does anyone actually do this regularly?

This is where it gets interesting. I started asking around—friends, family, random people on Reddit—and found this whole subculture of people who click these sites every single day. Like, it’s part of their morning routine. Coffee, emails, animal rescue click.

One woman I talked to (we’ll call her Janet because that’s her name) has been clicking every day for seven years. SEVEN YEARS. She says it takes her maybe 15 seconds. She also clicks the tabs for hunger, literacy, veterans, and a few others on the same site. She estimates she’s generated food for thousands of bowls at this point.

And here’s what surprised me: she doesn’t even have pets. She just… likes doing it. It makes her feel like she’s contributing something, even though she’s broke and can’t afford to donate money.

There are browser extensions people have made that automate the clicking. Facebook groups dedicated to reminding each other to click. It’s this weird little corner of the internet where people are genuinely trying to do something good in the easiest way possible.

The math gets weird

Let’s talk numbers for a second because this is where things get fuzzy and nobody really likes to be too specific.

If one click equals 0.6 bowls of food, and let’s say the site gets… I don’t know, 100,000 clicks a day? That’s 60,000 bowls of food. Per day. Which sounds like a lot until you remember there are something like 6.3 million dogs and cats entering shelters every year in the US alone.

So is it making a dent? Yes. Is it solving the problem? Not even close.

GreaterGood says they’ve provided over 100 million bowls of food since they started. That’s a big number. That’s real food. But shelter funding is still a crisis. Most shelters are always desperate for resources. The clicking helps, but it’s not replacing the need for actual donations, volunteers, fostering, adopting, and fixing the root problems that lead to so many animals ending up in shelters in the first place.

The weird psychology of it all

There’s something psychologically satisfying about the click, though. It’s instant gratification. You click, you see the counter go up, you feel like you did something. Even though your individual contribution is microscopic—0.6 bowls is like, what, maybe two cups of kibble?—it still triggers that little dopamine hit of “I helped.”

Some people think this is actually bad because it lets people feel good without actually engaging with the problem in any meaningful way. Like, you click your button, feel virtuous, and then don’t think about animal welfare for the rest of the day. It’s activism for people who don’t actually want to do activism.

But honestly? I think that’s kind of cynical. Yeah, clicking a button isn’t the same as volunteering at a shelter or fostering a dog or donating $100. But it’s also not nothing. And if someone clicks every day for a year, that’s 219 bowls of food (0.6 x 365, I did the math). That’s feeding a shelter dog for months. From literally 15 seconds of effort per day.

Where does the money actually go?

This is the part that’s hard to track down because these organizations aren’t always super transparent about the specifics. GreaterGood works with over 2,500 animal shelters and rescues across the US and internationally. They send food, supplies, and grants.

I found a breakdown from a few years ago that said something like 80% of the money goes to programs and 20% to overhead and fundraising. Which is pretty good, actually. A lot of charities have way worse ratios.

They also do disaster response—sending supplies to shelters affected by hurricanes, wildfires, that kind of thing. And they fund spay/neuter programs, which, honestly, is probably more impactful in the long run than the food donations because it addresses the root cause of shelter overpopulation.

The verdict (if there is one)

So what happens when you click? Real money moves. Real food gets donated. Real animals get fed. It’s not a scam. It’s not meaningless. But it’s also not a silver bullet.

If you’ve got 15 seconds and you’re already online, might as well click. If you’ve got more than that—time, money, space for a foster dog—then do more. The clicking isn’t supposed to replace actual involvement. It’s just the bare minimum floor of engagement for people who want to help but don’t know where to start.

And honestly? In a world where most people scroll past sad shelter dog photos without a second thought, I’ll take the clickers. At least they’re doing something.