Rising Stars: Meet Tori Fugate

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tori Fugate.

Hi Tori, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I applied for my role at KC Pet Project in February of 2012 – two months after the organization was founded – I was working two jobs at the time. I wanted to work in nonprofit and had always been interested in working with animals. When I went to my interview, I explained to my now-boss of 10 years that I had no idea who KC Pet Project was and couldn’t find any information about them online. She explained that my role would be to get the word out about the organization and thankfully, I’ve had the incredibly unique experience to build our organization’s “brand” from its beginnings to what it is today. I’ve been fortunate to be able to tell the stories of our pets, our team, and the work that KC Pet Project does to make a difference in Kansas City. And I’ve been lucky to have a boss in our President/CEO, Teresa Johnson, who pretty much lets me do whatever I want as long as it works (ha)!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
A lot of people think that this is a fairly simple job or that I get to play with puppies all day. I’ve been asked many times if I get paid to do the work that I do. Working in animal welfare is difficult – it’s emotional and physical work for all of our team members. You see animals every day at their worst, and you know their journey is going to be a long one to find a family. People come to us every day having to give up their beloved pet for reasons outside of their control and that is very heartbreaking. When we’re taking in 40-60 new pets a day, like we have been this summer, there is a constant pressure to work as hard as you can to get pets adopted, to reunite lost pets with their owners, and to find foster homes for the pets in our care to keep kennels opened up for our new arrivals.

But when you experience the community support to help you adopt out pets, take foster animals into their home, and help keep families together, it makes it all worthwhile.

We also worked in a very challenging environment at our old shelter which presented many struggles along the way. I was always excited when people would come there to adopt our pets.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am most proud of the career that I’ve had over the past ten years. I really came into this job without a lot of experience in marketing, even though my degree was in it. I didn’t know anything about fundraising and very little about public relations. But my boss, Teresa Johnson, took a chance on me, and I’ve enjoyed learning and growing in this role for almost a decade now.

One of my most proud accomplishments is being a part of the campaign and the eventual construction of our new animal shelter in Kansas City, the KC Campus for Animal Care. Thanks to the voters of Kansas City, MO, funding was approved in 2017 after our Raise the Woof KC campaign that I was blessed to be involved with. With the support of the philanthropic community, we broke ground on our new campus in June 2018. I was also on the design and construction committee of the new campus, which will also be a career highlight for me. We opened our doors of our new home, the KC Campus for Animal Care (nicknamed “The House that Love Built”) on January 1, 2020, the 8th Anniversary of our organization.

We are working hard build community partnerships and to expand services to help address the systemic roots of resource inequity for people and their pets in Kansas City through our Keep ‘Em Together KC program, and I’m incredibly proud of the work that our team is doing to advance this program. Through this program, we offer pet resource assistance with food or other in-kind support, we raise funds for medical procedures for owned pets, we have a Home Away From Home crisis foster program that gives an owner the time they need to keep their pets by placing them in temporary foster homes, and so much more. This program is entirely supported through donations from our community.

More information about this program can be found at https://kcpetproject.org/programs/keep-em-together-kc/.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
For me, I like going to work every day and knowing that I’m making a difference. We’re are building programs and expanding services all the time at KC Pet Project, and I’m really proud to be a part of an organization that is helping people and pets in Kansas City and that is constantly evolving and growing to meet the needs of our community.

It’s also really exciting when a dog that you share on Instagram gets adopted because of that post, or a video that we post on TikTok helps raise funds for a surgery a pet needs.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: http://kcpetproject.org
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/kcpetproject
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/kcpetproject
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/kcpetproject
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kcpetproject

Image Credits
All images can be credited to KC Pet Project