Support Help My Pet
Support the project
Help Help My Pet become independent and grow.
Help My Pet is free to browse and share. Financial support helps turn the resource we have already built into a durable, independent project that can keep its information current, reach more families, and build better tools without charging people to find help for their pets.
Support Milestone 1 now
Choose a quick one-time amount, or enter any whole-dollar amount below. Support is processed through Minty Tees’ Shopify checkout while Help My Pet is still hosted here.
Nothing will be shipped and no shipping charge should be added. Help My Pet is currently a project of Minty Tees / Arenas Promotions LLC, not a tax-exempt charity, so this support is not presented as a tax-deductible charitable donation.
Milestone 1: Give Help My Pet its own home — $475
The first goal is intentionally modest: move Help My Pet onto infrastructure it controls while keeping Minty Tees connected as the merchandise and fulfillment partner.
Buying the domain is only the first few dollars. The real work is setting up the new hosting and database, moving the existing resource system, rebuilding the public site around the new infrastructure, and testing the result carefully enough that families and veterinary teams do not inherit broken pages or missing information.
A dedicated domain, one year of basic hosting, and the minimum database and infrastructure services needed to operate independently.
AI-assisted coding, database setup and management, migration work, troubleshooting, and the paid development capacity needed to move the existing Help My Pet system correctly.
Rebuild the HMP site around the new infrastructure and adjust existing features so they work properly outside Shopify rather than simply copying pages.
A small reserve for unexpected service fees, migration needs, testing tools, or other technical costs discovered while moving a working system.
What stays with Minty Tees: merchandise, checkout, printing, shipping and fulfillment. Help My Pet does not need to recreate an ecommerce platform in order to become independent.
Optional public credit and supporter thank-yous
Supporters never have to be named publicly. If you would like credit, we can recognize the name you choose, an organization, or a pet or person you are supporting in honor or memory of.
- Any amount: optional public supporter credit, or an “in honor of” / “in memory of” dedication.
- $25 and up: optional Founding Supporter digital badge while HMP is building its independent home.
- $100 and up: optional public shout-out plus a one-time 50% discount on one HMP-branded product sold by Minty Tees, up to $25 off. No cash value; final redemption details will be provided to qualifying supporters.
- Organizations and veterinary teams: a separate sponsorship path with organization credit, links, digital sponsor recognition, and higher-level launch acknowledgments where appropriate.
Recognition never changes how HMP evaluates, lists, verifies or describes a resource. Support buys recognition, not influence.
Want public credit with your support?
Use this form instead of the quick buttons. Your recognition preference and optional public profile details will stay attached to the support item in the Shopify order so we know what you want published.
For now, these fields are stored with this support order. We plan to promote approved reusable details into a supporter profile on the customer account once the post-purchase account sync is enabled.
Veterinary hospital or company?
Hospitals, rescues, pet-care companies and other organizations can sponsor Help My Pet financially or ask about in-kind support. Sponsorship can include public organization credit and launch recognition, but never preferential placement or influence over HMP resource information.
Where we want to go next
The independent site is the foundation, not the finish line. These are our current future goals, not fixed budgets or promises. As we approach each one, we will define the specific scope, cost and order based on what Help My Pet actually needs at that point.
Keep the information trustworthy
- Regularly re-check resource eligibility, service areas, application status, contact paths and important requirements.
- Investigate corrections and reports from families, veterinary teams and organizations.
- Maintain source records and review dates so visitors can see how recently information was checked.
- Replace dead ends when programs close, pause applications or change their rules.
Expand where Help My Pet can help
- Add more veterinary practices, specialty hospitals, low-cost services, food and supply programs, transportation, hospice and end-of-life resources.
- Expand geographic coverage based on need, partner relationships and the ability to keep new listings maintained.
- Research underserved categories where families currently have few good places to start.
Build better ways to find the right help
- Improve search and filtering by need, location, service area, eligibility and urgency.
- Develop ZIP-code and nearby-resource discovery where it genuinely helps.
- Create clearer comparison and next-step tools so families spend less time opening resources that cannot help them.
- Use privacy-respecting analytics to understand which needs are common and where the resource system still has gaps.
Put Help My Pet where people already ask for help
- Print veterinary handouts, rack cards, QR cards, posters and other take-home materials.
- Pay for postage, local delivery and other distribution costs.
- Build outreach materials for veterinary hospitals, rescues, shelters, pet-care organizations and community partners.
- Attend or support appropriate community events when in-person outreach can put the resource in front of people who need it.
Make the project easier for more people to use
- Improve accessibility beyond basic technical compliance.
- Develop translated and localized materials as capacity allows.
- Test the site and printed materials with the people who actually use them, including pet caregivers and veterinary teams.
Build sustainable project operations
- Cover ongoing domain, hosting, email, software, backup, monitoring and payment-processing costs.
- Fund research, development and administrative work as the project grows beyond what one person can reasonably maintain alone.
- Handle appropriate legal, accounting, privacy and organizational work for an independent public-interest project.
- Explore fiscal sponsorship or another structure that could make grants and institutional support available without allowing funders to buy preferential treatment in the resource directory.
How financial support will work
We are currently choosing the funding setup that best fits Help My Pet. The goal is to make it easy to give a one-time amount, provide recurring support, help fund the independence migration as a defined campaign, or support the project through merchandise.
The current first milestone is $475. That target covers the initial domain and infrastructure plus a deliberately modest allowance for the programming, database migration, site adaptation and paid development capacity required to do the move carefully. If the actual infrastructure choice changes the budget materially, we will update the target and explain why.
Support will never purchase placement, favorable treatment, priority review, or control over how a resource is described. Funding can support the work; it cannot buy authority over the information.
Ready to help move HMP into its own home?
The current independence goal is $475. Choose a one-time amount below.
Other ways to help
You can also help Help My Pet become more useful without spending money.
As support begins coming in, we plan to publish meaningful project milestones and spending categories so supporters can see what their help is making possible.