Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Heidi's Village was created to answer the ongoing long-term problem of animal rescue overflow in Maricopa County- the Greater Phoenix Area. Heidi's Village accepts pets from existing rescues in Arizona at a significantly decreased daily rate. This decreases euthanasia and offers more opportunities to work with behavior challenged animals as well as minimally socialized cats and dogs, ultimately working to prepare them for successful adoptions. In 2021, we have increased operations to full capacity. On average, there are 300 animals in our care, of which about 120 are overflow boarding for existing Rescues that they would not have been able to save without our services. Unlike many other rescue organizations, Heidi's Village also offers a full-service veterinary clinic. We will open the clinic this summer, offering Veterinary Clinic services to vulnerable populations in the Greater Phoenix area, enabling families to have a pet health care home for their fuzzy family members.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Veterinary Clinic
Heidi’s Village state of the art veterinary clinic provides low cost wellness and preventative services to local shelters and rescues as well as to the public.
Dog & Cat Boarding
Rescue groups often don’t have a readily available foster home in which to place an animal who has shown up and in need of a forever home. By providing low cost, subsidized boarding, Heidi’s Village is able to provide shelter, food, water and life enrichment by caring staff and volunteers to these animals.
Neonate Kitten Nursery
One of the cornerstones of Heidi’s Village is to care for the most vulnerable animals. The warm climate of Phoenix means there is a never-ending supply of kittens that makes our neonatal kitten nursery so important. Orphaned or abandoned neonatal kittens require 24-hour care in order to survive. This care includes frequent bottle feeding along with keeping them warm in specially designed incubators.
Cat Adoption Center
Heidi’s Village cat adoption center provides adoption opportunities for homeless cats and kittens. All animals ready for adoption will be spayed/neutered, vaccinated and microchipped.
Grooming Center
The animals that come to Heidi’s Village through our boarding program are homeless. Many have lived on the streets or in less than ideal circumstances for weeks/months/years. An important part of their recovery includes grooming. When properly grooming an animal, the groomer can uncover injuries or illnesses that would be critical to address.
Behavioral Training Center
A key element to rehabilitating a homeless animal is ensuring that they are behaviorally sound so that they can bond with their prospective owner, have less anxiety and aggression and enjoy more quality time with their owners. The Heidi’s Village Behavioral Training center provides manners classes and behavioral modification for both rescue organizations and dog owners.
Where we work
External reviews

Photos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of animals with freedom from hunger and thirst
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Dog & Cat Boarding
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
To offer premium veterinary care to low income families, vulnerable populations and those who would otherwise not have access to veterinary care due to cost.
To provide discounted state-of-the-art animal rescue shelter services to existing animal rescues, decreasing euthanasia and enabling more displaced pets to become adoptable and then to be successfully adopted.
To serve populations that may be forgotten in the animal welfare world, survivors of domestic violence, veterans and people experiencing homeless due to medical expenses, mental illness and economic challenges.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Heidi's Village continues to read and understand the value and proof of "bonded families".
**According to a 2018 study conducted by the Access to Veterinary Care Coalition, 88% of households surveyed consider their pet a member of the family. Those who share their lives with an animal may experience reduced loneliness, improved mental and emotional well-being, more frequent physical activity, increased socialization, decreased blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and an overall boost in joy and happiness**.
This leads Heidi's to offer discounted veterinary care in the clinic to vulnerable families, people on the edge of homelessness and experiencing other challenges in order for them to continue to live a life positively enhanced by the animal family members. An effort that will enable the positive health impacts of sharing life with a furry friend.
We reduce inequalities by offering high quality services to those who wouldn't normally afford such veterinary care. Enabling them to experience equality in identifying, accessing and paying for high quality veterinary care.
By providing reduced cost shelter services to other rescues, when they experience overflow, we are enabling those shelters to focus on the animals currently in their care, rather than worrying constantly about overflow and euthanizing animals that otherwise could be saved.
Additionally, many rescue organizations are foster based, which means they do not have a physical shelter to care for their animals. While it is a great system to rescue animals without the economic burden of a building, it inherently has limitations on the amount of animals an organization can care for. When fosters are full, or there is a medical or behavioral case and an appropriate foster is unavailable, the rescue cannot accept that animal no matter how critical the situation is.
By partnering with Heidi’s Village, these foster based rescues are empowered to say yes to difficult behavioral or medical cases and/or when their fosters are full. They routinely house these cases at Heidi's Village for boarding and medical care, which are offered at an exceptionally low rate, until they are adopted, or until a foster becomes available. One rescue partner reported by utilizing Heidi's Village clinic services instead of a private clinic, they saved $25,000 in just the first 6 weeks of 2022. These savings go directly to our rescue partners saving even more, which lowers euthanasia rates even further.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Heidi’s Village exists to foster a community where animals are treated with respect, dignity, and compassion. Over 130,000 animals are lost, abandoned, or unwanted and surrendered to shelters in Arizona each year.
Opened in April 2020, Heidi’s Village works with existing animal rescues to provide the most convenient and safest way to handle medical and behavioral needs of an animal in one location. The most critical services an animal will need from a behavior and medical standpoint can be done in the same location: rescue, rehabilitation, and rehoming. We care for these animals providing boarding, medical intervention, grooming, behavioral intervention, and wellness services all in one location. This relieves expense and time for the rescue as well as reduces anxiety for these vulnerable animals.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
We have provided significantly discounted veterinary services to over 80 rescue partners since our opening in March of 2020. We have provided discounted surgical services to thousands animals, saving the rescue organization and/or individual thousands of dollars in needed procedures.
To date, over 1,500 dogs and cats have been rehomed and over 2,000 animals have received spay/neuter surgeries.
We have secured funding to enable this work to continue this quality, discounted, veterinary care to rescue partners and low-income families in Maricopa County, Arizona, or the Greater Phoenix Area. in 2021, we founded new partnerships with Temporary Care providers to increase the number of families they can help stay together through crisis.
Heidi's Village is also an enrolled provider with AlignCare, that will enable vulnerable individuals and families to bring their pets to us, for major veterinary surgeries, and AlignCare will cover 80% of the surgical bill.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
-
Who are the people you serve with your mission?
The people we serve through our mission are nearly 80 pet rescue and shelter partners. They are quite often foster-based organizations who can serve and re-home more pets when they can expand through a partnership with Heidi's Village.
-
How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
-
What significant change resulted from feedback?
Heidi's Village exists in Phoenix Arizona. As the Summer's get extremely hot, we have adjusted the hours rescue partners and staff can take the animals outside. We moved the hours to reflect the safety needs of the animals and the staff, volunteers, and rescue partners who walk them, visit the splash pad, and play with them in the yards in the mornings and the evenings.
-
Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
-
What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
Unlock nonprofit financial insights that will help you make more informed decisions. Try our monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights?
Learn more
about GuideStar Pro.
Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Heidi's Village
Board of directorsas of 03/03/2022
Virginia Jontes
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
-
Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Not applicable -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Not applicable -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Not applicable -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Not applicable -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Not applicable
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 03/02/2022GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.