Stray Pride. Everyone Deserves to Be Loved.

That’s the theme for a month-long St. Pete Pride fundraiser to help save St. Petersburg’s homeless animals. Shelter Swag has joined forces with two other LGBTQ+ and women-owned local businesses: Wide Sky and Such a Punk Pets, to raise awareness and support for Friends of Strays, St. Petersburg’s oldest no-kill shelter.

Stray Pride will help Friends of Strays and its lifesaving new program, “Pinellas Cats Alive!”, in which free-roaming cats are spayed or neutered and vaccinated before being returned to their communities. While St. Pete is one of the most pet-friendly cities in the U.S., Pinellas County ranks as the third-worst county in Florida for positive outcomes for shelter animals. St Pete’s stray cats typically have high rates of euthanasia – but Friends of Strays is trying to change that outcome.

“I know our community wants to and can do better. Our citizens already know that everyone – and every pet – deserves to be loved. The next step is to get the word out about what can be done to help the lives of especially the homeless animals in our city. And this ‘Stray Pride’ campaign is a great start,” said Dara Eckart, CEO of Friends of Strays.

Shelter Swag is a social enterprise designed to help promote animal-related nonprofits, especially smaller organizations that don’t have the same resources as their larger counterparts.

“We’re proud to support Friends of Strays. They’re this little shelter doing amazing work for homeless pets in our community and they want to do more”, said Linda Bak, co-founder of Shelter Swag. “Helping put a little ‘wag’ in their swag will help give the organization the resources to actually do more!”

Shelter Swag works to save animals one good design at a time and helps promote lifesaving programs being implemented at local shelters across the country, like spay/neuter and trap/neuter/vaccinate/return (TNVR) programs.

“We’re doing something fun to help get people engaged with and support our local shelters like Friends of Strays to make St. Pete and all of Pinellas County the best it can be for the animals – where all are loved,” Bak said.

$10 from every t-shirt or mohawk and $5 from every bandana go to support Friends of Strays. Get all three and $25 goes to the animals! Visit Shelterswag.com/StrayPrideStP