The Founder's Story
Every nonprofit starts with someone who couldn't look away from a problem. For Animals for Elders, that someone is our founder, Carrie Van Wert, and the problem had been sitting in plain sight for years before she decided to do something about it.
The gap she kept noticing
Carrie has spent most of her life in the animal and pet space, including years as an active volunteer at local shelters. Spend enough time around shelters and you start noticing patterns, and one of them stuck with her: older pets, passed over again and again, and older adults who needed exactly what those pets had to offer.
The moment that turned a pattern into a mission was closer to home. Carrie watched a neighbor, a single older adult, struggle with the loneliness and depression that can settle in when someone is aging on their own. It was a hard thing to witness. It was also the moment Carrie started to picture what a nonprofit built around that specific gap, animals who need someone and elders who need companionship, could actually look like.
From Kitty Sift to a 501(c)(3)
An idea is one thing. Building the organization to carry it out is another. That became possible after Carrie sold her first successful pet business, Kitty Sift. That milestone gave her the means and the room to do the unglamorous work of standing up a nonprofit: filing the paperwork, securing 501(c)(3) status, and turning a conviction she'd carried for years into something official.
Animals for Elders was real on paper. What it needed next was momentum.
The retreat that changed everything
The retreat goers all taking a group photo before exploring Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica
That momentum showed up somewhere Carrie wasn't looking for it: a nature retreat in Costa Rica, where she met Zara. What started as two people swapping life stories turned into Carrie realizing she'd just met someone with exactly the background AFE needed: nonprofit development, marketing, and fundraising expertise that she didn't have and knew the organization couldn't grow without.
That conversation is the real reason Animals for Elders went from an idea on paper to an organization actually doing the work. 2026 is the year AFE truly came to life: shelter partnerships, a grant program, and a mission finally built to match the gap Carrie had seen for years.
The gap we're still filling
The short version of why AFE exists: older adults need companionship and routine, shelter pets, especially older ones, need homes, and the cost of a pet on a fixed income is often the only thing standing between the two. Our grant program, covering up to $1,500 a year in approved pet expenses, exists to make sure cost is never the reason that match doesn't happen.
Carrie saw the gap first. We're just the lucky people who got to help her close it.
Know someone who could use help adopting a pet and is aged 70+? Let’s get in touch and see how we can help!
