In addition to her field leadership role at VCA Animal Hospitals, Diana Duncan, CVPM, sits on the board of VCA Charities, the charitable arm of VCA. As a 501c3 public charity, VCA Charities is committed to helping pets find and remain in loving homes. Below, Diana provides more details about VCA Charities, how local VCA hospitals can support its mission and explains the intent of its “A Home for the Holidays” campaign.

I’ve been with VCA for 31 years.

My degree is in psychology, but I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with that after graduation. While I was in college, my aunt was managing a veterinary hospital in Sacramento and I started working there. Once I had the opportunity to see what we could do, I couldn’t find anything I had as much passion for.

I started as a receptionist in a hospital, then became hospital manager and later area manager and regional manager. Today, I'm the Group Vice President for VCA's South Atlantic Group which consists of 71 hospitals across seven states.

I also serve as the Treasurer of the VCA Charities Board of Directors.

VCA Charities was founded in 2005 right after Hurricane Katrina. That hurricane was one of the first disasters that had a national impact on VCA because animals were being relocated across the country. We took them in at VCA hospitals and helped them find homes.

This was something VCA’s founders always wanted to do – to take the impact of things our hospitals had always done locally and figure out a way to scale it to something a bit bigger. VCA had previously done some fundraising for disaster relief but didn’t have a separate and formal charitable arm before Katrina.

In 2020, the mission of VCA Charities was reimagined and its mission and grant program were more clearly defined – to support the joy of pet ownership by helping pets find and remain in loving homes – and we have the great support of a dedicated team that also leads the work of Banfield Foundation and BluePearl Cares.

My role on the VCA Charities board is as Treasurer, but I see my role as being a leading voice of VCA Charities in VCA’s hospitals.

VCA Charities continues to look for opportunities to grow and maximize its impact. Clients are incredibly generous and we can scale our impact with the involvement of more VCA hospitals. Together, we can continue to make an impact nationally with local relationships and connections.

There are a lot of ways hospitals can help make that happen.

One way is just through spreading the word – we need VCA Associates’ help to share stories. Encouraging clients to donate and participating in Associate payroll deductions are also some of the most important ways VCA Associates can help support VCA Charities mission and programs.

VCA Charities recently launched a program called Dog Day Out – an incredible program that gets animals out of shelters and into the community to improve their chances of getting adopted. Unfortunately, the longer they remain in the shelter, the less likely they are to get adopted…getting a dog out of the shelter on a single field trip improves his or her adoption chances up to 10 times!

This is another opportunity where we encourage VCA Associates to get involved. For example, they can combine a team meeting with a Dog Day Out event at one of more than 30 shelters across the country.

VCA Charities is also in the midst of its annual has A Home for the Holidays campaign.

In its third year now, this campaign provides an opportunity to raise funds during the holiday season –dollars raised directly support VCA Charities’ adoption readiness programs, which help get more pets into loving homes for the holidays (and forevermore).

I hope this holiday season people look at their pets and realize how important they are to their families and it encourages them to contribute to VCA Charities with their time or resources so that more families can experience the joy of pets.

Interested in contributing to VCA Charities? You can make your gift here.