Why Charity Didn’t Work for Our No-Kill Shelter？
I’m writing this piece to clear up a bit of confusion about PawliBar.
People sometimes mistaken us for a charity. We’re not. We’re a small brand with a mission.
If we were just another charity, honestly, our partner shelter wouldn’t need us. They already run their own social media in China and accept donations directly. But here’s the thing: it’s never sustainable.
Donations go up and down like waves. When a video goes viral, support floods in. But when attention fades, and it always fades, the money dries up overnight. There are also other factors, like the economy, if you follow the news, you might know that things in China are pretty slow right now.
Over the years, Sister Ling, who founded our partner shelter, has sold her car, her house, basically everything she owned just to keep rescuing dogs and keep them alive and well. There were times when the dogs literally went hungry for days, and our shelter volunteers took out personal loans to keep the shelter going.
So before PawliBar started, Henry and I were trying to help the shelter in every way we could think of: we contacted local TV stations, we talked to the head of the chamber of commerce we are in, reaching out to loca businesses, even talking to influencers to spread the word.
But it was always the same story: one short burst of visibility, then silence.
And some of those “influencers” made things worse. They’d ask the shelter to stage dramatic rescues — like throwing a puppy into a dirty trash can to make the video look more shocking. Of course we refused.
That’s when I realized: we didn’t need more pity. We needed something that could last.
That’s why PawliBar isn’t a charity. Because charit, at least the way it’s often done, is built on sadness, on asking people to care only when it’s tragic enough.
What we’re building is different. We want rescue to feel warm, creative, and joyful.
We want people to join the mission not out of guilt, but out of love.
Because helping animals shouldn’t depend on how viral a tragedy goes.
It should depend on how many people care enough to make kindness part of their everyday life.
