What Is a No-Kill Shelter? Where NC Stands and What It Would Take to Get There

In August 2019, Delaware became the first US state where shelters collectively saved at least 90% of the dogs and cats they took in. By 2024, three more states had joined the list: New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont (Best Friends Animal Society 2024 report). North Carolina is not on that list. Best Friends’ 2025 state rankings, released April 2026, place NC roughly 36,900 lives short of statewide no-kill, the third-largest absolute lifesaving gap of any state.

NC’s statewide cat and dog euthanasia rate climbed from 22% in 2021 to 26.1% in 2024 (NC Department of Agriculture annual shelter reports). In 2025, NC’s reporting public shelters euthanized 39,202 dogs and cats, 26.0% of intake (NC DACS 2025 Public Animal Shelter Report); we break down those numbers in how many animals are euthanized in NC each year. In November 2025 Wake’s shelter director told WRAL it held twice as many dogs as it should.

This is the capstone for the spring blog series. We have walked through the crisis, what other states have done, how to contact your NC rep, the breeder regulation gap, and the case for state-funded TNR. Here is what “no-kill” actually means, where NC stands, and the specific changes that close the gap.

TL;DR: A no-kill shelter saves at least 90% of the animals it takes in, with euthanasia reserved for medical or behavioral cases that cannot be rehabilitated (Best Friends Animal Society methodology; Maddie’s Fund 2000 definition). In 2025, 68% of US shelters were no-kill, and six states are now statewide no-kill: Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the Best Friends 2025 report, plus Idaho and Montana, which reached it in early 2026. NC is not one of them. NC’s statewide euthanasia rate climbed from 22% in 2021 to 26.1% in 2024 (NC DACS annual shelter reports), and in 2025 reporting public shelters euthanized 39,202 dogs and cats, 26.0% of intake (NC DACS). The fix is not impossible. NC has counties already at the benchmark, and in 2025 the state spay/neuter program paid $250,954 against $659,626 in eligible county requests, a gap of about $409,000 the legislature could close in a single budget cycle.

What Is a No-Kill Shelter?

A no-kill shelter saves at least 90% of the animals it takes in. Euthanasia is reserved for medical or behavioral cases that cannot be rehabilitated. The 90% benchmark is not arbitrary. Best Friends Animal Society’s methodology page states it directly: “the number of pets who are suffering from irreparable medical or behavioral issues that compromise their quality of life and prevent them from being rehomed is not more than 10% of all dogs and cats entering shelters.” The threshold reflects the practical ceiling for what a shelter can save when it has the resources to try.

The working definition predates Best Friends by two decades. Maddie’s Fund formalized the term in 2000: “saving both healthy and treatable dogs and cats, with euthanasia reserved only for unhealthy and untreatable animals.” Best Friends operationalized that definition into the 90% save rate that animal welfare orgs and shelter networks now use as the standard benchmark. The save rate is calculated as live outcomes (adoptions, returns to owner, transfers to other shelters or rescues) divided by total outcomes.

What no-kill is not: a shelter that turns animals away. Most NC county shelters are open-admission, meaning they accept every animal that comes through the door. Open-admission shelters reaching the no-kill threshold is harder than limited-admission shelters reaching it, which is part of why the no-kill states are notable. They got there with mostly open-admission shelter networks. No-kill also does not mean zero euthanasia. It means euthanasia is reserved for the cases the threshold accounts for.

Where the No-Kill Movement Came From

The modern no-kill movement starts with Richard Avanzino at the San Francisco SPCA. Avanzino joined SF SPCA in 1976, when the city was killing roughly 29,000 animals per year. By 1989, the organization had ended its animal-control contract with the city and converted to a no-kill operation. In 1994, the SF SPCA and San Francisco Animal Care & Control signed the Adoption Pact, formally establishing San Francisco as the first no-kill city in the United States.

The framework spread through the 1990s and 2000s. Maddie’s Fund published the working definition in 2000. In 2016, Best Friends launched its No-Kill 2025 initiative, targeting national no-kill by the end of 2025.

The 2025 deadline did not arrive on schedule, but the trajectory is real. Delaware became the first no-kill state in August 2019. By 2024, three more had joined (NH, RI, VT). The national save rate reached 82.5% in 2025, and 68% of US shelters are now no-kill (Best Friends 2025 report). The movement that started with one city in 1994 now applies to most US shelters.

How NC Compares to the Rest of the Country

North Carolina is one of five states that together account for the largest absolute lifesaving gaps. Best Friends’ 2025 state rankings, released in April 2026, place NC third from the bottom by lifesaving gap, with about 36,900 more pets needing to be saved annually to reach statewide no-kill. The states with larger gaps are Texas (78,800) and California (54,400). Alabama (21,300) and Florida (20,000) round out the bottom five, both with smaller gaps than NC. A small number of high-volume states are pulling the national average down.

The national context is hopeful. Best Friends’ 2024 report shows just over 1,400 US shelters still below the no-kill threshold, and 49% of those are close, with 100 or fewer additional pets to be saved per year to cross the line. The remaining gap is concentrated in a handful of high-volume states. NC is one of them.

One bright spot inside the national numbers: cats. Best Friends’ 2024 report tracked 188,000 cats killed in US shelters in 2024, a 10.5% drop from 2023 and the lowest figure on record. Dogs went the other way: 237,000 dogs killed, a 6.2% increase year-over-year. The cat progress tracks community-cat sterilization. The dog regression tracked the post-pandemic adoption slowdown and shelter overcrowding. In 2025 both moved the right way: cat deaths fell to 187,000, the lowest ever recorded, and dog deaths fell 8.5% (Best Friends 2025 report).

Where NC Is Winning, Where NC Is Losing

NC’s progress is unevenly distributed. Several counties are at or near the no-kill benchmark; others are an order of magnitude worse. The 2024 county data tells two different stories about the same state. WRAL Investigates’ November 2025 analysis put a number on each NC county for the first time, and the spread is the single most important advocacy fact in this post: NC has counties that have already cracked it.

The strongest NC county performers in 2024: Anson County euthanized under 2% of its intake, Stanly 3%, Macon 3% (WRAL Investigates; NC DACS 2024 report). Separately, Rowan County Animal Services was recognized by Best Friends Animal Society as meeting the no-kill benchmark in 2024. Brother Wolf, in Asheville, was founded in 2007 specifically to build a no-kill community in Buncombe County. The model works in NC. It just is not statewide.

The weakest NC county performers in 2024: WRAL’s analysis put Nash County at 105% (the county disputes the figure, citing data-reporting issues), Columbus 80%, Washington 74%. In the middle, Wake County reported 16% euthanasia, but Dr. Jennifer Federico, the county’s animal services director, told WRAL the shelter has “twice as many dogs on our adoption floor as we should have” and has been at or above capacity for two years. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control, one of the state’s largest shelter systems, partners with Best Friends Animal Society on lifesaving programs.

Patricia Norris, the state’s animal welfare director, told WRAL the issue is not buildings. “It’s a reflection of the community. It’s a reflection of the economic realities of that community. You cannot build yourself out of this problem. You cannot warehouse yourself out of this problem.” The counties under 3% are not magically resourced. They are structurally configured to keep intake low and handle what they get without resorting to euthanasia.

Why NC’s Progress Has Stalled

Three forces. First, intake outpacing capacity. Wake County’s adoption floor is at twice its target population for dogs and has been for two years. Second, slow recovery from the pandemic adoption slump that hit US shelters in 2020 to 2022 and never fully reversed. Third, a state spay/neuter program that in 2025 paid only about 37 cents of every dollar counties requested.

The funding gap is the most fixable of the three. The NC Spay/Neuter Program at NCDA&CS, funded by the “Animal Lovers” specialty license plate ($20 per plate sold) plus a state appropriation, received $659,626 in eligible reimbursement requests for 2025 and paid $250,954 (NCDA&CS 2025 reimbursement report). The gap of about $409,000 was reimbursement that NC counties had already requested for low-cost or free spay/neuter procedures, and it went unpaid for lack of state dollars. The year before, eligible county requests came to $636,000 and the state paid $322,000 (WRAL Investigates, November 2025). Counties wanted to do more spay/neuter. The state funded less than half of what they asked for.

The structural fix is the same on both sides of the cat-versus-dog split: more upstream sterilization, more foster capacity, and more stable funding for the shelters that handle the result.

What Would Get NC to No-Kill

Five changes. None are speculative. Each one is already in place somewhere in NC or in one of the six no-kill states. The path is not theoretical.

1. Fund the spay/neuter program at the level counties are actually requesting. Closing the 2025 gap of about $409,000 between eligible county requests and what the state paid would have covered thousands of additional procedures statewide (NCDA&CS 2025 reimbursement report). For the broader case, see our deep dive on low-cost spay and neuter options in NC.

2. Expand eligibility to community-cat TNR. The current program funds owned pets of low-income individuals only. Expanding eligibility is a one-section statutory amendment, covered in detail in our post on the case for state-funded community-cat TNR.

3. Publish a statewide shelter outcome dashboard. NC already requires every public shelter to report its intake, adoptions, returns to owner and euthanasia by March 1 each year (G.S. 19A-65), and NCDA&CS posts the raw tables. What’s missing is a public dashboard with live-release rates and transfer outcomes that makes the data usable, plus complete, on-time filing. Our county-by-county NC animal shelter report is a start. We flagged the reporting ask in NC’s breeder regulation gap and how to contact your NC rep.

4. Replicate what Anson, Stanly, Macon, and Rowan counties already do. The state should fund a peer-county technical assistance program where high-performing shelters help neighbors replicate the model. This costs almost nothing and directly addresses the community-by-community gap Patricia Norris named.

5. Strengthen breeder oversight. Commercial breeder regulation drives shelter intake at the back end. Closing the gap reduces intake; reducing intake makes the 90% threshold reachable. Our analysis of NC’s breeder regulation gap covers the specific ask, paired with the front-end funding model in states that got it right on spay/neuter.

How You Can Help NC Get There

Three things you can do this week. We have built each of them into the site.

Email your NC state representative. Use our rep lookup tool to find your House and Senate members and auto-fill a letter template. Ask for full funding of the NC Spay/Neuter Program, eligibility expansion to community-cat TNR, and a public statewide shelter dashboard. Walkthrough: how to contact your NC rep.

Sign the petition. Signatures document the grassroots demand we bring to legislators. Sign the petition in under a minute.

Foster, adopt, or volunteer. Every foster home and every adoption frees a kennel, and the 100-County Pet List shows the pets waiting at NC shelters and rescues today. Start with fostering in NC, read adopting versus buying a dog in NC if you’re adding a dog, vet any group first with our guide to finding a legitimate rescue, or volunteer at your local shelter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

• A no-kill shelter saves at least 90% of the animals it takes in (Best Friends Animal Society, Maddie’s Fund). Euthanasia is reserved for medical or behavioral cases that cannot be rehabilitated.
• Six states are statewide no-kill: Delaware, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The national save rate reached 82.5% in 2025, and 68% of US shelters are now no-kill. North Carolina is not on the list and ranks third from the bottom by absolute lifesaving gap (about 36,900 lives short, per Best Friends’ 2025 state rankings).
• NC’s statewide euthanasia rate climbed from 22% in 2021 to 26.1% in 2024 (NC DACS annual shelter reports). In 2025, reporting public shelters euthanized 39,202 dogs and cats, 26.0% of intake (NC DACS).
• Four NC counties are at or near the benchmark: Anson under 2%, Stanly 3%, Macon 3%, and Rowan recognized by Best Friends. The fix is not impossible; it is unevenly distributed.
• NC’s spay/neuter program paid $250,954 against $659,626 in eligible 2025 county requests. That gap of about $409,000 is the most fixable of the structural causes.
• Five-point path forward: fully fund the spay/neuter program, expand eligibility to community-cat TNR, publish a statewide shelter dashboard, replicate the high-performing counties through peer technical assistance, and close the breeder regulation gap.

The fix is concrete and the model already works in parts of NC. Sign the petition for state-funded reform, email your NC rep with the policy asks above, and open your home as a foster to free a kennel today.