When choosing a route for our pet flights, Greater Good Charities’ transport team considers many things. We make decisions based on community need, available shelter capacity, adopter demand, and trusted local partnerships to create a balance between areas struggling with homeless pet overpopulation and those with more opportunities for adoptable pets.
Transport alone can’t solve the problem of shelter crowding, but it’s a key piece of the puzzle. With flights all over the country, our transport team works in tandem with our veterinary team whenever possible to address the underlying challenge: pet overpopulation.
At free spay/neuter clinics in underserved communities, veterinary teams provide sterilization, vaccinations, microchipping, and education—bringing care closer to people who may otherwise face financial or geographic barriers to veterinary services. This reduces unwanted litters and keeps pets with their families and out of shelters.
In Iowa, we’ve performed spay/neuter clinics in conjunction with our transports, sterilizing hundreds of dogs and cats in mere days before or after flying pets previously in local shelters to new homes. In Hawaii, a natural disaster sparked an immediate need for pet transport. Once the dust settled, Greater Good Charities remained to identify barriers and create sustainable plans for recovery with local partners.
One thing is clear: without pet transport, we lose a meaningful element of the greater solution. These flights are a key touchpoint with organizations that support their communities with resource allocation, disaster response, and more. Reducing overpopulation allows shelter staff to devote time, energy, resources to this other outreach.
When the Los Angeles wildfires burned in early 2025, relocating shelter pets created space for animals displaced by the fires and increased opportunities for families to reunite with their pets.
Animal shelters play a much bigger role in community well-being than just the care of animals. When disaster strikes, they become frontline responders to crises that are fundamentally human, and we serve people by serving their animals.
Transporting animals out of overwhelmed shelters makes physical space for the pets of families fleeing disaster, keeping households intact when everything else is in upheaval. Delivering emergency pet food and supplies removes one more impossible choice from a family already stretched thin. And when people can keep their animals fed, sheltered, and safe, they also keep the dignity of caring for an animal who relies on them.
Shelters meeting this need give people the peace of mind to focus on rebuilding, the stability to stay together, and the dignity of remaining caregivers rather than becoming another statistic of loss. Supporting our shelters isn't a parallel track to humanitarian response—it is humanitarian response.
With many years of expertise, we at Greater Good Charities listen to our partners and adapt when change is needed. That applies to transport as well.
Oklahoma is more than just a place we operate—it's one we call home. Our Tulsa Distribution Center serves as a supply hub, staged and ready to move resources quickly. We have staff on the ground and a strong force of consistent volunteers ready to give their time sorting supplies and supporting distributions.
This presence shapes how we meet the state's needs. We're actively addressing limited veterinary access and shelter overpopulation in Oklahoma with spay/neuter clinics in the Tulsa and Ponca City areas.
Plus, this summer our transport team is expanding that commitment, operating a new flight route out of the state to the Pacific Northwest. This is "blue sky" transport: building routine, non-disaster capacity that pays off exactly when needed.
By establishing this rhythm with our Oklahoma partners for pet transport, we become familiar with one another's processes, so we can respond faster and more effectively when disaster hits—moving pets out of danger and opening space for displaced animals in a community that has invested so much in us.
Together with your support, we’re weaving a web of impact that both addresses immediate needs and their root causes in our communities.
While our transport team opens shelter space and flies pets to new homes, our veterinary team works to reduce the number of animals in need of shelter stays and adoptive homes in the first place.
Your trust in our mission amplifies the good for people and animals every day—in Oklahoma, across the country, and around the world.