Brittany Kelley
KYLE — Following the near closure of the PAWS Shelter of Central Texas Kyle location, several allegations were made toward the nonprofit by the PAWS Transparency & Recovery group.
PAWS has been operating its Kyle location since 1986 and serves as a no-kill shelter for Hays County. A second campus, located in Dripping Springs, came to fruition in 2019. After 40 years of service, the no-kill shelter announced the closure of its original facility Oct. 31, citing financial troubles. This plan was quickly overshadowed by the outpouring of community support and donations, which allowed the location to permanently keep its doors open.
The initial closure announcement prompted the creation of the PAWS Transparency & Recovery group, said representative and former PAWS board member Cody Bradstreet. Consisting of volunteers, donors, stakeholders and community members, the group’s mission is to support the facility, while answering questions from residents.
“The first thing we did was ask for [the board] to release their current financial statements and board of directors minutes and governance documents, which they politely declined to do. Then that, of course, raised further concern,” said Bradstreet. “Then, [we] agreed to meet with them and when we met with them, we got very limited financial data, no board of director minutes and no governance documents. With the limited financial data we did get, it was absolutely alarming.”
These numbers, alleged the transparency group, included a $473,610 loss in 2024 and raising a little more than 10% of its $10,000 fundraising goal in 2025.
PAWS Board of Directors President Greg Sabatini explained that the reason that the shelter got to this point is because it simply waited too long to request help.
“We waited too long to send the alarm bell up. We knew that it was starting to get in a worse situation than we would have liked and we waited until too long because we had faith in all of the programs and the activities that we were doing to the point that we waited too long to say, ‘Oh no. We’ve got to do something a little bit more aggressive now,’ meaning, let’s close down one of the shelters temporarily, while we get our financial situation organized. If we had reached out to the community six months earlier, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” said Sabatini.
The circumstances at play were a series of errors, said Sabatini. The first being that the organization was spending more than it was taking in, as mentioned by the transparency and recovery group. According to the nonprofit's 990 form reported to the Internal Revenue Service, its 2024 revenue was $1,010,040, with $1,465,804 in expenditures, amounting to a $455,764 loss.
This is primarily due to high payroll expenses, as a result of having too many staff members and approving unnecessary overtime, maintenance needs for the facilities, less effective fundraisers, mismanaged operational decisions and a lack of grant funding, said the president.
The maintenance needs are inevitable when it comes to the aging facilities, Sabatini continued, but not only is it more expensive, due to the scale of the nonprofit, but there was also a lack of creativity and prioritization when it came to the fixes. For example, instead of addressing which needs were important, previous operators would call in contractors to fix every issue, instead of finding a temporary solution or asking community members for handyman work.
“We had a period of time where we had no executive director and we continue to have no executive director … but when you have a single individual who is responsible for running all of the shelters and that person is not available for whatever reason, the responsibilities that that person has, oftentimes, will get lost and will get pushed down. So, a lot of this regular review and assessment of where we needed to go with pending money, with repairs, with programs, was lost for a while because of the executive director gap,” Sabatini explained.
Additionally, he revealed that, for seven years, a financial audit was not completed. This meant that the shelter was unable to apply for larger grants that required this information and, instead, had to search for significantly smaller opportunities, which wasn’t sustainable.
As the grants grew smaller, so did the fundraising efforts.
“We didn’t do a really good job of having a programmatic donor management program within the leadership of the shelter,” said Sabatini. “We took donations every month since the shelters have been around; that’s the way that we operate. It’s just been declining over time … The cost of running fundraisers versus the return that we would get from the fundraisers has diminished, [as well].”
Despite this, he noted that there was still significant fundraising done in 2025 and that he “can’t even acknowledge the question [regarding the alleged $1,000 amount raised because] it’s so completely baseless.”(Note: The Hays Free Press/News-Dispatch is unable to verify this, as financial statements are not yet publicly available for the year.)
These realities have completely turned around in the past few months, said Sabatini, as the nonprofit now has a dedicated full-time position filled that solely focuses on fundraising. Since the announcement and plea for donations from the shelter, there has also been an increase in walk-in donations, company matches and general community support. PAWS is creating a marketing plan, working on next year’s fundraiser and implementing a monthly matching program from a different supplier each month that will match donations given by residents, said Sabatini.
As PAWS continues to complete audits and apply for grants, he noted that they will rebuild their relationships and have the ability to apply for larger opportunities.
Bradstreet explained that, when she was on the board, the nonprofit had more than $1 million in investments in cash and, now, it has nothing. So, she and others were concerned about funding and the donations.
“Our position is that they need to be transparent about what they’re asking for and clear about what they intend to use the donors' money for when they say they want to save Kyle’s shelter. Then, in the frequently asked questions on their website, they say that the money donated to save Kyle can be used for operational expenses across both facilities. I think that is misleading,” she said.
The donations made by community members will be going toward general operating funds, which include utilities, salaries — as approximately 60% of the nonprofit’s expenses are for staffing — pet supplies, medication, surgery funding, insurance costs and more, said Sabatini.
The group also made allegations regarding the Dripping Springs location. The facility sits on a 39-acre property that was donated to the nonprofit through two separate instances. The first consisted of 10 acres in 2004, with an additional 28.4 acres in 2007.
Regarding the second facility, Bradstreet claimed that the trust explained that the donated property was only to be used to further PAWS mission and that selling the caretakers home, along with the land it sits on, is in direct conflict with donor intention. The group also alleged that the Dripping Springs Surgery Center is underused.
According to the deed for the 28.4 acres donated to PAWS that contains the land that is being prepared for potential sale, which was obtained by the Hays Free Press/News-Dispatch, there are only two stipulations listed, both of which are not in violation, if land is sold.
Board President Greg Sabatini also clarified that the caretakers who left, did so on their own. He explained that selling the land was considered when researching available funding. This was discussed with the individuals that lived on the property, where only one out of four options required them to leave. Sabatini noted that, despite the land not being sold or yet up for sale, the individuals chose to leave on their own.
“Objectively, the surgery center is underutilized, but that’s always been the case and we’ve been continually trying to find ways to use it more, whether it be community veterinary options for folks out there at a discounted cost or maybe doing [more] spay and neutering. These are all things that we’ve been thinking about how to monetize that because it’s an absolutely beautiful facility over there,” Sabatini stated.
Although PAWS’s financial standing is leaning more positive these days, Sabatini noted that this is still a process and challenges, such as the growing maintenance needs at the facilities, are something that the board and staff are working to tackle through prioritization.
The PAWS Transparency & Recovery group has since filed a complaint with the attorney general, providing documents and requesting independent oversight of the facility, if proven necessary. Additionally, it has also collected more than 550 signatures on a petition requesting for an investigation to be done.
“We’re not attacking the board of directors. We are asking the board for transparency. We’re asking them for answers to the community’s questions and we’re asking them to hold their own public town hall, so people can understand what their challenges are and what they need funding or services for,” said Bradstreet. “All of us love PAWS. We all want to see PAWS successful.”
Sabatini stated that the board does not feel like these are actions done to support the shelter. He said that when the board and the group met, the latter shared that they didn’t want to take over or be on the board, that they wanted to provide a list of ways to improve the shelter, but that instead of delivering a list, they requested them to resign. Additionally, he shared that PAWS has recently received a Platinum rating, the highest recognition, for its transparency from Candid, a database service used by nonprofits and donors to validate status.
“That’s the last thing I’m going to do, is walk away, because there’s work that has to be done … Trying to slow us down, trying to put potential legal challenges in front of us or make us get distracted from the goal of saving as many animals as possible is not contributing to the success of the PAWS organization,” Sabatini stressed.
“I have never been more positive about the state of PAWS than I am right now,” he concluded, adding that they are willing to work with anyone who wants to see PAWS succeed, including those who wish to be a board member.
For more information on PAWS, visit www.PAWSshelter.org.
