Project No More is funding its first public advertising campaign. Over the past two months, our team and volunteers have been planning a billboard in a major American city designed to bring the organized torture of cats in China into public view. As of this writing, our GoFundMe has collected $4,878 from 77 individual donations against a target of $5,000.
We chose a billboard because social media has a ceiling. The people who follow our accounts already know about this crisis, and most of them are already furious about it. A billboard catches the attention of everyone who does not: the commuter on a highway overpass, the family on a summer road trip who will spend the next hundred miles talking about what they just read. We want to reach those people where they already are, without asking permission first.
The slogan is still in development. Our volunteers have been workshopping language for weeks, testing what reads clearly at highway speed and what communicates the severity of this issue without drifting into sensationalism. The direction we have settled on pairs specific language about what these animals endure with imagery that confronts the viewer without crossing into graphic territory.
On imagery, we made an early and firm decision: only authentic, verified photographs. The animal welfare community has a growing problem with AI-generated depictions of abuse victims being shared as real, and we will not add to it. If an image goes on our billboard, it will be sourced and it will be documented. Fireball, our mascot and one of the most widely recognized victims of organized cat torture, is the leading candidate. Her image communicates what happened to her without requiring graphic content, and the people who recognize her will know exactly what the billboard is about.
We explored several locations. Washington, D.C. was the earliest suggestion, and the appeal is obvious. Atlanta has since moved to the front of the list for practical reasons: high vehicle traffic, competitive advertising rates, and the availability of volunteers who can physically stand at the site and hand information to anyone who stops. The final placement depends on negotiations with billboard companies, but the team is optimistic about Atlanta this summer.
The response to this fundraiser has exceeded every expectation we had going in. Project No More has operated since its founding on volunteer labor and personal funds. Investigators, developers, designers, writers: all of them working unpaid, in their own time, because they encountered this issue and could not set it down. Seventy-seven donations from people largely outside our immediate circle tells us that the audience for this cause is far larger than a Discord server and a handful of social media accounts. People want to help, and we are trying to give them a way to do it.
The billboard is one component of a broader push. Our team runs a monthly postcard campaign directed at embassies and government officials under the hashtag #postcardsforcats. Volunteers across four continents print stickers bearing our website QR code and place them in public spaces in their own cities. Outreach to animal welfare organizations and public figures has started producing real responses. The infrastructure for sustained, coordinated pressure on this issue is coming together, and the billboard is the most visible piece of it.
Updates will follow as the campaign progresses. If you are in a position to donate or share, the GoFundMe is linked below.
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