In 2008, Vanessa Getty looked at her relationships with some of the biggest names in fashion and asked a practical question: what if these connections could directly fund free veterinary care for animals in under-resourced communities?

The answer was the PURR Sale — a luxury resale event unlike anything San Francisco had seen. Designer pieces from Chanel, Christian Dior, Oscar de la Renta, Michael Kors, Donna Karan, and Jimmy Choo, priced at 30 to 70 percent below retail. One hundred percent of proceeds directed to the Peninsula Humane Society’s mobile spay-neuter program. The first event raised roughly $150,000 in about an hour.

What made the PURR Sale structurally interesting wasn’t just the fundraising numbers — it was the model. Getty converted personal relationships into institutional infrastructure. She didn’t organize a gala or a benefit dinner. She built a marketplace. Donors gave items with real value; buyers got extraordinary pieces at prices they couldn’t find elsewhere; and the proceeds funded something specific and measurable: free surgeries for animals whose owners couldn’t otherwise afford them.

The second PURR event, held in 2015, raised $350,000 in an afternoon. Over the life of the program, the mobile spay-neuter initiative funded by these events performed more than 9,500 free veterinary surgeries across Bay Area communities.

San Francisco Business Times has highlighted Getty’s work as an example of the kind of civic and philanthropic engagement that defines the Bay Area’s most committed contributors. The PURR Sale is a good illustration of why: it wasn’t charity for its own sake. It was a system designed to generate maximum impact with the resources at hand.

The full scope of the project — its origins, its mechanics, and what it made possible — is documented at vanessa-getty.me, where her broader philanthropic work is outlined alongside her ongoing initiatives.

The luxury resale market has grown considerably since 2008. What Getty built anticipated that model before it had a name — and used it not for personal gain, but to pay for surgeries that would otherwise never have happened.