This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Dressed in white jeans and a purple cape, Michael Mountain spent years promoting his own brand of spirituality.
Now he leads one of Utah's largest nonprofit organizations: Best Friends Animal Society, which is spearheading an international effort to give every pet a home. He finally found his spiritual fulfillment in the redrock of Kanab.
Mountain was among a group of British intellectuals who shunned the establishment in the 1960s and bonded over a desire to seek the divine. Their search led them throughout Mexico and the United States.
Along the way, they created The Process church, controversial in its time, but also misunderstood, according to its members.
Mountain was one of the founders of The Process. He says the faith centered on kindness and the Golden Rule, but others said the group worshipped the devil and had connections to notorious killer Charles Manson.
The group later successfully sued a book publisher to clear its name.
But as the members grew older, they gave up their religious ministries for charitable works. Some moved to Arizona and began collecting the unwanted animals from the pound before they were killed.
The animals soon overwhelmed their property. In 1986, they created a pet sanctuary in what they named Angel Canyon in Kanab. The nation's biggest no-kill animal rescue group started small but has steadily grown.
They now own more than 3,000 acres in Kane County and their compound holds more than 1,600 animals. They also produce a magazine and run spay and neuter programs in Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Donations large and small - from animal lovers who are celebrities as well as those with modest means - feed new programs, which in turn attract more donors.
In 1995, the group raised $2.6 million, and almost every year that amount increased by a couple of million.
But 2005 was unlike anything they had ever seen before. Amid the human tragedy of Hurricane Katrina was an animal tragedy, too. Dogs treading water in rivers that were once streets. Cats starved in abandoned moldy homes. Best Friends sent in a team to rescue as many pets as possible.
As they braved the waters, the donations came flooding in. The result was the biggest one-year gain in the nonprofit's 22-year history.
"We put out an appeal to our supporters," said John Fripp, the animal society's treasurer.
And those supporters responded.
In 2005, Best Friends raised $32 million in donations, $11 million more than the year before. The society raised more than twice what other nonprofits such as Hogle Zoo, the Utah Symphony or United Way of Utah collect in a year.
Those supporters, 91 percent of whom are women, are once again sending cash in response to the group's current trip to Beirut to rescue 300 dogs and cats. Best Friends has raised $182,000 in the past few weeks.
Such disasters as Katrina and the Hezbollah-Israeli war feed into people's "latent desire to help," said Dave Jones, a fundraising consultant for nonprofits based in Salt Lake City. "When you see animals at risk, your heart goes out to them."
These cataclysms gave Best Friends a stage to present its mission and push its agenda and in the process sent a "remarkable" amount of money to the animal society, he said.
Such fundraising is expected, Jones said, just make sure the money goes where the organization said it would go.
Mountain insists: "It didn't go to anywhere else."
Best Friends had $3.5 million in leftover Katrina money at the end of 2005, according to Fripp. Best Friends spent the rest of the money caring for the animals they relocated to their Kanab compound.
The society still had a surplus, as it has for more than a decade. The money goes into a reserve account, which now tops $10 million, and Fripp hopes to create an endowment, although he says the organization probably needs more animal shelters on its Kanab property first.
Most of Best Friends' money comes from people who receive a fundraising letter or a quarterly newsletter. The average donation is $35. Nearly 300,000 people subscribe to Best Friends magazine for $25 a year.
Movie stars such as Charlize Theron, Jessica Alba and Hilary Swank show up at the annual "Lint Roller Party" in Los Angeles. This year's event took place on Thursday, with 700 people paying at least $125 to attend.
Francis Battista, who helped create Best Friends, now manages the Los Angeles programs and estimates the Lint Roller raised $230,000 this year.
Mountain says this money will help further Best Friends' mission, and he now is planning on reconnecting the organization to its spiritual beginnings. Best Friends is now reaching out to different congregations, hoping they will emphasize that helping animals is "Christian-like."
He calls it "restoring Eden" through showing kindness toward animals.
"Kindness, we consider to be one of the highest spiritual values."