Crossroads Campus

What Your Donation Supports

The revenue generated through the "A Community Thrives" initiative will enable us to expedite the opening of The Grooming School at Crossroads, a nonprofit, pet grooming school for the young adults we serve.  

Groomers are in high demand, and grooming is a low barrier career path that offers a sustainable wage and opportunities for growth, making it a good fit for young people who have been impacted by inequity and trauma.  

Teaching young people to provide low stress, humane grooming services is well-aligned with our mission to use the healing power of the human-animal bond to benefit both people and pets.

Our Inspiration Story

When Crossroads interns Domonique and Ke'Toria decided to pursue careers as pet groomers, our staff stepped in to help.  With no local educational options, the women enrolled in a distance learning program.

As most people are realizing during the current COVID educational climate, distance learning is challenging.  Now, imagine being a young adult trying to fund and study, at a distance, the profession of dog grooming!

Crossroads assisted Domonique and Ke'Toria in their education by contributing a large portion of their tuition. We purchased new computers for them to use for course study and scheduled paid "study" times to devote to their online training.

In addition, our groomers provided mentoring and consultation, and assisted in locating specific breed types to satisfy their course requirements.

Domonique and Ke'Toria have both completed their course work and have their grooming certification.  Ke'Toria is working as a groomer at a local Nashville business and Domonique will soon be returning to Crossroads to help us open a second grooming salon.

Through working with these determined women as they pursued their career goals, we recognized the need for an affordable, local pet grooming school.

Please help us to provide opportunity for more young people in Nashville!

About Crossroads Campus

Crossroads Campus is a unique and innovative nonprofit that provides humane education, job-training, employment and affordable housing for young adults, and adoptions for homeless dogs and cats.

The linchpin of our model is our Crossroads Pets- Shop & Adopt social enterprise, a nonprofit, pet-retail and grooming business through which we offer job training, employment and pet adoptions.  Upstairs from the store, we operate a small housing program for our participants most at risk of homelessness.

Crossroads is now in the process of leveraging our success to significantly scale up our model through our Crossroads Campus Expansion Project.  The project will create 22 additional units of housing and significantly expand job-training and employment opportunities for young adults in a neighborhood in which over 30% of the young people aged 20 to 24 years old are unemployed.