Who sings Noel on ASPCA Commercial 2022?

Marie Bedford first saw what has become known as “The Ad” in nonprofit circles about a year and a half ago. “I saw it a couple of times and found I just had to respond,” Ms. Bedford, an actress living in Brooklyn, said. “It’s so moving.”

The television advertisement, for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, features heartbreaking photographs of dogs and cats scrolling across the screen while Sarah McLachlan, the Canadian singer-songwriter, croons the haunting song “Angel” in the background.

That simple pitch has raised roughly $30 million for the organization since the advertisements started running in early 2007, making it the A.S.P.C.A.’s most successful fund-raising effort — and a landmark in nonprofit fund-raising, where such amounts are virtually unimaginable for a single commercial. (The organization’s annual budget is $50 million.)

Ms. McLachlan appears only momentarily to ask viewers to share her support for the A.S.P.C.A.

“Sarah made it possible to do in two minutes what took 30 minutes before,” said Jo Sullivan, the organization’s senior vice president for development and communications, referring to the long-form use of celebrities in the past. “She literally has changed the way we fund-raise.”

Like Ms. Bedford, many of the roughly 200,000 new donors attracted to the organization through the advertisement are “annuity” donors who have pledged an average of $21 a month to the A.S.P.C.A., which charges their credit card or receives the money via an automatic electronic transfer from their bank.

The advertisement came about by accident.

The A.S.P.C.A. had been working with a Canadian firm, Eagle-Com Inc., which helps charities raise money using television and that had helped the A.S.P.C.A. create spots featuring celebrities like Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld,” Kevin Nealon from “Saturday Night Live” and Jennifer Coolidge, who played the manicurist in “Legally Blonde.” Those advertisements typically ran in the early hours of the morning, which was all the organization could afford.

Eagle-Com was working on a project for a small animal shelter in Vancouver, British Columbia, that Ms. McLachlan supported and asked if she might be interested in doing similar work for the A.S.P.C.A.

“She asked for information about our mission and programs and just got really excited,” Ms. Sullivan said. “People keep asking us how we cultivated her — did we send flowers, chocolates — but it really was just a happy accident.”

Donations from the McLachlan commercial enabled the A.S.P.C.A to buy prime-time slots on national networks like CNN, which in turn has generated more income. This holiday season, the A.S.P.C.A. rolled out another advertisement featuring Ms. McLachlan singing “Silent Night,” and it will release another McLachlan advertisement in January.

“I don’t want people to hear $30 million and not understand that we’ve grown tremendously with that increase in income,” Ms. Sullivan said.

For instance, over the last decade, the A.S.P.C.A. has increased its grants to support other animal welfare organizations by 900 percent.

“A big chunk of that has come in the last three years because of this ad,” Ms. Sullivan said.