When 12-year-old Mimi Ausland came into the Humane Society of Central Oregon’s Bend office this spring to explain her idea to collect dog food over the Internet, the staff was skeptical. Kids come in all the time with big ideas, explained community outreach director Lynne Ouchida, but they never follow through.

“To be honest, when Mimi scheduled that appointment, that’s what we thought it was, just a 10-hour community service project,” she said. “We had no idea.”

Mimi’s Web site is the shelter’s sole source of dog food, provides much of the cat food and is helping feed animals at nine shelters across the country. On Tuesday, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals named her the national ASPCA Tommy Monahan Kid of the Year. Monahan, a 9-year-old from Staten Island, N.Y., was killed in 2007 when he ran into his burning home to try to save his Yorkshire terrier and his lizard.

On Thursday, Mimi will be awarded $2,000 by the Humane Society of the United States, which she will pass on to the Humane Society of Central Oregon.

A sixth-grader at Seven Peaks School, Mimi has been volunteering at the Humane Society for the past three years. Last winter, she discovered her parents, Kelly and Brooke Ausland, using freerice.com, an online vocabulary game that donates rice to the United Nations World Food Program with every question answered. Her father said Mimi quickly figured out that the game could be adapted to collect pieces of kibble instead of grains of rice. On freekibble .com and its companion site, freekibblekat.com, every pet trivia question answered — right or wrong — donates 10 pieces of kibble.

So far, the site has gathered 47 million pieces of kibble — around 20 tons — Kelly Ausland said. For a project that began with only local dogs and cats in mind, it’s exceeded all expectations, feeding around 500 cats and 800 dogs every day.

“I definitely thought it was going to be smaller, but it’s great that it’s bigger now,” Mimi said. “I think that’s awesome.”

Answering hundreds of e-mails a day and securing pet-food donors for the Web site has become nearly a full-time job for the family.

“We make small little meetings and assign hours that me and my dad get together, but right now I’m really focusing on schoolwork,” Mimi said. “Freekibble is, I guess you could say, probably tied with that. Me and my dad, we answer the e-mails and put in the trivia questions and things like that. It is taking up a big amount of time — but not too much time.”

Kelly Ausland said it’s “been worth every minute.”

“It’s been such a blast to watch her fulfilling this dream of hers and the impact it’s had,” he said. “… It was great when it was feeding the Humane Society here, that was fantastic, but now it’s gone to a different level and it’s having a broader impact.”

Her story has been featured on “NBC Nightly News” and “The Today Show,” in the National Enquirer, and next week she’ll be a guest on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” She said she’s getting used to being a celebrity among her friends at school.

“They’re all in the loop and they definitely know all the secrets and surprises that are coming up,” Mimi said. “Tell one friend the big news and then everybody knows. They pretty much know what’s going on all the time.”

At the Humane Society of Central Oregon, the Web site has helped carry the organization through difficult times, Ouchida said. Donations of cash and food have dried up with the slowing economy, but freekibble.com has kept coming through.

“This is probably one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It’s definitely one of those things that reminds you why you’re in animal welfare and the nonprofit world.”

Check out Mimi’s Web sites

Visit freekibble.com and freekibblekat.com to answer the daily trivia question — right or wrong — and 10 pieces of kibble are donated to the Humane Society of Central Oregon.