Dear Friends,
last month I asked whether, we as a community could save 100 animals this summer.

What has happened since…

I’ve met Mary Ann, a wonderful lady from NC.She saved several cats from a property, who’s owner threatened repeatedly

Using cats for target practice for procreating? An oxymoronic situation considering who's doing the shootin'

to just use the cats  for target practice.
Mary Ann and her patient husband set up traps, and over the course of a week were able to catch all of them.

trapped kitty - ready to be spayed

All have been altered, vaccinated and an older kitty is being treated for a couple of fighting wounds.
Stay tuned for Mary Ann’s story…..

a new lease on life instead of a never ending cycle of kittens

Then there is Daniela, who literally took us up on our challenge the very next day. She lives in Atlanta, went to a high kill shelter in Rome, GA and saved a beautiful English shepherd mix from death row.

Daniela named him Borgo, after a district in Rome.

Borgo on Death Row at the Rome, GA animal pound

Within days Borgo came down with the kennel cough. Daniela spent hours taking him to the vet, treating him, comforting him.

After several baths, a trip to the groomer, lots of love, vaccinations and finally getting neutered – Borgo is ready to move to his new home, which is already waiting for him in Indiana.
Unfortunately, Daniela is a poor student, with a minimum wage job on the side and has exhausted her resources.

She needs help with transport and/or shipping Borgo to Indiana. Please contact Daniela if you can help. dragomirovad@yahoo.com

What about the challenge?

We are a community of over 2000 members in the US. I think we can do better. Daniela, a student, with a minimum wage job, living in a small apartment has proven that there’s always a way to save a life.

Borgo and his personal angel, Daniela

Every life is worth saving. No matter how old or broken an animal is. We owe it to them to make things right.
If we don’t intervene, who will?
What can WE – as a community, as individuals do this coming month?

Step ONE: sign up as a volunteer with us.
if you can’t volunteer please consider supporting us via the Simba Fund.
100 cents of each dollar go to the care of our animals, and funding of special rescue operations. Let’s Adopt! does not have any overhead, because we are ALL volunteers.
This sets us apart from any other big organization.

• Send me your stories and pictures of the animals you saved.
• Sign up to volunteer for us. We are looking for volunteers in ALL 50 States and also in Canada RIGHT NOW.

Shoot me an email with your information:

• Name
• Location
• Volunteer Interest

Let’s make this summer one to remember…

Let's Adopt! Summer Of Luuuuv 2010

The summer we saved 100 animals - TOGETHER!

BE The Change
~Misha

Today’s blog is actually inspired and for the greater part written by one of my dear teachers.

Please read it with an open mind, read it again with your mind inspired, and then read it again, with your heart ready to spring into action.

Cruelty is an infectious disease and one must strictly guard oneself against it. Some students seem to have this peculiar infection and they somehow gradually dominate the others. Probably they feel it is very manly, for their elders are often cruel in their words, in their attitudes, in their gestures, in their pride. This cruelty exists in the world. The responsibility of the student and please remember with what significance we are using that word – is to avoid any form of cruelty.

Once many years ago I was invited to talk at a school in California and as I entered the school a boy of ten or so was passing me with a large bird, caught in a trap, whose legs were broken.

I stopped and looked at the boy without saying a word. His face expressed fear and when I finished the talk and came out the boy – a stranger – came up to me with tears in his eyes and said, ”Sir, it will never happen again.” He was afraid that I would tell the headmaster and there would be a scene about it and as I didn’t say a word to either the boy or the headmaster about the cruel incident, his awareness of the terrible thing he had done made him realize the enormity of the act.

It is important to be aware of one’s own activities and if there is affection then cruelty has no place in our life at any time. In western countries you see the birds carefully nurtured and later in the season shot for sport and then eaten. The cruelty of hunting, killing small animals, has become part of our civilization, like war, like torture, and the acts of terrorists and kidnappers.

Dogs tortured to death for consumption in Korea

In our intimate personal relationships there is also a great deal of cruelty, anger, hurting each other. The world has become a dangerous place in which to live and in our schools any form of coercion, threat, anger must be totally and completely avoided for all these harden the heart and mind, and affection cannot co-exist with cruelty.

You understand, as a student, how important it is to realize that any form of cruelty not only hardens your heart but perverts your thinking, distorts your actions. The mind, like the heart, is a delicate instrument, sensitive and very capable, and when cruelty and oppression touch it then there is a hardening of the self. Affection, love, has no centre as the self.

Now having read this and having understood so far what is said, what will you do about it? You have studied what has been said, you are learning the content of these words; what then is your action? Your response is not merely to study and learn but also to act. Most of us know and are aware of all the implications of cruelty and of what it actually does both outwardly and inwardly, and leave it at that without doing anything about it – thinking one thing and doing just the opposite. This not only breeds a great deal of conflict but also hypocrisy.

Most students do not like to be hypocrites; they like to look at facts but they do not always act. So the responsibility of the student is to see the facts about cruelty and without any persuasion or cajoling understand what is implied and do something about it. The doing is perhaps a greater responsibility. People generally live with ideas and beliefs totally unrelated to their daily life and so this naturally becomes hypocrisy.

So don’t be a hypocrite – which doesn’t mean you must be rude, aggressive or overly critical. When there is affection there is inevitably courtesy without hypocrisy.

What is the responsibility of the teacher who has studied, learned, and acts toward the student? Cruelty has many forms. A look, a gesture, a sharp remark, and above all comparison. Our whole educational system is based on comparison. A is better than B and so B must conform to or imitate A. This in essence is cruelty, and ultimately its expression is examinations; so what is the responsibility of the educator who sees the truth of this?

How will he teach any subject without reward and punishment, knowing that there must be some kind of report indicating the capacity of the student? Can the teacher do this? Is it compatible with affection? If the central reality of affection is there, has comparison any place at all? Can the teacher eliminate in himself the pain of comparison?

Our whole civilization is based on hierarchical comparison both outwardly and inwardly which denies the sense of deep affection. Can we eliminate from our minds the better, the more, the stupid, the clever, this whole comparative thinking? If the teacher has understood the pain of comparison what is his responsibility in his teaching and in his action? A person who has really grasped the significance of the pain of comparison is acting from intelligence.

[Jiddu Krishnamurti - Letters to Schools Volume One 15th February, 1980]

Teachers & Students alike….

BE The Change

Make that one phone call to report animal cruelty, help a neighbor out, who struggles with feeding their animals in this economy, make contributions to those organizations that work so hard on bringing change. Become part of the solution by volunteering your time, knowledge and resources.

Let’s Adopt! USA needs YOU – yes YOU …help us in our quest to save animals, but also to spread the word, educate the members of your community about no-kill.

Become a leader in your own community.

Visit our Facebook Group and sign up as a volunteer in the discussion area.

Let’s make some noise for the voiceless out there.

Let’s stop the brutal killings, sanctified by your city leaders, funded by your tax dollars,

Let’s put tougher laws on animal cruelty, hoarders, breeders.

Let’s DO SOMETHING.

The apathy of many people is mind-boggling to me. We have grown numb to the pictures of death row animals, mutilated, abused, sick, dying…

here today ….gone tomorrow….. until the next load arrives.

Help Us, Help THEM!

BE The Change!

Misha

Dear Tribe Members of the Let’s Adopt!USA Family.

First of, I want to thank all of our members for your continuous support in growing our FaceBook Network, and helping us connecting more volunteers and activists in the US.
I’d also like to take the opportunity to welcome all new members who have joined us over the past couple of weeks.
We could not do our important work without you.

Our tribe is growing daily.

As we are approaching the “Thousand Member Mark”, I realized that many of you don’t know each other (yet)…other than that we obviously share a love for animals, have compassion for the voiceless and want change… Drastic change.

So, this week I want to invite you to visit our

Let’s Adopt! USA FaceBook Photo Album

and post a picture of you and your pet(s).

post a picture of you and your rescue to our facebook group

It’s as easy as 1 – 2 – 3:

• Go to: Let’s Adopt! USA Group Photo Album

• Add your/pet’s name AND general location (state/metro area)  as captions.
• Post the image.
• In the comment section: Post a short story about how you met, and your life was changed.

DONE …

rescuing another being is a life-changing experience.

Add a quick note about what you have to offer to Let’s Adopt! USA in your capacity as a volunteer or activist, and what you would like to see changing in YOUR OWN COMMUNITY.
If you prefer you can also send me an e-mail to misha@myletsadopt.com

We can’t wait to see all your beautiful faces and read about your connections.

companions for life

Finally, please take a moment to add yourself to our regional networks in the LET’S ADOPT! USA group’s discussion section.

This will help us contact volunteers quickly when we need local foster volunteers, organizing transports/rescue or for local action alerts.
This will only take a few moments of your time - imagine how many lives we can AND WILL save together.

Thank you again for standing up for what is right.

We have a lot of work to do.

BE The Change…

Misha Dee
misha@myletsadopt.com

Let’s Adopt! USA
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=205025950458

Give Our Angels Wings:
http://bethechange.chipin.com/simbas-fund

Put Yourself On The Map :
http://bit.ly/LetsAdopt-Network-Map

We all need money, right?

Once upon a time, I worked in development at a non-profit dedicated to women’s health. I remember the director of the organization telling me that you could always get a job in the non-profit world if you knew how to raise funds. What she was saying is that there is always enough money to go around and that we just have to be clever enough to claim our share.

It has never been easy for animal shelters and rescues to raise the funds they require to carry out their work. In this economy, it’s even harder to do so. I checked with a handful of friends to find out what they have seen work in the realm of fundraising, and I’d like to share some of our ideas with you today.

Remember to leave your comments at the bottom of this post. We would love to hear your ideas about fundraising.

Before you even start browsing through the ideas, make sure you really know your donors. Take the time to develop personal relationships with the families who adopt the animals you have rescued. Don’t be afraid to ask for their continued support of your work.

Another reason you need to really know your donors and your supporters is so that you can tap into their skills. You might have a database genius, a graphic designer, a professional artist or photographer, a café owner, or even a journalist already inside your group. Who knows? You might be lucky enough to have a fundraising professional as a supporter!

Know your base, and engage with them in a big way.

Here are some tried-and-true suggestions to help you with your fundraising efforts:

• Hold a silent art auction. Have people donate all kinds of art work that somehow relates to your mission statement (or not) and hold a silent auction. Post a minimum on all the bidding sheets. You can also hold eBay auctions.
• Offer ways for people to buy their special occasion and holiday gifts from your organization in person and online. This allows them to shop from home, and it allows you to reach a much wider audience. Eco-bags with or without your logo are a great item to offer as more and more people are trying to spend their money in ways that effect change.
• Hold car washes, road blocks, and garage sales. Ask local youth groups and students to help you with these efforts.
• Run a campaign to ask people to remember you in their wills. Let them know that you will help with the rehoming of their beloved pets if necessary in the event of their death.
• Offer various levels of membership, and offer animal sponsorship. Go seasonal so that people have a reason to sponsor an animal more than once a year. For example, you could offer people the opportunity to “buy” one of your animals as their valentine this year. Take time to create beautiful Valentine’s Day cards to send out to supporters who buy a valentine.
• Run a furry speed dating event around Valentine’s Day. Invite all animal-loving singles to register and attend for a set donation amount.
• Have children trick or treat for pets at Halloween. Instead of taking candy from friends and neighbors, children can ask for small donations to help their local rescue. Advertise this idea to parents, and offer them brochures or information about your rescue for children to decorate their Halloween baskets and even pass out to families as they go from door to door.
• Offer pictures with Santa every December. Have someone in your group dress up as Santa, and have a photographer volunteer his or her time to take pictures for people. Local pet supply stores are often willing to host this sort of even for free because it attracts customers who buy things while they are there.
• Provide your wish list to schools and churches in your community. Get young people involved. Some students have to complete a certain amount of community service hours in order to graduate. Why not offer them the opportunity to bathe dogs, scoop litter boxes, or even organize a fundraising campaign aimed at young people? Be sure to provide them with recognition and a letter of reference once they have completed all their hard work for your organization.
• Have fun and create a competition. In my city, a non-profit that raises funds for inner-city schools joined forces with another non-profit organization to create a cookie competition last year. In cooperation with a local bakery chain, each non-profit created a cookie to see whose would sell the most. Over the course of about three weeks, customers could buy each of these two types of cookies at the bakery’s local stores. Each cookie had a name that tied it back to the organization who created its recipe. The non-profit organization received a huge percentage of all cookie sales and got plenty of PR in the course of the competition. Why not try something similar in your town?
• Encourage rivalry among your supporters. Choose a couple of key active players in your organization to lead this effort. Create teams or pit individuals against each other to see who can raise the most funds for your organization during a particular time period. You can divide people up as men vs. women, one side of town vs another side of town, or even 35-and-under vs 35-and-over. Have fun with this, and keep track of the results on your website. Of course, it would be even better if you could offer some sort of prize to the winning team!
• It doesn’t always have to be about the animals. Not everyone is going to seek out animal-related organizations for their donation dollars. Find ways to entice people who don’t want animal-related products. Do you have a member of your group who happens to be a massage therapist, for example? You could offer chair massages with the profits benefiting your organization. You can even go crazy with this idea and create an entire bazaar or boutique night where you offer all kinds of items and services with a percentage of all sales benefiting your organization.
• In the same spirit, talk to your friends who are involved with non-animal related organizations. Find out how they handle fundraising. You might learn a lot from each other!
• Organize a cookie or cake drive. You could also set up a cake wheel at a local fair or bizarre, or you could sell cookies and cakes at garage sales. People holding garage sales will often be happy to sell your items because food draws people in to buy their items!
• Organize a trivia night. This draws in people of all ages. You could even hold it at a local pub or pizza restaurant.
• Use your newsletter. Send it to all your donors so that they can see where their money is going (and that you are staying in touch), and post it to your website so that potential donors can see what you’re doing. Time spent creating a professional, effective newsletter will pay off in dividends. Here are some tips.
• Approach your local churches and community centers and ask them to post your newsletter in their bulletin area. You could even offer church youth groups the opportunity to volunteer with your organization for a big group project such as “The Great Kennel Clean” once a month. You could even ask your local church to take up a collection for your rescue during its annual Blessing of the Animals. Catholic, Episcopal, and other churches hold these annual events.
• Set up a booth at your local farmers market to raise awareness and funds. Know a farmer who will place information and a fundraising jar on his or her table for you? Even better. You can also leave these fundraising jars at local pet supply stores and veterinary offices.
• Target the young professionals in your community. Find out where they hang out, and then speak to the owner of the restaurant or bar about holding a cocktail event with proceeds benefiting your organization. This is a great way to attract a donor base that can grow with your organization, and it’s a great way for young professionals to meet like-minded people in their community. It’s fantastic for singles, too!
• Hold an open house. People like to see how you are taking care of the animals. They want to know where their money is going. During the open house, you can include merchandise/bake sales and raffles.
• Play bingo! Take some bingo cards and all the equipment to a senior citizen’s center. It will be great fun for you and them, and it will all be for a great cause.
• Open a retail store operation such as Meow Mart and Pedigree Interiors in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• Team up with restaurants or retailers for a percentage of their proceeds on specific days. This arrangement benefits both of you because folks who support your organization are likely to patronize the restaurants or retailers on those days.
• Arrange for your organization to receive a percentage of sales using a merchant’s gift card. For example, in my area, Kroger gives 4%, and Bigg’s gives 6%.
• Create and sell greeting cards with pictures of your rescue animals on them. These can be real pictures or even an artist’s rendition of the animals. You can create them with volunteer time and effort, or you can have them printed professionally.
• Throw more meaningful parties. Let friends and family know that you don’t need anything for your birthday or Christmas this year. Ask them to make donations of money or supplies to the organization of your choice. This idea works extremely well for children’s birthday parties where kids have an opportunity to shop for something to help a homeless kitty or puppy. It provides a learning opportunity for each child and an opportunity to build self-esteem and feel good about doing something positive.
• Look online to find local newspapers, magazines, and websites that accept free submissions to their calendars from non-profit organizations. Then start advertising your adoption days, fundraising events, and open houses. This would be a perfect project for a school student or a local Girl or Boy Scout looking to earn community service hours, by the way!
• Everyone appreciates humor. Run a “Spay-ghetti and No Balls” dinner and silent auction. Think of other creative ideas like a Black Cat Ball around Halloween where people get to dress up and you get to raise awareness of the heartbreakingly low adoption rates for black cats and dogs.
• Print and sell a calendar with photos of pets your organization has rescued. This is also a great way to keep adopters involved because they can submit their pet’s photos for the calendar competition each year. Ask each of your volunteers to commit to selling at least 10 calendars, and also offer your calendar on your website, in your newsletter, and during all of your events. Do make sure your calendar looks professional and beautiful so that people actually want to buy it and use it around their homes and offices. You might even find a local printing company willing to provide free or low-cost printing.
• Apply for every grant you can find. Yes, it’s a pain. Yes, it’s tedious. But once you pull everything together for the first couple of applications, you can do cut and paste jobs for the bulk part of every future application (and then perform some tedious editing with a fine tooth comb!). Non-Profit Guides has some fantastic resources for grant writing.
• Use the resources of the Foundation Center. Their website is fantastic, and they have physical offices in five cities: New York City; Washington, DC; Atlanta; Cleveland; and San Francisco.
• And, finally, acknowledge your current donors on a frequent basis. Treat them well so that they turn into regular supporters.

Perhaps the most basic and most important thing we all need to do is demonstrate and communicate the impact of our activities.

Don’t ask people to feel sorry for you. Don’t try to guilt them into donating or buying your organization’s items. That doesn’t work in the long run.

Entice people to join your cause by demonstrating that you are a positive force for change in your community. Set yourself apart as the leading organization in your area or in your specialty. Build a track record, and use it to network yourself and your organization.

Want more?

Humane Fundraising and Helping A Cause 4 Paws both have websites full of many other ideas.

The Messy Beast also has a page full of clever fundraising ideas.

You probably already have a website, but is your group on Facebook yet? Do you have a blog?

Think big.

You might be part of a small local organization, but that doesn’t mean you can’t think big in terms of your fundraising strategies and techniques. We live in a global society, and we have the unbelievable resources of the Internet at our fingertips.

If you don’t already have a website or blog yet, explore your options on WordPress. Setting one up has never been easier, and this could be a great project to hand over to a student who would like to volunteer with your organization.

Don’t forget to join the Facebook group of Let’s Adopt! (USA).

Of course, it’s not all about raising funds.

It’s also about minimizing costs. In order to minimize your costs, you first need to know your costs. This might seem obvious, but a lot of us could improve our financial tracking and budgeting skills. Are your fixed costs low enough?

In short, we could take a few lessons from the business world.

This document was developed for non-profit organizations in general, and not everything will apply to your situation. But it’s still worth having a look!

And remember that volunteers are a great way to keep costs low. So spend as much time building relationships with your volunteers as you do with your donors. Not everyone has money to spare, but many people will give of their time. Anything they can do for you will help keep your operating costs low, and you want to keep them coming back.

a Bali Street Dog who needs our help

Is it about doing things your way? Or is it about saving animals?

Economies of scale can apply to rescue as well.

Have you considered merging your rescue with another one in your local area? Or even just working on joint projects? Oftentimes we can accomplish more together than apart, and we shouldn’t let our egos interfere with our ability to remain focused on our collective goal of saving animals.

Why not have open dialogues with other rescues to see what you can do as a whole? You could take advantage of a much larger donor and volunteer pool if folks in your community don’t have to choose one group over the others, and you might even find that the hard work of rescue is easier when all of you are working on the same team and splitting the work between you. You could even create a group such as Pet Groups United whose aim is to be a United Way type of organization for animal groups in Kentucky.

Do you need some tools to help you manage your costs?

I offer you this absolutely incredible collection of 100 online resources to help run any aspect of a non-profit organization.

Idealist.org, one of my favorite websites, is also full of all kinds of tools to help you start and manage a non-profit organization.

Innovative Design, a leader in sustainable architecture, has prepared an interesting document about how to minimize operating costs in schools. Much of the information in this document could be applied to animal shelters.

Incorporating some of these lessons and tools into your organization will make it even easier for you to demonstrate and communicate the impact of your activities. Such an approach is also more likely to gain the attention and respect of those involved in the business world who oftentimes have the ability to decide where corporate donations will land. If you’re running a lean, professional organization, potential donors might be even more encouraged to take the plunge and get involved with you.

My sincere thanks to Bali Street Dog Fund’s co-founder and fundraiser extraordinaire Paula, Just Faith employee Theresa, Volunteer Rescue Transport Coordinator Krystal, Willie Wonka the Wonder Dog who works tirelessly on Facebook in memory of Buddy, and Ohio Alleycat Rescue & Spay/Neuter Clinic volunteer Tania. Thank you for sharing some of your ideas with the rest of us.

And before you go…

Animal Planet will be airing the American Kennel Club/Eukanuba National Championship tomorrow (Feb 6, 2010) evening at 8 PM and 11 PM EST.

They are calling this “the biggest, most exciting dog show of the year.”

Take a moment right now to let Discovery Communications (the owner of Animal Planet), the AKC, and Eukanuba know that you are not excited by the breeding and showing of dogs.

Let them know that you will not be watching the program because you do not support the breeding, showing, or selling of dogs as long as 4 million dogs are being killed in our animal shelters each year. Encourage Animal Planet to air more relevant programming, and ask Eukanuba to sponsor events that are of more interest.