Animal Welfare Professionals

We are a small rescue and adoption group and have been fundraising since 2003 with the goal of building an Adoption Center and No-Kill Shelter.  After many years we had raised enough to start construction on a 10,000 sq ft shelter facility which would be combined with a 4,000 sq ft building that was donated and renovated with a locally sourced grant.  We had just completed construction when our facility was damaged by Hurricane Florence.  After more than four years fighting the insurance company we received only a small portion of our claim.
We are now faced with raising enough money to complete repairs and to cover an estimated operating budget of appx $150,000.
We would appreciate ideas.  We have thought about an open house to show our facility to the community when repairs are completed with naming opportunities for rooms, and producing a video for a GoFundMe campaign.
What other ideas would you offer?
#FundraisingandDevelopment

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Kent Neal
President
Pet Adoption & Welfare Society of Carteret 501(c)
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Bricks donors can have their name business name or in memory name engraved on brick for a donation of a certain amount

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Cindy Wilde
Foster mom extroanier
Companion golden retriever rescue
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Bricks engraved with donors name or business in memory in exchange for a donation of a certain amount  a whole room name would be large donation build brick by brick would take several donors but allow those who can afford less to participate donate.

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Cindy Wilde
Foster mom extroanier
Companion golden retriever rescue
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Engraved bricks is a good idea and we have used it.  We call it "Pave the Way".

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Kent Neal
President
Pet Adoption & Welfare Society of Carteret 501(c)
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 12:38 PM
From: Cindy Wilde
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

Bricks engraved with donors name or business in memory in exchange for a donation of a certain amount  a whole room name would be large donation build brick by brick would take several donors but allow those who can afford less to participate donate.

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Cindy Wilde
Foster mom extroanier
Companion golden retriever rescue
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Sorry to hear all that happened to your shelter Kent.

The naming and brick ideas are great for any capital campaign.  For our shelter we also had different "naming" options that were included for example benchs with an engraving along our dog walking path or memorial boulders that had plaques for sponsorship.  We also have an ongoing memorial garden for bricks outside of our main facility that primarily looks at pet memorial gifts.

For videos, if you have a volunteer or in house person, that's great.  At this point with the quality of phone cameras, a lot of these items especially for social media, can be done on the cheap with fun production qualities.  If you're using a video production firm, be a little more careful there, if they're not giving a big discount or volunteering their time, this can be quite an expensive prospect.

You may also want to look at fun splashy things.  People love getting behind a cause, and "a hurricane wrecked our shelter" is a great cause.  Just by giving them a touchpoint to get behind you might be able to do pretty well croudsourcing a funding campaign.  You can even look at quirky things like, the hurricane put you underwater?  Do a 24 hour marathon where you film people swimming in a kiddy pool to raise money for the shelter.

We're also coming up on the winter season which is the traditional time for year-end appeals.  Having a compelling story about an animal you served during the disaster, or how you helped the community recover is a great hook to asking for more money, especially if you can tie gifts directly into how it will help your shelter, I.E $100 will buy new bedding for all our animals, etc.

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Jeff Okazaki
Humane Society of Jefferson County
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 12:43 PM
From: Kent Neal
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

Engraved bricks is a good idea and we have used it.  We call it "Pave the Way".

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Kent Neal
President
Pet Adoption & Welfare Society of Carteret 501(c)
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 12:38 PM
From: Cindy Wilde
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

Bricks engraved with donors name or business in memory in exchange for a donation of a certain amount  a whole room name would be large donation build brick by brick would take several donors but allow those who can afford less to participate donate.

------------------------------
Cindy Wilde
Foster mom extroanier
Companion golden retriever rescue

Jeff,
Thanks for the great suggestions.

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Kent Neal
President
Pet Adoption & Welfare Society of Carteret 501(c)
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 01:41 PM
From: Jeff Okazaki
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

Sorry to hear all that happened to your shelter Kent.

The naming and brick ideas are great for any capital campaign.  For our shelter we also had different "naming" options that were included for example benchs with an engraving along our dog walking path or memorial boulders that had plaques for sponsorship.  We also have an ongoing memorial garden for bricks outside of our main facility that primarily looks at pet memorial gifts.

For videos, if you have a volunteer or in house person, that's great.  At this point with the quality of phone cameras, a lot of these items especially for social media, can be done on the cheap with fun production qualities.  If you're using a video production firm, be a little more careful there, if they're not giving a big discount or volunteering their time, this can be quite an expensive prospect.

You may also want to look at fun splashy things.  People love getting behind a cause, and "a hurricane wrecked our shelter" is a great cause.  Just by giving them a touchpoint to get behind you might be able to do pretty well croudsourcing a funding campaign.  You can even look at quirky things like, the hurricane put you underwater?  Do a 24 hour marathon where you film people swimming in a kiddy pool to raise money for the shelter.

We're also coming up on the winter season which is the traditional time for year-end appeals.  Having a compelling story about an animal you served during the disaster, or how you helped the community recover is a great hook to asking for more money, especially if you can tie gifts directly into how it will help your shelter, I.E $100 will buy new bedding for all our animals, etc.

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Jeff Okazaki
Humane Society of Jefferson County
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 12:43 PM
From: Kent Neal
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

Engraved bricks is a good idea and we have used it.  We call it "Pave the Way".

------------------------------
Kent Neal
President
Pet Adoption & Welfare Society of Carteret 501(c)


Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 12:38 PM
From: Cindy Wilde
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

Bricks engraved with donors name or business in memory in exchange for a donation of a certain amount  a whole room name would be large donation build brick by brick would take several donors but allow those who can afford less to participate donate.

------------------------------
Cindy Wilde
Foster mom extroanier
Companion golden retriever rescue

Hi Kent,

Sorry to hear about your shelter issues.  Could you reach out to local news stations?  Here in Colorado,  we have an evening news program that has a segment/fundraiser for Community Betterment projects, non-profits, etc.  where they ask for small donations from a large number of people, maybe there is something like that in your area.  If so, you could raise a lot of $ if you could get on the air and share your story.  

Jenna Ricci
Rocky Mountain Feline Rescue

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Jenna Ricci
Volunteer
Rocky Mountain Feline Rescue
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Our county does a "Giving Day" in the spring using GiveGab https://info.givegab.com/giving-days/  and we've been pretty successful using that to do peer to peer fundraising so the "ask" isn't always coming directly from us.

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LeAnne Christoffel
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Thanks for all the great suggestions.  We will definitely look into them.

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Kent Neal
President
Pet Adoption & Welfare Society of Carteret 501(c)
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-21-2022 04:54 PM
From: LeAnne Christoffel
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

Our county does a "Giving Day" in the spring using GiveGab https://info.givegab.com/giving-days/  and we've been pretty successful using that to do peer to peer fundraising so the "ask" isn't always coming directly from us.

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LeAnne Christoffel
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Hey Kent!

This is a wild idea, but it ended up being huge for us.  Two years ago we got our gaming license to run a Treasure Hunt Raffle game for out Building Fund.  I'll spare the details of how the game works, but we sold tickets weekly for a cash prize.  Each week the shelter retained a portion of ticket sales with the rest going into the Jackpot.  When all was said and done, the raffle ran for nearly 1 year without hitting the jackpot and this thing got huge.  We were doing over 10K in ticket sales weekly and ended up with a winning jackpot of over $200,000.  The shelter received enough funds to to build an addition on to our shelter.

With that being said, we ran it again last year and we got unlucky and the jackpot went out right away.  It all comes down to lucky, but it's worth considering!   Ticket sales were slow until we reached a $10,000 jackpot.  That was a huge turning point and we started getting significant traffic for ticket sales.

Good Luck!

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Kelly Eckerle
Dubois County Humane Society
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This is a really unique and awesome idea. What state was it that allowed you to do this and what was the breakdown of funds kept by the organization vs funds entered into the jackpot?

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Michelle Miele
Treasurer
Detroit Community Cat Rescue
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-22-2022
From: Kelly Eckerle
Subject: RE: Fundraising Ideas

Hey Kent!

This is a wild idea, but it ended up being huge for us.  Two years ago we got our gaming license to run a Treasure Hunt Raffle game for out Building Fund.  I'll spare the details of how the game works, but we sold tickets weekly for a cash prize.  Each week the shelter retained a portion of ticket sales with the rest going into the Jackpot.  When all was said and done, the raffle ran for nearly 1 year without hitting the jackpot and this thing got huge.  We were doing over 10K in ticket sales weekly and ended up with a winning jackpot of over $200,000.  The shelter received enough funds to to build an addition on to our shelter.

With that being said, we ran it again last year and we got unlucky and the jackpot went out right away.  It all comes down to lucky, but it's worth considering!   Ticket sales were slow until we reached a $10,000 jackpot.  That was a huge turning point and we started getting significant traffic for ticket sales.

Good Luck!

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Kelly Eckerle
Dubois County Humane Society
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Hey there!

We are located in Indiana.  Every state will have different gaming laws, so it may not be a possibility everywhere.  We opened a separate bank account just for the gaming funds.   That made it fairly simple to keep all of the funds separate.  There is some startup cost in purchasing the game itself and the tickets.  In about a month of running the ticket sales we had made up the startup cost and were operating in the positive from there out.  A lot of it has to do with luck, but if you have a good following and can market it, it's a great option to look into!

We also took advantage of our gaming license to do a half-pot at an adoption event recently.  That's another good way to earn fast money at events!

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Kelly Eckerle
Dubois County Humane Society
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-24-2022 02:46 AM
From: Michelle Miele
Subject: Fundraising Ideas

This is a really unique and awesome idea. What state was it that allowed you to do this and what was the breakdown of funds kept by the organization vs funds entered into the jackpot?

---------------------------------
Michelle Miele
Treasurer
Detroit Community Cat Rescue
---------------------------------




Original Message:
Sent: 11-22-2022
From: Kelly Eckerle
Subject: RE: Fundraising Ideas

Hey Kent!

This is a wild idea, but it ended up being huge for us.  Two years ago we got our gaming license to run a Treasure Hunt Raffle game for out Building Fund.  I'll spare the details of how the game works, but we sold tickets weekly for a cash prize.  Each week the shelter retained a portion of ticket sales with the rest going into the Jackpot.  When all was said and done, the raffle ran for nearly 1 year without hitting the jackpot and this thing got huge.  We were doing over 10K in ticket sales weekly and ended up with a winning jackpot of over $200,000.  The shelter received enough funds to to build an addition on to our shelter.

With that being said, we ran it again last year and we got unlucky and the jackpot went out right away.  It all comes down to lucky, but it's worth considering!   Ticket sales were slow until we reached a $10,000 jackpot.  That was a huge turning point and we started getting significant traffic for ticket sales.

Good Luck!

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Kelly Eckerle
Dubois County Humane Society
------------------------------

Sorry to hear about the damage, that's devasting! We are a non-profit no-kill rescue with a vet clinic and we're fundrasing to renovate our current adoption center. Thought I would share some of our ways of fundraising! 
- We do monthly "Dine to donate" event's at local restaurtants/fast food places. Most of the locations give back  around 15-25% of the evening proceeds.
- Paint and Sip Night - we hosted a night of painting with an instructor and drinking wine. The instructor donated her time and the majority of the supplies, which left very little of things that we needed to purchase our selves.  
- We have 2 large fundraisers every year. One is a formal dinner with a silent and live auction, this year we brought in a gross of a little over $60,000. We invite "guests of honors", which were some of our majormedical cases that were adopted out. The adopters and the dog attended the event and we did a presentaion of their story; it was a big hit,
Our seond largest fundraiser is a walk a thon, we also have a silent auction at this event. There's games, food trucks and vendors. Last year's gross revenue for this event was around $21,000.
Hopefully this information can help somebody out there. I like reading everyone else's ideas!




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Keyana Miller
Co-Executive Director
Valley Oak SPCA
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