Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi Carl,

Thank you for being the voice of rural America.  I live in rural Northeast Arkansas.  We are in a crisis.  We do not have the resources to make an impact that will change the neglect and apathy we see toward animals.  I am the founder and director of Mended Paws Sanctuary.  We receive a scant amount of grant funding, I work an extra job to keep the doors open.   

An example of what we face every day - our kennel is a max capacity, last Thursday I received calls to assist with 19 puppies and 2 adults.  Our resources can provide food but nothing else.   The one gentleman that absolutely breaks my heart is an older handicapped gentleman who knows someone who is incarcerated,  this person left behind two mom dogs and a total of 11 puppies.  The rural town where he lives does not have animal control, the town resembles a third-world country.   This sweet man, who lives on a very tight budget, took in the mom's dogs and puppies.  He did not know who to ask for help, someone gave him my number.  He is desperate for help, he took the 11 puppies (now 4 months old) into his home and has them in a bedroom, to keep them safe.  He isn't physically able to care for them and does not have the financial resources.  He is doing the best he can to save these animals.    We have no resources to move these puppies out of our county.  They will have no life if we adopt them locally. 

The county has a spy and neuter ordinance, but enforcing the ordinance doesn't improve the life of the animal, when people are fined they surrender the dog and eventually get another.  

It is a vicious cycle with no end in sight.   
There has to be an answer to the crisis.

Thank you again,  it takes a village to rescue animals...I am waiting to find our village. 
Connie 

Yes, we definitely need more services in rural areas. For example, here in South Florida, our organization was called out to help with TNVR and rescue in a rural isolated and impoverished area where the cat population had gotten out of control. The reason that it had gotten out of control is that the spay neuter van from animal care and control that used to come through their neighborhood had stopped for years and the people out there just don't have the money and transportation ability to get animals to a shelter to get spayed and neutered. Amazingly there were people in the community taking in cats and fostering them themselves and there was one person with traps that would TNVR any cat that came into his yard. We showed up and trapped about 100 cats and took dozens in for adoption. The community was incredibly grateful to not have tons of kittens and more mouths to feed. More county resources need to be put into areas like this where people care but are not financially and physically able to help.

Kudos to you for addressing what we in rural/underserved areas have long encountered! There are few grantors willing to even entertain the idea of funding small, low budget, rural/grass roots projects to any significant degree-an issue typically complicated by the fact that so many rural/grass roots organizations simply lack the resources and manpower to collect/provide the extensive "data" grantors often require when an application or report is submitted. Great work is being done by rural animal welfare organizations, but recognition of that fact is lacking at the national level, and such organizations struggle to remain alive.

Hi Lynda,

I'm a grant writer and one of the ways to get around some of the restrictions via grantors is to team up with other, more established organizations. Grantors LOVE to see collaborations and community support, and the more people involved, the greater the impact. Rural and underserved areas are gaining some momentum in the grant world as they can reach far and wide and make a significant impact. I know that Best Friends has grants through the Rachel Ray Foundation that specifically supports organizations that collaborate and are in areas that need more help. If you go to their website, you can see what the priorities are for your region and once the grant cycle comes around, you can actually meet with an advisor from BF that will help you make your application as strong as it can be. You need to be network partners with them, but I don't believe there are many restrictions to that besides being a 501c3 and running for 2 years. 

If you have access to the Foundation Directory, you can also narrow your grant search by state which will help you narrow the grant field down. Also, there are organizations like Ace Hardware that run "round up" programs where they'll ask customers about rounding up to the nearest dollar for a new charity each month. Things like that, plus Bissell, Walmart, Mars, Purina, etc., are great ways to diversify your organization's fundraising.

Hope that helps! Also, because you're in AZ, the Arizona Community Foundation Animal Welfare Grant opens up around June if you want to give it a shot. I wrote a grant for a small shelter in Scottsdale last year (not rural, but there was only 1 paid staff member and the rest were volunteers so it was very small!) and we ended up saving 15 dogs with the funds we got. There's still hope!

That is a great tip. We are a 501c3 exotice and farm animal sanctuary in a very rural area of Florida. We find it hard to get animal welfare grants because we take in other animals besides cats and dogs. There is not much out there specifically for farm animals, pocket pets or exotics. The idea of collaborating with a local dog/cat shelter (which we have done in the past for events) is something that could help both organizations. 

Cole, Working in three adjoining counties in North Central Arkansas, we know the struggle going on every single day to help people keep their animals. The animal controls, shelters, rescues, and fosters are overwhelmed with the number of homeless, abandoned, and injured dogs and cats. The requests for donations from the communities are never ending because the need for help is never ending. The change in economic conditions has hit hard, though, and there are only so many times the same small population area can be asked to donate. It is disheartening to be overlooked for grant awards, but we can only keep on making applications, hope the process will become easier because people like you, Cole, call attention to the needs of rural communities.