Hey there all! First off, thank you in advance for any replies, you all are a WEALTH of knowledge and I appreciate any advice you can give.
The short of it is, were trying to get a TNR program rolling. I'm a neonatal rehab specialist that serves Wilmington NC and the surrounding counties, and been doing other animal rescue for 15 years, and we are an official 501c3. So we are not new to the game, just new to TNR. I live in Pender County, which is very rural and resource poor (our median income is 37k per household, but this number is very skewed as we have a small but very wealthy pocket on the beach). We literally have NO TNR programs that serve our county. The next county over does have a program, but they are overloaded and not able/willing to expand into ours, and there are no other programs in the other surrounding areas.
We have built a great reputation as a neonatal group, and have done some TNR as we always try to find the moms and help if there are more. We have some great volunteers and experienced trappers as well. We raise enough funds to do the kitten work, but were having a hard time motivating the community to care about community cats. We have an education/communication issue in this county, which is a whole other issue were working on with messaging, but were trying to figure out, - where the @# do we find funding for this?
Our county shelter is overloaded and cant offer us any spay/neuter spots on any sort of ongoing basis. We do have a great relationship with a vet whos about a half hour away who can get cost down to 55 for males, 85 for females. The other s/n clinics are pretty much at max capacity, or over a 2.5 hour round trip from us. We think we can at least get a small scale program going with a group of volunteers.
Weve tried some of the local walmart grants, and reaching out to small businesses, and just arent having a whole lot of luck yet, so reaching out to the interwebs to see if any of you good folks have any advice!
#FundraisingandDevelopment------------------------------
Jennifer Witkowski
Owner
Miles To Go Kitten Rehab
NC
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