Deborah Cribbs, Chair of the Board of Trustees for Joanie Bernard Foundation & The Ten movement

Kristen Petrie [00:00:02]

You've tuned in to The Community Cats Podcast. Ready? Let's go.

Stacy LeBaron [00:00:13]

Welcome to the Community Cats Podcast! I am your host, Stacy LeBron. I've been involved helping homeless cats for over 20 years with the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society. The goal of this podcast is to expose you to amazing people who are improving the lives of cats. I hope these interviews will help you learn how you can turn your Passion for Cats into Action. Today we’re speaking with Deborah Cribs. Deborah is the Board of Trustees Chair, for the Joanie Bernard Foundation and Ten Movement. Scooter, the Neutered Cat, took Greater Cincinnati and the Nation by storm in 2013 with an edgy, irreverent, and hilarious campaign that encourages Spay-Neuter and Feline Education to achieve a NO-Kill Community. Nearly eight years later, Scooter the Neutered cats’ initiatives, have unequivocally been a success. Formerly, in Cincinnati before Scooter debuted, the live release rate percentage of cats that entered shelters and were released adopted was merely 37%; today the rate is more than 96%! The Queen City is now considered a NO-Kill Community and a paragon for other cities to emulate. These tremendous results are thanks to several factors, people, and organizations, including the leadership of Deborah Cribs the chair of the Board of Trustees for the Joanie Bernard Foundation and the Ten Movement, the parent organizations of Scooter the Neutered cat today. Cribs considers herself Scooters’ Mother and has committed herself to improving The Nine Lives of cats. Cribs personal experience has deepened her connection to the work of the movement she leads. She has a colony of community cats in her backyard and is an admitted Failed Foster parent who fell in love with her Foster and ended up adopting. She has overseen every Scooter campaign and encouraged her creative team to keep pushing the boundaries to spread awareness for spay neuter; community cat education and adoption; fostering cats; all supporting the mission to become a NO-Kill Community. When Cribs (whose career was in the banking industry) and the board were originally bequeathed the money to form the Joanie Bernard Foundation; their only charge was to improve the lives of cats. But due in part to Cribs vision they have accomplished that and so much more. In addition to having played a role in dramatically raising the live release rate to unprecedented heights in the region; she's guided the Ten Movement to forge partnerships and provide support with greater Cincinnati shelters, adoption and foster organizations and spay neuter clinics. Cribs believes there's still plenty of work to be done. The Ten Movement continues to fund creative public service campaigns, spearheaded by Scooter the Neutered Cat, including the recent Mild Kingdom Initiative for Creative Cat Awareness and past promotions such as Cat Math and Talk to Your Cat About Sex, sparking viral interest across the country for their fun; cheeky takes on life saving resources for cats. A devout animal lover, Cribs is a vegetarian, enjoys trying new foods, and an occasional glass of red wine. She also loves books, Star Trek, and international travel, which sparks new opportunities to learn about and appreciate cultural differences. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband and pets. Cribs and Scooter have no plans to slow down. They will continue educating the public until there is a 100% NO KILL Nation for cats. Deborah, I'd like to welcome you to the show.

Deborah Cribbs [00:03:21]

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Stacy [00:03:23]

I can't wait to dive into all of the information that was in your bio! But first I want to find out how did you become so passionate about cats; what brought this vision to the Joanie Bernard Foundation?! You know, what is it about cats that gets you going?

Deborah 00:03:37]

Well, I suppose, I grew up with cats. We had cat companions since I can remember as a child and being somewhat of an introvert, and sometimes a little snotty myself, I think they just spoke to me. I've always had cats in my life and this Foundation allowed me to express a lot of different elements in my life at the same time, which is great.

Stacy [00:04:06]

Deborah, tell me a little bit about the Ten Movement and how that all got started.

Deborah [00:04:13]

Sure, as my bio says I was then, and I am currently, a banker. I manage money for clients of wealth. I had a particular client, a mother-daughter combo, who were extraordinarily wealthy and had no heirs at all. One of the few things that brought them joy in what I would call a somewhat dysfunctional life – or a different kind of life – was cats; and their love of cats kind of came from my love of cats. So, when they died, they left this Foundation in the control of my bank. My bank has allowed me to Chair this Foundation for several years now and probably into the future. I’d like to say that it is Serendipity that now gave my team, and I, the opportunity to create a legacy for my client, the donor. And a legacy for us as well! It has certainly become my life’s work.

 Stacy [00:05:15]

So, Deborah, let me ask you this question because this is actually a hot topic for me with regards to planning for a legacy after you pass away; or, if you have cats that you are responsible for and making sure that you have planning from that standpoint. When these folks had approached you, did this happen before they passed away or afterwards. Did you have an idea about this ahead of time?

Deborah [00:05:38]

I mean, estate planning, it's complicated for this kind of wealth. It’s part of my job and it IS very complicated. But to answer your question: the clients did not have heirs and knew that their vast wealth needed to go somewhere. Given that cats were one of the few things they actually liked, and they knew they wanted to leave their money to care for cats in the Cincinnati area – and that’s a key – for that’s a very small area and a lot of money to care for cats. So, to your question, these decisions need to be properly made long before death if you have assets to accommodate whatever your wishes are. Under my stewardship, these clients created a private foundation. Not an unusual thing to do. This is an extremely large foundation. It’s public information that it's a 90 plus million-dollar foundation, and we are required to give away 5% every year as per the IRS rules.

Stacy [00:06:40]

Yeah, I'm familiar with some of these rules. What an incredible opportunity! Before you had gotten involved with them you've talked about your vision. Were there any mentors that you had to help you learn about the different community cat programs that were out there, or - did you already know about TNR, and have this sort of vision; of wanting to help the cats in the Cincinnati area?? But it seems like you're also trying to provide resources on a national level.

Deborah [00:07:07]

Well, interestingly, I came about this probably backwards from what you're used to with your guests. I'm a businessperson. My teammates are business people, and this Foundation was established as a business. I mean, as part of my business. When the clients died, much younger than we would have thought, we were completely in charge of this foundation and the clients wishes were that it benefits cats in the greater Cincinnati area. As Bankers, as stewards, as trustees, it is our fiduciary responsibility to carry through with clients wishes, even if we don't agree; so, I got myself a couple of teammates within the bank and they happen to be friends, and they happen to also love cats. And there we went. But, I think the difference is that we are business people and suddenly we were charged with spending a vast amount of money for a very specific cause and it was only then that I started educating myself, truly on Animal Welfare and Cat Welfare, and specifically in Cat Welfare in the greater Cincinnati area, where I think I am now the foremost world's expert on the topic, honestly! 

Stacy [00:08:30]

So, it's a critically focused and targeted project and one of the things that I have always promoted over the years is working in a targeted way. So having a designated service area, if you are resource-limited, you're going to be able to make a greater impact by being able to focus your resources and not distribute them far and wide. So, it sounds like you've got like the deepest of the deep dive going on there for cats in the area.

Deborah [00:08:58]

Yes, very much. And if I may say just to continue answering something I think your listeners, if I understand your audience, might be interested in, we're business people. We do math. We're Bankers. We went out into this area and started meeting all the leaders in the Animal Welfare movement locally. And without trying to cause any offense I will say that there is dysfunction in this Arena when it comes to business, so it was very difficult, it was very challenging for us. When we had a fiduciary responsibility to spend this money wisely, to actually spend that much money on this specific a cause, in this specific an area, it was very challenging; mostly because of the grave business dysfunction that we found, and I could frankly go on and on about that. But what I will say that we did, while private foundations generally do not fund employment positions because we don't want somebody to lose a job if we stop funding, it took us about a year to understand the lay of the land, the problems, the challenges locally, regionally /nationally, and we realized that we were lacking the kind of progressive leadership that we needed in this area. There was a very “old style”, and I'm sure your listeners all understand what that is. A very old-style, shelter, county-shelter management team and we realized that we needed a different kind of leadership. So, we did fund, we identified the most functional of the groups and funded them to hire an executive director for a couple of years, and she’s still working wonders in that very position, and they were able to fund itself after the couple of year grant cycle. But we realized that here's this non-progressive shelter management team that had all been in place for 25 plus years, and there was a very Progressive Movement outside of Cincinnati and various parts of the country that we educated ourselves upon and we thought: OK! We can go around the county shelter and “eat” around the edges and maybe have incremental success; or, we could dance with the devil, understand why they do what they do and see if we can more expeditiously get to success locally. We did choose that option. We danced with the devil, and it took a while!. It took us fully five years and I'm not going to say for a second that we are THE only reason that this change happened; but beating people over the head with money can succeed. 

Stacy [00:11:49]

Right! It's one of the things I've had a colleague say, “You know, you got me to  drink the Kool-Aid.” And, so, if you fund a program and let them just try something out for a month or two, then that usually will help convince folks to try something new. How did you get involved; did you fund some community cat program specifically?

Deborah [00:12:12] Well, as we went along this journey and looked at it from a business standpoint, I will say that our donor probably would have been happy if, as

I like to say, every cat in Cincinnati had a bed and a telephone. But realized this is a sincere problem. Cats are being killed in shelters, regionally and nationally; and again as business people, we said “Well, what will solve the problem?”. Let's forget about, you know, yes, we want to take care of cats and make sure that every cat has a bed and help with adoption and all that. But what is really the problem here? And we decided that we would concentrate on spay neuter. And I think everybody will agree that if the spay neuter situation was taken care of, then the rest of it, perhaps, can fall in line. We've concentrated for these years on spay neuter and we started funding Spay/Neuter Programs. Now, one of the first things we realized is that we needed a high-volume low-cost Spay Neuter Facility. And that was the original group that we funded to find a space, retrofitting a space; and to date, we funded the building of a high-volume center in Indianapolis. There's one that will open in Dayton, Ohio. within the next year. It's a little delayed. We funded one in Columbus and we're working right now on a sizable project in Northern Kentucky. So, we're trying to create a ring of success around the Greater Cincinnati area, but looking at Spay Neuter and educating ourselves, we quickly understood, and at the time we called it TNR, now we call it Community Cat Programs or even Return to Field. So, I'm just going to use the old term. And we started to understand that in order to fix the problem, the lowest hanging fruit, the one that will make the biggest impact -the quickest was TNR and Community Cat program. So that's why we started funding those and as a funder you can’t – you shouldn’t – create interest from a group. Meaning, a group has to organically come to us and say “We’re ready to do this thing. We want to do this thing. Can you fund this thing? But we’re ready to do it and we know how to do it.” But because it was a very new idea in this area, and again, because of that grave business dysfunction, or lack of progressive thought, we did have to kind of beat people over the head with money to get some of these Community Cat Programs started. But, to your point, once they saw success and realize that the urban myths around the public not being in favor really, really were not present in any of the programs that we funded. Once they had the success, you're right; more and more people jumped on. 

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Stacy [00:16:36] 

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Stacy [00:17:40] 

So, for folks that are maybe not necessarily in the Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana area you've created this other campaign. What sort of resources are available to other folks? Now that you've seen how to make change and impact, what do you have in your basket of tricks to share with others? To really help and  encourage a greater Community Cat program, greater TNR, the Return to Field; all these things that that we know work, and we want to try and educate the public on this now?

Deborah [00:18:10]

Thank you very much for asking that. Again, back to the beginning. When we started trying to understand the problem we also had a very strong conviction that half of our money needs to be spent on the ground, and that work really is in the greater Cincinnati area. We work in a 100-mile radius. We very rarely fund national projects at this point. I mean, there will be a day when every cat in the Cincinnati region has a phone and a bed, and we will move on; but, right now we still have work that we can do in the hundred-mile radius. The other half of the funds is needed to go to engaging the public; because it is our opinion that if we do not make this the Public's Problem then we will always be chasing our tails. Proverbially. And that's what's happened in the last 50 years basically since Animal Welfare work began in this country. If we hide it from the public, which I believe was the old Paradigm in play, then the public doesn't realize they need to be engaged and that it's their responsibility. We feel very strongly that we need to be transparent and let the public know it is their problem and I think anybody in a shelter environment around the country and around the world understands that. If you show that you've got a Hurricane Cat, the public answers, right? Of course. So, then we said, “Well gosh, how are we going to engage the public”? And I hesitate to say educate the public because the public doesn't really want to be educated. But trying to engage them is a whole different thing we think. So, long story short, we hired an ad agency to do just that and we started doing a series of ad campaigns and it was interesting. And again, anybody that knows cats gets it. At first, we knew we wanted to engage with humor, and we wanted to be edgy; so, we did create our mascot and Spokes-cat Scooter the Neutered Cat. Hip. Spectacles. No testicles. So, Scooter speaks for us. And at first Scooter was out telling the public you need to do this for the betterment of the World. Well, that was kind of a fun campaign, but I don't think the Public, you know, ran to help. Then we said you need to do this because it'll help You in Your household. And we were highlighting bad cat behaviors that occur, if you don't Spay Neuter, and that campaign was called Talk to Your Cat About Sex. It might be my favorite. I love that one. So, okay, the public responded. We got really famous locally and we did have a couple of viral videos come out of that. But then we're like, well, we're not solving the problem; like the public loves our ads, but are they doing anything, you know? Are they doing more? So, we did another campaign. Again, it was the funny: Cat Math. Cats can multiply, but they're terrible at math! But they sure can multiply, and they sure DO multiply. So that was the Cat Math campaign. That was a couple of years ago. Again, everybody really liked it. It certainly talked about how cats can multiply and the math of it is astonishing. When you're first presented with those numbers, they ARE astonishing. So, again, the public loved the campaigns. But the needle was moving more because of the work we were doing on the ground. Then this year, this, this horribly challenging year, we started a campaign that we call Mild Kingdom and Mild Kingdom basically includes billboards and spots on TV, and radio, and digital. Lots and lots of digital that tells the public: Hey, cats are out there in their Mild Kingdom, and they need to be Spayed Neutered, even if they are community cats and not living in your house! And we basically told the public, if you call this number, we will help you and we will even pay to get these cats spayed or neutered. Well, my goodness! Here it is! The public has responded! We've had unprecedented engagement across all of our platforms, and the needle is now moving differently. We're not having to move it as hard. The public is really helping to move that needle on community cats. So, we’ve created all of these campaigns at great cost as this is a professional campaign that's been created. And we've got lots and lots of collateral material. Everything from door hangers to digital videos, to websites, to TV spots. And we're willing to offer those at very, very low cost just to leverage the message nationally. So, I think that's something maybe your listeners would be interested in.

Stacy [00:23:01] That sounds tremendous. It sounds fantastic. And if folks are interested in finding out more specifically about this campaign and how to participate, where would they go?

Deborah [00:23:13]

Good question. On our website for the foundation, The Joanie Bernard Foundation Org we do have a “letter of intent” portal and that gets to me. I do read all of them and I respond to all of them. Again, we only work, I mean to say, on the ground; meaning funding programs locally in that 100-mile radius, but if somebody used that portal to talk about an interest in our ad campaigns, I would certainly engage with them on that.

Stacy [00:23:43]

That's fantastic. I mean, I could see that being used as an Outreach tool to help continue to support spay/neuter clinics or voucher programs or something like that in the area communities. I could really see some synergies there around that. And I run these Trapper training certification programs with Neighborhood Cats, on a monthly basis and over 60% of the attendees are actually funding their TNR are on their own and doing all the work on their own. So, you know, it's not always just about an organizational thing; it's about how to empower the public to be able to turn their Passion for Cats into action.

Deborah [00:24:24]

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. What we've just begun to find ourselves is that if we tell the public there's a problem and give them a tool - we are finding we do have to give them a tool - they will put Sweat Equity into it where they may not be able to, or be willing to, put money into it. We find that they are willing to engage with us by doing some of the work. We just give them the tool which is a phone number and then instructions. 

Stacy [00:24:56]

So are there any other sites other than the Joanie Bernard Foundation that you want to mention to our listeners today.

Deborah 00:25:03]

Sure. We created what we call the Ten Movement, which is ten.org, our website. So, cats have 9 lives, give them 10! That has some great information and our new campaign called “Mild Kingdom” is mild kingdom dot org (mildkingdom.org). There's a lot of information about trapping and Community Cats on both of those. Thanks for asking. 

Stacy [00:25:29]

Deborah, is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners today?

Deborah [00:25:32] I'd love for everybody to look at our websites to see some of our spots and if you have interest in another jurisdiction around the country, I'd love it if you'd reach out to me and see if maybe we can help leverage some of these great spots in other communities.

Stacy [00:25:50]

Excellent, Deborah. I want to thank you so much for agreeing to be a guest on the show, and I hope we'll have you on again in the future. And I also know you participated in the on-line cat conference and wanted to thank you so much for that, too.

Deborah [00:26:03] Thank you for asking me to be here.

Stacy [00:26:06]

That's it for this week. Please head over to Apple podcasts and leave a review. We love to hear what you think in a five-star review, it really helps others find the show. You can also join the conversation with listeners, cat caretakers, and me on Facebook and Instagram. And don't forget to hit FOLLOW or SUBSCRIBE on Spotify, Apple podcast, Google podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcast so you don't miss a single show. Thanks for listening and thank you for everything that you do to help create a Safe and Healthy World for Cats.