Raising Money for Community Cats

Raising Money for Community Cats. It’s not a lot different than what happened the day the furnace died!

I will never forget this day! It was early November about 5 years ago. I was at the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society adoption center in Salisbury, going about my usual day. I was working in my “office” that was this very small room in the basement of our adoption center. We ALWAYS had an office cat in it! People used to be amazed that I worked in such a small and confining space, but I grew to love it. It was away from all of the craziness and was so small that I was able to only keep what I really needed in it.

On this particular day I was busy writing thank-you letters to our donors, planning our next board meeting and working on a grant application or two at the time. Just your normal average day! Then… our heating system decided to not work. Later in the day we brought in our service team and they shared the bad news. We needed a new system and it would cost over $13,000!

Well, that just about made my day! What were we going to do? We certainly didn’t have $13,000 set aside for a repair like this, but we needed a fix right away. Rather than be frustrated and feel like we couldn’t do anything, I tried something new. I had used a fundraising site called Firstgiving for our spring fundraiser, The Strut for Strays, but I had never used it for a crowd funding need. This was an emergency, though. We needed money and we needed it fast!

So, I sat down and wrote a short appeal to our donors, letting them know about our situation and that we needed money ASAP. It was not the most beautiful appeal that I put together (I actually used a photo of the old furnace) and I am sure it wasn’t perfectly written, but it got the point across and it was from the heart.

I didn’t know it at the time, but turns out it is all about the story and determination!

Within a week we had raised over $15,000! Why were we so successful with our first crowd funding campaign? Here are my five top takeaways:

1. Speed of Implementation:

We got this ask out within a day or two of knowing that we needed a new furnace. If you have a need, get the “ask” out soon!

2. It is a genuine “ask” with immediate need:

If we didn’t get the money for the new furnace we would have had to dip into savings to help pay for it, but we hadn’t budgeted for it in anyway.

3. Tell the true story:

I basically quoted what the service man told me. I wasn’t making anything up. When people read the appeal they heard my voice, not some “templated” ask.

4. We had a lot of volunteers that could spread the word:

We had over sixty volunteers that helped at the shelter and another couple of hundred that help us in other ways. These folks have a known attachment to the building and the MRFRS programs. I believe that 50% of volunteers will donate to a cause that they volunteer for.

5. An engaged email list:

We had always focused on building up our email list with as many names as possible. We used this listing to email out our appeal. It was before the time of algorithms and spam email boxes, so many emails got to where they needed to be.

The fall is the best time to ask for donations and if something like this happens to your organization, please take advantage of the situation and raise some funds! Many groups raise over half of their donations over the next two months. Did you know that?

Don’t by shy, tell a story and get some donations to help Community Cats in your neighborhood today, too!