New to Forums, Looking for help with grants

[veda]

Hi, I'm new to the forums. I'm a member of a fairly new 501(c)(3) animal rescue and we are now addressing the problem of feral cats in our area. We need to talk to rescues who have written for grant money from PetCo. 

 

[StefanZ]

I just want to say Hello and Welcome.  I hope others can tip you how to seek grants from PetCo and other organizations.

During meantime, you want perhaps to describe more your group, the situations, what possiblilites you do have, what you do perhaps have, and what you dont have.

Good luck!

 

[veda]

Hi, StefanZ We are a very small rescue out in the middle of the cornfields of Southwest Minnesota. We are over an hour in any direction from any kind place with an actual animal shelter. Our group operates through foster homes to place as many dogs, cats, and other animals into homes as we possibly can. Once or twice a year one of the larger city no kill shelters will take a few of our animals to help us out. 

We are actually doing really well with placing dogs into new homes. Cats are a major problem for us. We can't place even kittens at a minimum adoption fee of $25. All of us are now full up to the number of cats we can keep. Even our member who has a farm has 30 cats (spayed and neutered at her expense). 

We have several colonies of stray/feral cats. We have a group who are living out at the barn where one of our members has her horse. There are 17 cats coming to the feeding station and at least 6 of them are about ready to have kittens. These cats are all feral. Our director has a pair of feral females who have come to her yard for shelter and food. One of them has had kittens in the cat shelter. Our town has a 'cat lady' who feeds the semi-tame cats released in the neighborhood. I think right now she has 7 since the last time the police trapped and killed stray cats. We have several other farms with small colonies of feral cats. 

We have three goals. We want to TNR as many cats as we can to stop the breeding. We want to place as many of the kittens as we can in pet homes. We want to convince the city that TNR is a better option to killing cats. 

So far, we have collected $1,500 toward TNR above our normal operating budget. We were hoping to get MN SNAP to come and do a spay/neuter day for us and our local community, but we are outside of their operating range. We can get spay/neuter and shots done for $75 locally through a price break our vets are willing to give our rescue. We are hoping to get at least $5000 from PetCo to start making a dent in the need for spay/neuter. 

Veda

 

[jennyr]

What you are doing sounds a wonderful project, if overwhelming. I do not know if any of our members have experience with getting grants in this way, but I am sure they will answer you if they have.

 

[catapault]

Veda, have you considered trying a crowdsourcing site such as Indiegogo? To check it out search for Indiegogo on the Internet, click on Browse at the head of the page, and then Animals to see what animal related projects other people are funding. Good luck!