Financials
Detailed financial reports have been sent to board members. We have lost a lot of income due to cancelled fundraisers. Luckily we are still in the black. A few other fundraisers have helped fill in and make up some of the gap.
Adoptions
Adoptions 328 as of July 26
Covid policy and virtual adoptions are working out well.
Still struggling to get spay/neuter appointments but improving
Intakes 355 (including litters) Returns 26
Fundraisers
Most fundraisers still on hold.
Flatbread is scheduled for August 18th. Please invite bunny friends and local friends to the facebook event. Help promote and advertise. Take out orders too.
Special May Giving Tuesday raised $3415
Independence facebook fundraiser is still open and has raised over $4000 so far
Covid 19 appeal through Givebox raised a little over $4000. It is hard to get an exact number since we noticed an uptick in paypal donations when email went out but hard to say how many were from the appeal.
Getting some money in auctioning off baby names. Last batch will bring in $305
We are selling tie dye t-shirts (59 sold so far for $590) and decals (41 so far for $410).
Calendar will hopefully be sent out for printing this week.
Auctions are set up in wordpress and have been working well for the naming auctions.
Development Committee Update:
We have formed the Development Committee, a sub-committee of the Board which includes Dawn Lewis (chair), Jen Beauchesne, Lesley Braga, Rachel Minnie, and Abigail Ring. The Development Committee acknowledged the current financial and social losses due to COVID-19 and reports a loss of $6,478 due to the cancellation of both Bunny Spa Days (compared to 2019 totals), $13,169 due to the cancellation of Yoga events (compared to 2019 totals), and $2,201.19 (compared to 2019 totals). While HRN has made up for financial losses with success through giving, the Development Committee will be working to bring more fundraising and (virtual) social events to HRN in the coming months. The following events are being actively worked on:
-virtual 5k (Rachel will work to coordinate this)
-Flatbread done according to COVID-19 protocol (with smaller prize auction)- August 18th at Flatbread Company in Bedford, 5-9 (eat in or take out). This will take the place of the event normally done in September. (Suzanne is the current lead for this)
-online auction using Facebook (Rachel has offered to organize this)
-bunny naming auctions (coordinated by the Rachel and the HRN social media team)
possible future events/scenarios for socialization/engagement/fundraising:
-online kid-friendly bunny workshops about rabbit care
-“bunny Facebook” takeover auction (people bid for chances for their bunny to “take over our social media for the day)
-online trivia/online comedy events/nights
-“online/virtual” bunfest (this would be work-heavy and may not yield the most money but may help open doors for a future bunfest event
-House Rabbit Network Patreon (Lesley to deliver info)
-revamping the online store
For Spa Day, we are still waiting to hear if Domino will allow us to do this. If they do, we could assemble a bare bones crew and offer curbside-to-operatory spa day. This would completely remove the social aspect from the day, however.
Grants
Submitted for HRS $1000 emergency grant
No MAC grant this year.
Working on final reports for Petco grant and 2019 MAC grant
Will submit for next Petco grant when cycle opens up
Holiday wishes grant is open Aug 10-Sep 23. We need to encourage people to submit with stories of how their pet has helped them.
Shelter
Still closed, need to discuss keeping it or if/when to reopen. Hiring a shelter manager is on hold. Also limited number of rabbits.
Donation Management
Abbey did import data from quickbox for the last 5 years. She sent out an email appeal to 1798 people which has raised over $4000. 69 people donated through Givebox, an unknown number through paypal as there was an uptick in paypal donations around the time. We discussed sending out a formal letter to a limited targeted group and judge the response to that.
Foster Homes
There has been a large increase in interest in fostering during Covid. Some of these homes have turned into long term fosters, others are looking to “try out” a bun. We have determined it’s best to have only neutered buns in homes that can not transport to the limited number of vets offering surgeries. We have established an email group for foster homes to improve communication. A Google Sheet has been created to track rabbits in foster homes that are in need of spay/neuter and I have been working directly with the foster homes to get their buns in to surgery in a more streamlined way.
Independence/Tolland Rescue
The end of June we received a call on the Hotline from a social worker. Her client disclosed he had 80 rabbits at his home and needed help. On July 2nd five HRN volunteers and three CT Humane employees worked together to pull a total of 94 rabbits from two bedrooms, one rabbit was in a barn on the property. The home was in a condemnable state and the tenants were known drug users. The rabbits were distributed among multiple rescues, including CT Humane, Providence Animal Rescue League, Potter League, Lowell Humane, Dakin Humane and HRN. HRN took in a total of 43, 8 babies were born in rescue two days later totaling 51 rabbits from the home in Tolland. 5 rabbits were in need of prompt medical attention and attended to by CT Humane vets.
Hotline
We moved the application process online and have a new email address where all of the apps and hotline reports are housed.
We trained FIVE new volunteers! We trainied some back ups too
Tuesdays are open right now, we have lots of interest, I will hold a training in the next 2 weeks to get a new person for Tuesdays. I am covering for now.
Keeping waiting lists was a failed experiment so we shifted the language on the site to basically say that not all the buns are necessarily available. We also removed the question about a specific bun on the application
Upcoming
One more hotline volunteer will be added and possibly another back up
Moving the “admin” process for adoption completion from Amanda to me. New email was created to track everything.
Paypal
We would like to limit the number of people that have access to paypal but several people need to be able to view transactions. We are going looking into setting up a group and have transaction emails sent to the group, which will allow many people to view the data without having paypal access.
Capturing Strays
We need to stress that HRN does not go out and capture strays and when people are out they should not mention our name or say they are representing.
GSuite
We are using gsuite for managing our email, group and phone. Suzanne and Amanda had admin rights, Lesley has been given admin rights too.
Data Managment System
Suzanne has been working on a list of questions/requirements for evaluation data management systems. She will start investigating different tools next week.