RSPCA week isn't a success

To be honest it wasn't a big surprise that my inbox today contained a message from our HQ saying that Tesco are reducing the number of days during RSPCA week 2013 when we can collect donations outside their stores. 

RSPCA week has been incredibly valuable to branches over the years, but we've never been able to realise its full potential because we simply don't have enough volunteers to cover all the major Tesco stores over 7 days. Reasonably-enough Tesco now say it's not fair to say no to other charities who might be able to make full use of the opportunity.

The days we can collect will now be Friday May 3rd, Saturday 4th and Sunday May 5th.

If we make a real effort to achieve total cover in 2013, Tesco may  revise their decision and offer us the full 7 days again in 2014. If we don't ... we could well see our collection permission reduced even further.

Animal welfare is in crisis. Our inspectors are needed as never before and all the while there is the ticking time-bomb of people who have animals and won't be able to cope if they get ill, or injured, or if the price of feed goes up. 

Whether you think the RSPCA is too timid in its campaigns — or much too "activist" — please make a resolution to help us provide the basic welfare services that make animals' lives tolerable.

It would be an enormous help if you could spare just two hours to collect — either during 3-5 May 2013 or during 15-17 February 2013 when we have permission to collect at Pets at Home.

Sheep for live export at Ramsgate port

If you can help collect, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

We also need more volunteers to help at our three charity shops and to set up a fundraising group.

Please also consider joining the RSPCA. The more members we have, more likely it is that government will pay attention when we lobby for better treatment of animals. More members also means a larger pool of talent to draw on for local branch committees and stronger democracy.

Pics from the Newmarket shop's 1st anniversary

Unfortunately Chief Inspector Mark Thompson was called away to an incident so was unable to attend the anniversary. However the customers, staff and volunteers thoroughly enjoyed it, including a fantastic cake baked by a local confectioner's shop.

This was the first time I'd had an opportunity to see the shop in action and I was very impressed by the way Lorna and her team have made use of every inch of sales space. This is essential as the Market St. shop has lots of storage in its basement, but a very compact sales area which depends on keeping a constant flow of items to fill up as donations are sold.

The cake!

Vinyls!

Many thanks to the donor of about four hundred vinyl records. We started the mammoth task of getting them out on the shop floor today.  We're now about half-way through and have already raised over £70 from the first sales.

Thank-you also to Nicola and Michael who shipped the first two loads over to our Burleigh Street shop and to Anton for going through them checking for the most collectible ones which are likely to be worth more than the rest. I never knew before that some vinyls were made from white plastic instead of the usual black (they look rather like white chocolate) and are collectible because they're unusual.

We hope (if Nicola and Michael can bear it) to transfer the second half next Saturday and put them out on the shop floor at Burleigh Street on the Sunday.

Why use volunteers?

This might seem entirely obvious — we use volunteers to make more money available to help animals — but it's currently a hot topic in general volunteering circles, with some people saying that it's better to cut services than to replace staff with volunteers, and others rather more sensibly arguing that half a loaf is better than no bread and it's preferable to keep a few staff supported by volunteer helpers than making everyone redundant.

From the standpoint of an animal charity I have to admit I find the repeated assertions that volunteers should never, never be seen as "free labour" a bit strange. Volunteers are donating their time and it makes no sense to insist on devising complicated explanations of why this isn't the really important bit of volunteering.

If you're a stray cat with a broken leg, you need a qualified, paid vet to fix it, but you need volunteers to raise the cash that pays the vet.

If you happen to be a merchant banker, it probably would be more useful to us if you bunged us the odd half-million rather than helping out in your leisure time, but, for most of us, volunteering is a way to give the charity a cash equivalent we couldn't afford to donate as actual money from our wages.

Our shops illustrate how this works: we need some paid staff to ensure we can open regularly at the times customers expect, but if all the work involved in running a shop had to be done by paid staff the profit available to use for animals would be minimal, if not non-existant — probably around the 5% received by charities who don't have shops, but get a percentage from commercial "charity bag" collections.

Fundamentally, money is a way of storing the value of work. Whether you do the work directly or donate it as cash, cat food or saleable items, we need your help.

Please visit our shops at 61 Burleigh Street, Cambridge, 10a Market Street, Newmarket, or 188 Mill Road, Cambridge and give us your support.

Would you be more interested in flexible volunteering?

We realise most people are incredibly busy nowadays, and committing to turn up regularly may be a serious difficulty. 

Obviously our regular volunteers do have to skip sessions sometimes too when they need to fit in vets' appointments, holidays and so on (we're not slave drivers!)

If you think you can probably only manage to volunteer occasionally, there are still lots of useful things you can get involved with.

Shops

We need the regular volunteers to make it possible to stay open at the advertised times, but there are plenty of back-room tasks which can be started or stopped depending on the number of helpers available.

Behind the person at the till there is a busy team who sort, clean, price and shelve. If they can stack up plenty of items all priced and ready on days when many volunteers are available, one helper can keep up with the shelf-filling when we're short-staffed.

Extra helpers on a Sunday, when sales are comparatively slow, can really benefit the following weekdays by making it possible for Monday to open fully stocked and looking good.

RSPCA Week

We normally average over £20 per volunteer per hour for this collection, which comes round at the end of April each year. If you don't have time to do anything else in the year, just two hours volunteering would mean £40 we wouldn't otherwise have.

One-off stalls and events

Individual jumble, car-boot or table-top sales can raise useful amounts, although they need a fair bit of organisation and some way of transporting sales items.

Annual Dog Show

We need a team of people for the basic organisation, but there are plenty of useful things that can be done on the day itself if you don't have time to come to any pre-planning meetings.

If you might be interested, email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Message from Katie, who will be trying to pull together our branch volunteering activities

Just to let everyone know that the volunteers meeting will be held, as usual, at Emporium 61 on Burleigh Street next Thursday (16th December) beginning at 7.30pm. I hope to see as many of you there as possible!  As of January we will be holding these regular meetings at the Cornerhouse Pub on Newmarket Road and hope that this will make for a nicer atmosphere as well as encourage a few more new faces!

 

I have attached the proposed fundraising calendar for next year and as always we will require any help that you can offer. Be it an hour, a day or a week! (Particularly for fundraisers during RSPCA week really anytime you can spare will make a difference).

 

Just to introduce myself a little more formally, my name is Katie and I recently graduated from the University of Exeter, currently I am working in Sawston for a small market research company. As I work 9-5.30, email is the best way to get in touch with me but I am hoping to become a central point of contact for all volunteers. I want to make sure that everyone is happy so any feedback you can offer will be greatly appreciated. Another part of my role is recruiting new volunteers as well as coordinating the volunteers needed for some of our larger events such as RSPCA week and hopefully next year our sponsored dog walk and dog show!

 

I will be using an email list to let you all know what is going on, any events that are coming up and general reminders. I fully appreciate that no one wants to be bombarded with emails and so I will try and keep this to a bare minimum. If you would like to be taken off of this list for ANY reason please do let me know!

 

Anyway Happy Holidays to all of you and thank you for all of your hard work this year!!

 

Best Wishes

 

Katie

(If you would like to be added to the volunteering email list, please send an email to volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk)

January
February	One World Week @ University of Cambridge : Work for A charity  event
March
April
May	RSPCA Week (2nd-8th May) Sponsored Dog Walk Half term (30th May- 3rd of June)
June	Microchipping day/ Dog Show we are hoping to combine an ‘alternative dog show’ with a microchipping event for dogs £10 per microchip with an average saving of £10 which raises £6 for each microchip RSPCA AGM-end of June
July	Summer activities- Bingo night/ Pub Quiz/ Treasure Hunt/ Race night/ bat walk one activity a fortnight over the summer
August	Pole Dancing/ Pilates/ Yoga trials
September	Freshers Fair @ Cambridge university
October
November	Mill Road Christmas light switch on
December	Mill Road Winter Fair Meeting for next year’s fundraising calendar Christmas Event- All ideas welcome!!

Video showing some of the work of our clinic

Sadly, Star, the cat featured in the video, suffered heart failure a few weeks after it was filmed. He was given treatment at the Vet School as an inpatient, but died shortly after admission.

Heart problems are a common complication of an over-active thyroid (which is what was wrong with Star), because basically the whole of the cat's metabolism starts running at an excessive rate. This can overload the heart and weaken it.

Cats! Help urgently needed

We have just been notified of the existence of a large colony of cats who may need to be moved because the site where they are living is due to be re-developed.

We'll have more details when we've had a change to speak in depth to the person who contacted us, but it's likely that we will need:

• Suitable sites (e.g. stables, barn, large garden) for pairs of neutered adult cats who have been used to living outside.
• Foster homes for kittens needing socialisation.
• Volunteers willing to help with trapping cats and transporting them to the vets for neutering.
• Help with funds to cover the costs.

How not to do a home-visit!

Ouch! (I should say at once that the facebook page discussed in the linked article does NOT belong to any RSPCA facility in Britain).

We do ask potential adopters for a letter from their landlord confirming that it's OK for them to have pets, but I hope we would go about it a little more tactfully than that and this is where training is key.

The Librarian has some very relevant wise words about why the staff and volunteers of any organisation should beware the temptation to bad-mouth their customers on social media. Animal rescue groups are no exception to this rule; animal adopters are our support base and we need to remember this even when we most feel: "the more I see of human beings, the more I like dogs."

Everyone who adopts an animal from our branch normally has a pre-adoption visit to check that their facilities are suitable for the pet they want and to try to ensure any snags are dealt with before they cause problems. (For example our home-visitors will give advice on whether the adopters' garden fence is able to contain the dog they've reserved.)

It's important that home-visitors don't get the idea that their job is to catch out people who are going to be cruel to animals; it can cause enormous difficulties if they take it upon themselves to do subsequent un-announced visits or otherwise give adopters the impression that they are being treated as suspects. Follow-up post-adoption visits should always be by pre-arrangement with the adopter — realistically what are they going to cover up as a result of having a few days notice?

The vast majority of people who come forward to adopt do it because they love animals and want to help and it does animal welfare no favours if we insult or patronise them because that means they'll be less likely to help us with other things, like fundraising, in the future. Some of them do need to be encouraged to accept that standards of pet care have moved on since they were children (we wouldn't home a single rabbit to live alone in a hutch, for example), and some need a gentle steer towards animals that are suitable for their circumstances (for example a large dog in a flat with no lift is going to be a big problem when he gets elderly and finds stairs difficult).

Home visitors are essentially a point of contact between the adopter and the branch, and post-homing visits should be an opportunity to solve any problems and ensure the placement is a success, not a threat that the animal will be taken away.

In reality our biggest problem is not abusive adopters, but lonely, needy ones who would ideally like to have their home visitor popping back every weekend to check the pet is OK and help with flea treatments, nail trimming etc.

We always need more volunteers to do home-visits, as it's important that the visit is done as soon as possible after an adopter has expressed interest. If you might be interested in training for this, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Cats everywhere!

This year's been particularly bad for unwanted cats, partly because our funds are so low that we have to think very hard before taking any extra animals into our kennels and partly because it looks as though more owners are procrastinating about getting female kittens neutered until it's too late.

We need to recruit more foster carers so that we can avoid putting kittens into a cattery environment where they miss out on the important social learning they would get in a home environment. 

If you might be interested in fostering for us, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

We will cover expenses such as food, litter etc.

Slideshare presentation on volunteer recruitment and retention

From Adopt a Pet in the StatesVolunteering

Not quite what you'll find in most RSPCA branches because the majority of these are directly run by their management committee members, who are all volunteers themselves. However there are lots of tips we could use.

Fostering animals for the branch

We had a fairly typical call on Sunday from an elderly lady who'd been feeding a stray cat in her garden and watching with alarm as Kitty's pregnancy became more and more obvious. Her little dog was scared of cats and she herself was allergic, so she couldn't bring the cat indoors to have the kittens, and in any case she was very worried what she would do if urgent veterinary attention was needed. She was convinced that Kitty might be about to give birth at any moment, so was desperate to get her into a safe home. 

From our point of view this kind of situation is an emergency because, once the kittens had been born outside it would be very hard to find them and give them enough human contact to stop them growing up wild. In a year's time any female kittens would be able to have kittens of their own and in no time at all there would be a colony of hard-to-home cats and complaints about mess and smell.

So many thanks to one of our fosterers for coming up trumps and taking mother-to-be in at 30 minutes notice. The elderly lady had obviously been feeding her well and handled her enough to get her tame enough to settle comfortably indoors, so we should have no difficulty finding her a home provided all goes well with the birth.

Would you be interested in fostering animals for us?

You need to be living in premises where animals are allowed, but a garden is not essential as most fostered animals are either very young or recovering from injuries and need to be confined inside. 

Typically we try to get puppies, young kittens and/or their expectant mothers into foster homes so that they can benefit from social contact with humans and other animals. Kittens and puppies who spend their first weeks in kennels tend to grow up shy and have more difficulty adjusting to life in a normal family home.

We also try to use foster homes for recuperating injured or sick animals so they can get more TLC than in busy boarding kennels and to avoid too many trips between the kennels and our clinic.

The need for foster homes is fairly unpredictable, so we try to keep a roster of people who don't mind being contacted when an animal needs to come in. Families with children are ideal for socialising young animals because it means they get a broad experience of different types of people and are more likely to be friendly with everyone. If you have children who are going to be very upset if the fostered animal doesn't survive, it might be best to be selective about taking on injured animals.

All foster homes are visited by our homing co-ordinator before animals are placed with them. Basically this is a similar visit to the ones we do before placing animals in permanent homes, except that the homing co-ordinator will also discuss the practicalities of caring for injured or very young animals (e.g. loaning the foster home a suitable cage for animals who need to be confined).

The branch will cover expenses such as food and cat litter and any veterinary costs involved.

If you might be interested in fostering, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

RSPCA Week 2010

As usual I don't feel we made as much of RSPCA week as we could have done if we'd had more volunteers and hadn't already been maxed out with other things that couldn't be abandoned to make time to organise it properly.

Ideally we need to recruit someone who isn't already doing something else that's "mission-critical" to branch activities who could make it their sole project. Collectors don't just need to be recruited; they need to be contacted with reminders a few weeks beforehand; issued with their tins and badges, then finally thanked and told how much was collected after the event. It just isn't possible for someone to do this effectively on top of other major volunteering commitments. It's also much better for volunteers' morale if the person organising RSPCA week is collecting too, so they don't feel they're being bossed about by someone who's not pulling their weight in the actual work.

Millennium Volunteers, Big Society et al.

Politicians and political journalists seem to be in favour of volunteering, but it hardly ever seems that they "get" the nature and problems of existing voluntary organisations, particularly ones concerned with animal protection.

In my more embittered moments I feel they expect the RSPCA to solve any problem with the most tenuous connection with animals (pet cremation? dogfight? deranged cat? no money? floods? plague of frogs? frogs with plague?) while providing volunteering opportunties that train people so they can leave and get paid work as soon as they are trained. In spite of this they don't seem to expect to factor us into any of the new schemes for community volunteering even though it would be a lot easier to build on existing groups rather than reinventing the wheel each time. And on top of that a lot of them seem to have a grumpy view of animal protection as a drain on resources that ought to have been spent on humans.

The sheer volume of calls to the RSPCA phones illustrates the level of demand and the circular disaster of the attitude that says, "If you haven't got enough money, I won't give you another penny."

At the most basic level, service-providing animal charities like the RSPCA are putting serious amounts of money into local communities, helping to keep jobs at vets and kennels and improving the quality of life of very poor people who would otherwise have to give up their pets. We're neutering cats and dogs to prevent over-population from causing mess, disease and disturbance, and rehoming animals whose owners can't cope. It's the non-glamorous, hard slog end of animal welfare and we can't keep it up forever without more broadly-based support. Over the past few years we've been sucked into ever more desperate attempts to satisfy demand in the hope that giving what people want will eventually mean more help.

Many of the people who benefit from our services don't have any realistic prospect of getting into paid work so that they can pay their own vet bills, but almost everyone would be capable of doing something to help keep us going, whether it was collecting funds, helping at our charity shops, or donating old clothes for recycling. In return they'd get the sense of purpose, self-respect and companionship that's so badly needed to combat the pervasive depression and unhappiness.

RSPCA Week 2010 26th April to 2nd May

Register an interest in volunteering with us

Volunteers needed in Newmarket

Our charity shop at 156 High Street, Newmarket urgently needs more volunteers to cover Saturday afternoons. We particularly need helpers for sorting incoming donations and cleaning and tidying the shop and stockroom so that they're ready for the Monday volunteers.

If you don't have time to volunteer every Saturday, it would still be very useful to have more people willing to come in on a monthly rota.

If you can help, please call in at the shop (ideally on a Saturday morning or early Saturday afternoon).

Resolutions

"Raise more funds," has to be our motto going into 2010. Without money we can't pay vets to treat animals, or kennels to board them so that they can be rehomed.

You can help us by:

• Buying items from our charity shops at 61 Burleigh St, Cambridge, 188 Mill Road, Cambridge and 156 High Street, Newmarket.
• Donating items to our shops (textiles and shoes can be sold for recycling even if they are worn out, but other items need to be in saleable condition).
• Volunteering in our shops.
  
• Volunteering to help with our yearly collection in RSPCA week at the end of April.
• Adopting animals from us so that they spend a shorter time in kennels, costing us boarding fees.
• Donating a percentage to us when you sell items on eBay.
• Buying second hand books online from our Abebooks store
  

Rejoicing over shop slightly premature

As we weren't allowed to transfer the initial rent payment at the same time as paying the rent deposit and paying for the fixtures & fittings, I'd rather hoped we would be able to pay the landlord by cheque, which is a straightforward process that can be done by post.

Sadly, like everything involved in the never-ending Burleigh Street Shop saga, that would be too easy, so Kit and Janine will be turning up in person to initiate the payment at the branch of Cambs. Building Society which opens on Sundays.

With any luck this will be the absolutely final step before we can get the keys and we will be able to make a start on cleaning and decorating next week.

The banner above is Andrew's absolutely inspired design for the shop frontage. Note that the phone number is only a dummy as we've not got a line installed yet.

If you are interested in volunteering to help with setting up the shop, please ask Andrew or Ffiona at 188 Mill Road. If you would like to drop off donated goods by car there is vehicle access and a parking space at the back of the shop from Paradise street, but for the moment, please still take donations intended for 61 Burleigh street to 188 Mill road as we'd like to do a thorough clean before moving in any stock.

View Larger Map

Bramble clearing working party March 29th

We're going to make a start on clearing the brambles and piles of brush in the area at the back of the animal clinic on Sunday March 29th. Start 9 am (yes - I do know this is the day the clocks go forward), finish around 1 p.m. This is the fire exit route for the rooms to the rear of the building, so we need to keep it free of obstructions.

We could do with more volunteers (turn up any time between 9 and 1). You'll need gardening gloves, and it would be very helpful if you could bring secateurs or loppers.