RSPCA bookshop at 188 Mill Road

These charming "Four Seasons" and cat prints were donated to our Books and Prints shop at 188 Mill Road.

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Mill Road doesn't really attract many shoppers during the week and the area is becoming more and more just a "dormitory" where people who work more centrally return at night. This means we can't justify paying a manager's salary for the shop, as we'd never sell enough to cover it. 

At the moment we can usually only open on Fridays and Saturdays, when we have enough volunteers. I've been on holiday from my paid job for the past few days, so I've experimentally taken in some of the branch paperwork I need to catch up with and done it at the staff desk. Results have been patchy. Thursday afternoon was pretty good, but yesterday was hardly worth the effort, with most people browsing rather than buying.

We do get a lot of good donations, that donors might not make the effort to cart all the way to our Burleigh Street shop, and I would really like to make the effort to keep 188 open for a full six days. If you have an interest in books, music CDs or pictures and think you might like to get involved, even for just a few hours each week, please email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Volunteer opportunity: Phone Rota

We need helpers with answering our emergency contact number on a rota basis.

This would involve having calls forwarded to your own telephone for an agreed period - e.g. every Wednesday between 9 am and 1 pm.

The most important reason for maintaining the rota is to make it possible for clinic clients to phone in for an emergency out of hours appointment if their pet has a problem that can't safely be left until the next normal clinic session. This is why we try to make sure that someone is available to pick up an incoming call within ten minutes.

Other calls are mainly from members of the public needing help with animal-related problems and many can be solved by putting them in contact with the main RSPCA control centre, dog warden service etc. 

The rest can usually be divided into ones asking for information about using the animal clinic (e.g. opening times, charges, what proof of benefit is required) and requests for help with out of hours veterinary emergencies where the owner is not able to pay for a private vet to treat their animal.

Full training will be given.

Next dog show planning meeting Thursday 16th June

Holly and Graham, winners of our last show

This will be a combined dog show planning and volunteers meeting at the Corner House Pub, Newmarket Road, Cambridge, starting at 7.30pm.

Anyone interested in helping with the dog show on 9th July, or volunteering with the branch in general, would be very welcome. The Corner House does excellent veggie or non-veggie meals if you would like to eat as well as chat.

Volunteer opportunity: Minute taker

Basically this involves attending our regular monthly committee meetings, taking rough notes and then writing up minutes of action points agreed and circulating them by email before the next committee meeting.

It may seem fairly trivial, but for the effective running of the branch it's essential to have an accurate record of what was agreed and who has been "volunteered" to action the decisions. The accountants who prepare the annual independent examination of our financial affairs which is required by law expect our records to include minutes of all meetings where decisions were taken.

This would be an excellent opportunity for someone with note-taking skills who is interested in learning more about the activities of RSPCA branch committees, but not yet prepared to take on the responsibilities of full trusteeship. Or, of course, for someone who DOES want to be a trustee and would like to get started with useful work that doesn't require huge amounts of time.

If you might be interested in this, email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Volunteer opportunity: transport organiser

This is the first of a series of posts I'm going to run on the various volunteer posts we are trying to fill within the branch:

We often need to transport animals (mostly cats, but some dogs and other small animals) at short notice. This will usually be from a veterinary surgery where the animal has been given first aid, going either to our own clinic for further treatment or to kennels or a foster home to be boarded until rehomed.

This transport is usually done by volunteer drivers, but it can be time-consuming phoning round until one who is available at the time can be located because of the unpredictable nature of the need. At present the task of phoning round is done either by me or by Janine, our rehoming co-ordinator, but this is starting to be problematic because we both have full time paid jobs so we can't easily do the phone calls until the evening.

We would like to recruit someone who would be willing to take on the task of linking up the volunteer drivers with the driving jobs needing to be done.

This would involve the volunteer being available to take emails or phone calls notifying them that transport needed to be arranged and then phoning round the volunteer drivers to find someone who was available.

If interested, the volunteer might get more involved in trying to recruiting more drivers.

If you think you might be able to help with this, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Volunteering at our charity shops

We urgently need more volunteers at our shop at 61 Burleigh street. This is a big shop, now taking over £300 every day, but high turnover means that we need lots of helpers to keep donations moving out onto the shop floor.

Basically the process goes like this:

• Unsorted goods come in, either brought to the shop by individual donors, or collected via house-clearance runs or "trawling" (which is where we drop off collection bags in a street and return next week to pick them up, hopefully containing lots of things we can sell).
• We empty the bags into a large sorting bin, separating any obviously unsaleable items. Unsaleable textiles, shoes and metal items are bagged up for sale to recycling merchants. 
• The remaining items are checked again (e.g. for missing buttons, rips, stains). 
•  Any out-of season clothes (e.g. heavy winter coats in summer) are put into storage for their correct season.
• In-season clothes are hung on coathangers on a movable clothes rail, and items like crockery, bags, hats, shoes etc. are sorted into storage boxes.
• We use a steamer (basically similar to a large kettle with a flexible plastic spout ending in a bar like a vacuum cleaner attachment) to iron out creases and generally freshen up the clothes so that they look attractive.
• Each item of clothing is checked for size labels and the correct "size cube" is attached to its hanger. A price tag is completed and attached using a "pricing gun". Items like crockery and bric-à-brac are priced using sticky lables.
• As items on the shop floor are sold, the sales area is continually "topped up" from the clothes rail and the storage boxes in the back room. It's essential to keep up the flow so that the shop never looks bare and customers will keep on being attracted to come back.

At present we don't have enough volunteers to ensure that there is always at least one person to work in the back room as well as the one sitting at the till in the shop. Most of the time it would be useful to have at least two backroom helpers, so that one can be preparing goods and the other putting them out, as well as giving the person on the till cover for breaks.

If you might be interested in helping, please drop in at 61 Burleigh Street any day Monday-Saturday between 11 am and 5 pm.

Our shops are our only good source of regular income, and by supporting them you would be giving a real boost to our ability to provide local animal welfare services. It's also fun and a wonderful way to meet like-minded people

Volunteer Meetings: change of date and venue

We've decided to move the monthly volunteer meetings to our shop at 61 Burleigh st. as most people seemed to prefer a more central location.

The regular meetings will now be 7.30-9.30 pm on the third Thursday of each month (try saying that quickly!) They'll be fairly informal, so people can arrive and leave to suit themselves between those times. Please drop in if you're interested in finding more about RSPCA Cambridge and what we do locally.

Parking at the Adam and Eve Street public car park is free after 7 pm. Map below shows the shop location on Burleigh Street and the pedestrian access from Adam and Eve Street.

View RSPCA E61 in a larger map

Fiona has just pointed out that the next meeting, on May 20th, is the day following the training session for potential bookshop volunteers  on 19th May. If you are interested in volunteering at our bookshop (188 Mill Road), please go to the training session in preference to the general volunteer meeting if you can't do both. The general meetings will be a regular feature, so you won't miss out if you have to skip one or two of them.

The June meeting will be combined with the branch AGM and will be at the Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge on 17th June (same times). Subsequent meetings will be at the shop again.

Volunteering with the branch

Maisie, one of our injured strays

Volunteering opportunities with our branch probably don't fit the ideal image most people have of "helping at the RSPCA". Most of the animals we have up for rehoming are boarded at a private kennels, so we can't allow volunteers to just drop in and help out with dog walking etc. because this would mean disruption to the kennel owners' work caring for the private boarders.

A typical rescue case for us generally manifests via a call to the branch emergency phone from a private vet who has just received an injured stray with a log number from the RSPCA National Control Centre. This log number guarantees that the RSPCA will pay for emergency first aid. The Control Centre (NCC) is staffed 24/7 and responds to emergency calls from members of the public (or vets who have received injured strays directly). Sometimes an inspector or animal welfare officer will be sent out to deal with the situation (e.g. if the injured animal is dangerous), but if the finder has transport and can handle the animal they are usually requested to take it direct to a vet so that treatment can begin as soon as possible.

The National RSPCA pays the first £60 + VAT to get first aid started and the vet will then contact their local branch to fund continuing treatment and (hopefully) to rehome the animal once he or she is fit again.

This inevitably means that our rescues start off scattered all over our branch area, and we need to move them to our clinic for further treatment; to foster homes for recuperation, or to kennels for rehoming. Inevitably everything is guaranteed to happen at the most inconvenient time possible.

This is why we don't have many opportunities for people to come in and help with caring for the animals, but we always desperately need more foster homes and volunteer drivers.

If you might be able to help with either of these, please email: rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk