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In 1998, fur flew when Cheryl and Dave Duffield, PeopleSoft
Founder and Board Chairman, announced their intention to
establish Maddie's FundŽ and give away more than $200 million
dollars to help save this nation's homeless cats and dogs. But
getting the money hasn't been as easy as many animal
organizations thought. This step-by-step plan is designed to
make the process clearer so that more groups can get funded;
more lives can be saved.
1.
Review guidelines
2.
Make a directory
3.
Set up a meeting
4.
Meet with working group; decide key issues
5.
Gather data/fill out preliminary application
6.
Meet with Maddie's Fund
7.
Finalize goals
8.
Determine implementation strategies
9.
Complete Maddie's Fund Adoption and Spay/Neuter
applications
1. Review
guidelines. The first step is easy. Make sure you're
eligible for funding. The Maddie's Fund web site has
downloadable Funding Guidelines and Instructions; current
Preliminary, Adoption, and Spay/Neuter Application Forms; and
a series of Frequently Asked Questions that are all important
"must reads." Hard copies can be requested by phone
(510.337.8989), by fax (510.337.8988), or by email
(info@maddiesfund.org). By reading the guidelines and
reviewing the application materials, you find out exactly what
Maddie's Fund will and won't support. For example, Maddie's
Fund will support rescue organizations linked in
community-wide collaborations with private veterinary
practitioners, traditional shelters, and animal control
agencies. Maddie's Fund will not provide money for shelter
construction, humane education programs, or emergency funding.
A note to remember: Maddie’s Fund will not depart from the
Guidelines. You will not convince Maddie’s Fund to support an
individual organization’s operation or any other very
admirable or worthwhile effort if it falls outside the
Guidelines.
2. Make a
directory. Next, put together a comprehensive, animal
organization survey, complete with contact names, phone
numbers and addresses of all the animal groups in your area.
Include traditional shelters, animal control agencies, rescue
organizations, breed or feral cat rescue groups, shelter
auxiliaries, the veterinary medical association, private
veterinary hospitals, spay/neuter clinics, etc.
3. Set up a meeting. Once you've
established your directory, invite every single group to an
exploratory meeting to discuss the various organizations'
level of interest in applying for a Maddie's Fund grant. (Even
if you don't go forward with a Maddie's Fund grant, this
meeting can lay the groundwork for effective community
collaboration.) If your local animal control agency or
traditional shelter refuses to even discuss the possibility of
participating in a Maddie's Fund grant, it's unlikely you'll
be able to proceed. Maddie's Fund grants are dependent upon
the cooperation of all traditional shelters and animal control
agencies.
Once at the meeting, present an
overview of the Maddie's Fund criteria, answer questions to
the best of your knowledge, compile a list of organizations
who want to proceed with a grant request, and set up another
meeting.
4. Meet with working group; decide key
issues. The participants at the next meeting will probably
be your core collaboration of rescue organizations,
traditional shelters, animal control facilities and private
practicing veterinarians. Now the work begins in earnest.
Actually hammering out the project and each group's role
within it can take several months, and entail many meetings.
Some communities have used the services of a facilitator to
help them run meetings or help coordinate the project. Even
so, some groups may get frustrated and drop out. Don't get
discouraged! Getting as few as three or as many as thirty
groups plus veterinarians to work together as a team is no
easy task. Issues to decide: There are a lot of key
issues the group must decide: an adoption guarantee lead
agency to administer the adoption component, a VMA lead agency
to administer the spay/neuter component, the target community,
the project goals, implementation strategies, and grant
distribution plan. A word about the target community:
The target community can be a city, a county or a state. Some
groups have considered the idea of having one county and bits
of others as their target community. This sort of
gerrymandering can get overly complex; it's better to stay
within more clearly defined boundaries. The most critical
thing to remember about the target community – don't bite off
more than you can chew. It's better to start small and succeed
than to start big and fail.
5.
Gather data/fill out preliminary application. Data
gathering is generally taken on by the lead agencies since
these organizations will be in charge of tracking statistics
and compiling progress reports throughout the life of the
project. This process in and of itself can be laborious, time
consuming and frustrating. Many shelters don't keep detailed
statistics. The busy schedules of shelter workers and
veterinary hospital staff make data gathering even more
difficult. In addition, most shelter workers aren't used to
collecting the kind of information Maddie's Fund asks for
(e.g., numbers of healthy, treatable and non-rehabilatatable
deaths as defined by Maddie's Fund Guidelines). But once the
data is collected, it will serve as an invaluable tool to help
organizations meet their goals.
Once you've
gathered the data, use it to fill out the Preliminary
Application, which should be sent to Maddie's Fund as the
first step in the application process.
6. Meet with
Maddie's Fund. Once your completed Preliminary Application
has been sent in, Maddie's Fund will be happy to meet directly
with your group to answer any and all questions and to help
you prepare your final Applications. The preferred way for
Maddie's Fund to meet is by conference call, but in some cases
Maddie's Fund staff will consider traveling to your community.
Please note: Maddie's Fund will not be able to meet with
groups unless all of their data for the Preliminary
Application has been gathered and submitted.
7. Finalize goals. Part VII of
the Adoption Application shows you how to establish your
adoption and death reduction goals for the grant, and footnote
1 of the Spay/Neuter Application explains how to calculate
your spay/neuter goals for the grant. The Applications also
take the guesswork out of how much money to ask for. The
formulas, estimating guides and calculations tell you how to
use the statistics you've gathered to develop baselines, above
baseline targets and goals, and how much money Maddie's Fund
will provide for your project. Remember: in order to
get funding from Maddie's Fund, you must be able to reach the
goal of eliminating the deaths of healthy dogs and cats in
your target community within five years. You may find out that
the numbers of healthy deaths in your target community are so
high, getting to the goal in five years is impossible. In that
case, you'll have to put your Applications aside for now while
you implement strategies to reduce the numbers. When you
progress to the point where the goal is achievable in five
years, you can apply for a Maddie's Fund grant. Please
note: Maddie's Fund money is designed to help take programs to
the finish line; it is not designed to tackle intractable
problems in troubled communities.
8. Determine implementation
strategies. Now that the goals have been established, the
group needs to figure out how to reach them! Brainstorm ideas
that will provide direct and immediate results. The plan
should fit within your community's resources, abilities and
values. Consider the strategies of other successful
organizations and check out the Maddie's Fund web site to look
at the Applications and Progress Reports from other funded
projects. "No-Kill News From Around the Nation" and "Is There A No-Kill Blueprint" are other
helpful articles on the Maddie's Fund web site. All of this
should help you create a Business Plan that's right for your
community.
9. Complete the
Maddie's Fund Adoption and Spay/Neuter Applications. What
once looked daunting and unfathomable, the Maddie's Fund
Applications, are now a piece of cake. The adopton guarantee
lead agency should fill out and send in the Adoption
Application, and the local, regional, or state VMA should fill
out and send in the Spay/Neuter Application. Both applications
must be received for your project to be considered. Keep in
mind: even if you are accepted for funding, Maddie's Fund may
work with you for several more months to finalize the details
of the grant. These details will ultimately be placed in a
written agreement that both parties must
sign.
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