We have some new features of the site and other site news that may help you:
1. Volunteers: Originally, you were allowed to choose only one area of expertise for your profile, but some volunteers wrote to me saying that they wanted to be listed as two or more, such as writer AND editor. Well, I’ve had the registration form changed so you can now choose as many areas of expertise as apply. If you’d like to add any areas of expertise to your profile, please log in and modify your account.
2. Animal welfare organizations: You can now search for more than one type of volunteer at a time. For example, if you choose writer AND illustrator, the search function will bring up all the writers and all the illustrators in the database. However, you can’t search on location AND area of expertise, though we’re working on providing that capability.
3. Animal welfare organizations: Please keep in mind that you don’t need to constrain your search to your local area — most of our volunteers can work remotely over the Internet.
4. Everyone: Please let me know when a volunteer is working on a creativePAW project…I’d love to post about it on the site to encourage even more people to sign up!
I announced the creativePAW site less than two weeks ago, and we already have more than 110 volunteers registered! We have writers, editors, web designers, voice talent, photographers, PR people, graphic designers, musicians, and other creative professionals…we even have a tarot card reader who is willing to volunteer at charity events. Thank you to everyone who has signed up as a volunteer.
I’d like to give a special thanks to LinkedIn, which donated 10 job postings worth $200 each to help me find more volunteers. LinkedIn has more than 16 million members, so being able to reach them is quite a bonus.
The Granite City Animal Shelter, a no-kill shelter, is in dire straits. Please read this note from the shelter operators and do what you can to help…thanks so much!
Linda
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Dear Animal Lovers
We are asking, rather begging, at this point for your help. Our shelter is financially in very critical shape and in grave danger of closing. Our small membership continues to raise funds through every means possible, but its not enough. We need more members, we need more volunteers, but most of all, we need donations.
Granite City Animal Shelter in Dire Need of Donations
Those of you, who feel as we do when… you’re handed a dog with a 50lb tow chain embedded in his neck for so long that when it was removed he can no longer hold his head up… when two cats are dropped off so infested with fleas that they have scratched their own eyes out… the Akita that was beaten with a 2×4 daily for discipline… Sweat Pea, a bait dog for dog fighting with such a grossly scarred face it was hard to look at… or a skeletal 75lb Great Dane unable to stand who was being starved to see how long it would take him to die!
These horror stories are the facts of daily shelter cases! Where as other shelters may have deemed them lost causes, we are happy to report ALL of these animals were given medical care and love are now living happily in their own homes!
Our shelter successfully adopted out over 600 healthy, happy dogs and cats last year and we hope to always be able to continue our good work. This task becomes more and more overwhelming as the stray, ill and unwanted animal population continues to grow as our economy becomes more pinched.
As much of the public is unaware, being a “NO KILL” shelter restricts our shelter to private donations for all the operating costs to maintain our facility. Because we chose to heal, reform and love our critters rather than euthanize them, we are unable and do not qualify for city, state or government funding.
Daily operations require heat, electricity, water, telephones, enormous amounts of foods, cleaning products, office supplies but foremost preventative medicines, operations (such as spays and neuters) and vet bills to rehabilitate and cure those animals that have come to us in the worst possible shape.
For these “rejected, unhealthy and unloved animals” we ask for your pennies, dimes and dollars. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Though every puppy lick and kitty purr is worth a million to us! Please consider ANY donation a step toward our future and continued success. HELP! HELP! HELP! AND MUCH THANKS!
Click Here to Become a Guardian Angel
You may also donate by mail at:
Association for the Protection of Animals
P.O. Box 1311
Granite City, IL. 62040
