Good Afternoon to all our supporters!
Today I was at our storage unit where the food for our outreach programs are stored. And unfortunately, the shelves (and floor space) are almost bare. As fast as we purchase food (and we have been purchasing a lot of food) it is given out to needy animals and their families. Even though we do have food that is donated via our food collection bins and donators, most of the food is purchased. We can buy food at wholesale cost through our wonderful partners, Pet Supplies Plus in Bloomfield Hills for the dog food and Tractor Supply in Ortonville for the cat food.
To breakdown the math of food we purchase:
Dog Food: We purchase 3 pallets (180 bags) to 4 pallets (240 bags) of 16.5# bags of dry food each month and we give it all out. Lately it has been 4 pallets, because the need keeps increasing.
180 bags at $7.35 each bag = $1,323.00 and 4 bags would be $1,764.00
Cat Food: We used to purchase 30 bags of 16.0# bags of dry food every month, but we are going to start purchasing more because we gave the last 30 bags away in one week.
30 bags at $8.99 a bag = $269.70
The minimum cost of what we purchase to hand out every month is $2033.70. Multiply that by 12 months and we purchase $24,404.40 worth of cat and dog DRY food every year.
Supplementing that is the food that people donate, but that is just a small fraction of the total we give out.
The reason I am writing this is because our list is longer than the amount of food we have. We would like to help more animals in need faster, but the truth is we are limited by the donations that come in. The only way we can purchase more food is if people donate to our organization.
In addition to food purchases to give out in our outreach programs, we help people get their animals spayed or neutered. Unfortunately we are losing one of our major grants because the organization that gave us this grant is dissolving. This means that we are losing over $20,000. worth of spay/neuter grants a year. Somehow we need to make that money up and the only way to do that is donations from our supporters.
Outreach program food and spay/neuter are the major expenses that go to helping the animals, but we also have other related expenses. We purchase dog foods bowls, hardware to repair chains and make them longer, basic medication for outside animals, straw to to fill the doghouses of outside dogs, and veterinary care for sick animals and rescued animals. It might seem like its not much, but we use a lot during a year and the expenses add up.
Bottom line is that it costs large amounts of money to help the animals in our target areas and we can’t do it alone. WE NEED DONATIONS to keep the organization going.
If you can donate money, please consider our organization when deciding who to donate to. We gratefully accept cash, checks, credit cards thru Paypal and our new crowdrise link.
Checks can be made out to:
Michigan Animal Adoption Network P.O. Box 566 Roseville MI 48066
To donate via Paypal: www.michigananimaladoptionnetwork.org
Our Crowdrise Winter Fundraiser:
https://www.crowdrise.com/maan2014winterfundraiser/fundraiser/michigananimaladopti
We would LOVE to be able to give food to everyone on our waiting lists as as they request it, but we can only fufill the requests as we receive the food. Please help us help more animals!
Thank you for your continued support!!
Chris Wisswell,
Network Manager
