I just got off the phone with Bernie, she is 180 miles away from Chicago with her 41 dogs and 1 kitten all on their way to new homes and we were talking about how much GOOD has come from this!!! This has been amazing!! We have made new friends, we raised over $42,000!!!!!! and we have a matching grant of $35,000 from the Zoline foundation!! So we have raised $77,000. WOWZA!! and all because of each and everyone of you!!!
We truly felt everyone's support for this cause and it is so touching to see everyone rallying behind Bernie's effort to save the lives of these animals. Together person by person, we did what we thought we couldn't do. This has been an incredible experience and it brings me to tears. Not because we didn't "win" because when you think about it -- we did win!! Each and everyone of you made this fund raiser drive a SUCCESS!!!! We raised a total of $77,000 because of YOU!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!
Bernie says she will still be able to build a shelter with the money raised. It will have to be a smaller shelter but it will still happen. We can all follow the progress on her blog here!
I would also like to thank you my blog readers! I was worried that posting so much about this effort might be off putting to my readers, but I have been thrilled and delighted at the new friends I have made, and the outpouring of support that you have shown for A Place to Bark and this cause that is so close to my heart. Thank you to each and everyone of you for helping, spreading the word and being supportive of the animals!!!
What happens now?
Now Network for Good will audit all the donations from the badges to strip off the duplicate donors to get to the "real" results of individual donors. In 30 days they will notify the official winners. Could A Place to Bark still win? In theory that could happen if one of the other badges had many duplicate donors. A Place to Bark will still receive $1,000 from Network for Good for placing in the top 8, so that is wonderful!! All the final contest details are on this page here from Parade Magazine who sponsored the challenge.
Donation Gifts/Prizes
Bernie's husband Jeff is furiously inputting all of the donor's information into a database, it is taking some time because we have so many donors (yay!!!!) as soon as the database is built we will select the winners of the donation gifts and artwork. not to worry! I will keep you updated here!! We will do this as soon as possible!!
I will post any other updates I can think of here! Thank you for bearing with me with this fund raiser drive and thank you for your amazing support! I promise I will be back to art stuff in my next posts!
