05/14/2024
Our Pawriffic family is the best! We’re so lucky to have so many kind-hearted clients that are just as dog obsessed as us! Let’s show it by helping out a local rescue that has saved over 5,000 dogs!
Hi Everyone, This is a very Raw and Real post… so bare with me.
To start off…. It’s been a year. A year since we posted pleading for help saving our Facility, the animals in our care, our home, and everything we have built with this organization since 2017.
As a recap, we have been renting our current facility since September 2019, and paying $3k + Utilities since we moved in.
Last February, the property owner decided he wanted to sell the property instead of continuing to rent it to us… just “Because”. Leaving us with 60 days to come up with a plan to buy the property or move. At the time, we had no real lease, and had been renting from him as a “Handshake” agreement. Which is a legally valid rental agreement in Michigan.
So to put it plainly… we were screwed.
Moving simply wasn’t an option with 60 dogs actively in our care. All of which are AMAZING dogs who have been turned down by other rescues and shelters over the years and we were their last hope. If we had been forced to move last year, those dogs would have been left with no where else to go and would have been doomed to a very grim fate with such short notice.
Our followers and supporters saved us, temporarily, by donating over $30k collectively towards the down payment to help us stay here…. That money was raised in less than 2 weeks and we were left in SHOCK. This rescue quite literally wouldn’t still be here without that support and dogs could have died, with no other place for them to go. (Thank you isn’t enough!)
However, even after that money was raised, the Banks still wouldn’t give us a loan for our facility…. Why? Because I, as the Director of FTSOBH do NOT pay myself, and never have, therefore we were lacking one piece of the puzzle… “Job History”.
In the close minded eyes of the Underwriters, I was just a 23yr old who hasn’t had a “Real Job” Since highschool…. So even with all the proof dating back to 2019 that the rescue CAN afford to pay a mortgage (plus utilities every month), even after obtaining one full time job within the preapproval process, even after achieving a near perfect credit score, and even after raising the down payment in such a short time… it simply still wasn’t enough for the Elites of the banking world to sign off on the loan. (Although, It was enough for a “PreApproval”, which was just some sick joke made by the bank at that point because they still denied us for the real deal In the end.)
***Deep Breaths… lots of deep breaths…***
I’ve given everything to this rescue personally. I’ve given up my former dreams and college, Relationships, job offers, traveling, my mental/Physical/emotional health, etc.
I’ve had friends and family tell me that this rescue is a waste of my time and money and that it’s going to get me no where. Yet I’ve persisted for the past 7+years and I genuinely don’t regret a second of it. These dogs (and the occasional cats) are my everything now. So for SEVERAL banks to tell me “It’s not enough”, after all of that, simply because I have not lived a “Normal” life since highschool… Killed me.
I thought we were going to lose this place after receiving that loan denial last May. It was the most scared I have ever been in my life, and it wasn’t fear for myself but for the dogs in our care. I was totally content with being homeless living in the rescue van with my personal pets if it came down to it… but these rescue dogs had no place to go.
I had to walk through the kennels that night feeding all the dogs, looking into their “Yay it’s dinner time!” eyes, and have it on my mind that they may lose their lives because of silly and stupid bank rules that over look “unique” situations like ours. I fed the dogs that night while balling my eyes out, my heart was shattered. I thought I had let them all down, that it was all coming to an end, and that I had failed them.
I thought to myself… what was the point? What was the point of all these years? All the emotional, mental, and physical agony that I have put myself through for these animals, just so they could have a fair chance at life when nobody else had given them that. What was the point in saving the dogs that were still in our care if their fate was just going to end due to a stupid loan denial?
I couldn’t let that be “the end of FTSOBH” and the dogs that were still under our care.
We go down fighting here.
So I did all that I could do after that denial (and mental breakdown) … I sat down with our landlord, and after a very long, emotional, enraged, colorful languaged, and brutally honest discussion about what happens to the dogs if he kicked us out, we agreed to a 2 year lease (🎉) with the following goals in place, which were set by the Bank:
-2 years of me going back to work full time… and not just one job… but TWO full time jobs to appease the bank.
-Credit has to remain at a near perfect rate.
-We Still need ATLEAST a $17,500 down payment by May 2025.
So…. we are now a full year into that plan, and here’s where we are at with those same goals:
-Credit ✅
-Down Payment ✅
-Job History 1/2 ✅
-Job #2….. TBD
-1 out of 2 very agonizing years, paying almost double what a mortgage would be and hearing “Why don’t you just move on with your life and forget about this facility?” During every rent exchange…. ✅
Alright, so now what? We still have a year, and it sounds like there’s just one more small hurdle right?
Well sorta… part of the deal with the bank is that they want to see atleast a year of this rescue Paying myself as an employee, and that will suffice me needing “2 REAL full-time jobs”.
Can we afford to pay an employee? Uh, not really, not currently. Paying an employee is much easier said than done. For most businesses, employee wages is their biggest prioritized expense monthly….. but for a 501c3 nonprofit dog rescue our priority list goes; Keep the dogs healthy/fed/safe, keep the Lights on and the temperature controlled, Pay our vet bills, Repair the facility when needed, Keep the rescue vehicles running, etc… then maybe think about hiring an employee if after all that it’s feasible to do so.
I don’t know very many organizations our size that can afford employees without grants… and we could apply for grants! But we are too short on time to wait for the approval or denial for those… and unfortunately getting an employment grant the size that’s needed in this case is extremely rare.
So Let me rephrase… we CAN afford to just barely pay me (as an employee) at the rate that the bank WANTS the rescue to pay me… but what we can not afford is the employment taxes.
And even if we do pay me monthly, that just means that every cent that comes into the rescue currently, would go straight towards my pay check, and then I would be personally spending “My” paychecks on all the rescue bills (rent, utilities, vet bills, etc) …. Which is totally do-able, but if you know anything about employment taxes for businesses, those alone make paying me impossible for the rescues budget right now.
Basically the government wants to charge us to have an employee. Weird concept right? I know.
So we’re a little stuck and now we’re running out of time to figure this all out.
Here is our two options going forward:
-Increase our monthly income for the rescue to atleast $6,000.
Our Patreon Monthly Donation Program currently brings in about $2k a month. If we can get it to $5k a month then we can officially afford hiring a full time employee,
as this increase in monthly donations would finally allow us to cover employment taxes. (Because the government says so…)
In the grand scheme of things, if just 1,000 of our 10,000 followers/supporters on this page signed up through Patreon to donate $3 a month, we’d be set! (that doesn’t seem so out of reach right?)
OR
-We Start a Gofundme for the entire amount needed to purchase this facility, minus what was already raised for the down payment last year. The Amount needed to purchase this facility in full is $320,000 (that’s a scary number!) but IF we miraculously raise that amount in a year…we can say SCREW THE BANK and purchase our facility in full with “For The Sake Of Being Humane” on that Deed!!! 🎉
So… here’s our Patreon Link where you can sign up to donate $3-$100 a month, just like a subscription:
https://www.patreon.com/ForTheSakeRescueFund
And here’s the Gofundme Link:
https://gofund.me/8fcbdc81
At this point, we have absolutely Everything to lose if we don’t atleast try both of the above options and hope to god that one of them works out for the sake of our Rescue.
Thanks to your continued support since 2017 we have been able to save thousands of lives, 5,000+ to date!
I am praying, rain dancing, and will remain a giant ball of anxiety/stress for the next 12 months in hopes that this is NOT our last year in rescue and that We are able to save thousands more, for many years to come, as long as they shall need us.
We have so much more work to do in the rescue world, here in our local community and across the country in our Texas communities, and so many ideas and plans to make it all happen!
But we are going to need YOUR help to do so, and every single cent adds up! ❤️🐾
Thank you for your 7+yrs of support so far, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you!
Sincerely,
Ashlynn,
Director of FTSOBH.
P.S. We will be taking every fundraiser opportunity/idea thrown our way for the next year to help us reach our goal and updates will be posted very regularly!
