Have had about had it with a local humane society I decided to volunteer at. Along with staff members who vanish leaving me and potential adopters searching the ENTIRE complex for them, staff members who are rude/cliquey, we have adoption events in places that don’t make any since. Like the grand opening of an apartment complex!
An apartment complex is opening up in a ritzy area of town. They have decided to hold an adoption event there. Strange, but, whatever. They announced a month ago that they would need people to do A, B and C from 9:30 to 2:30. I signed up.
Monday I get an email telling me that, by the way, I would have to drive back to the shelter with them and help them clean up. It would be me, another volunteer and several staff members.
It will take me 1 hour, barring traffic, to get to the apartment complex and 18-20 minutes, again, barring traffic, to get back to the shelter, THEN over an hour to get back home again.
I emailed and told them that, sorry, but I won’t be able to make it. If it had only been the 9:30-2:30 shift I’D SIGNED UP FOR it would of been fine, but to take on additional work, no thank you. I’ve donated money, time and supplies to this shelter already.
I can relate, after volunteering and having a leadership position with two dog rescues. Loved the mission both times. But the people… ugh. Yeah, whenever you get people involved, things get stupid.
When I adopted my first greyhound, we took her to a meet and greet with the group. (It’s like an adoption event but they don’t do adoptions there. The point is more for the general public to see and pet our dogs and ask us questions about what it’s like to own them.) I enjoyed it so told them that I would like to help out with the one next month. Next month I discovered that I was now **running **it.
Also in the so-stupid-its-funny department: when I stepped into the role of treasurer I discovered that they’d paid for a copy of Quickbooks but only ever used the check register feature. They could have saved money by doing that on paper check registers. (Since we already had it, I improved the bookkeeping to use more of the features of the software, and produced basic financial reports that the board members didn’t know what to do with. All they wanted to know was how much money was in the bank.)
Over a couple years that meet and greet job turned into a monster. Because I was the only person committed enough to do it every month, I often was there alone with my dog. People would look at me like “why are you trying to give away your dog?” They also asked me to set up meet and greets at different places around the area, some of which I did by finding other volunteers. Until I got sick to death of being the meet and greet person. When I finally told the board that I was NOT doing any more meet and greets or setting them up, their response was, “… ok, so you’ll set up a new one in $CITY next month, good…” That’s when I resigned from the board of that group.
Wolves are under Federal protection … you should encourage their re-establishment in your communities … that will go a long ways to reducing the populations in your animal shelters … it’s an environmentally-friendly ecologically-sustainable green way to deal with the problem …