St Giles Animal Welfare is one of many animal causes using easyfundraising, playing a vital role for animals and pet owners across their county. Like other such causes, there is huge expense to cover, including vet bills, food, facilities and human resources to rescue and provide care for their furry residents. The (just short of) £2,000 raised from supporters shopping online to date has certainly helped, but the charity continues to fight to meet the high demand for their services to ensure no animal has to suffer and no owner has to surrender their pet to a shelter due to financial hardship. We caught up with Mel, the marketing and fundraising co-ordinator from the charity to learn more about their work and their fundraising efforts.
Tell us all about St Giles Animal Welfare
Our charity was set up to help all strays, abandoned and mis treated animals across Somerset. We are responsible for caring and rehoming stray and unwanted dogs, cats and small animals. A lot of the animals arrive neglected, injured or with ongoing medical conditions that require extensive veterinary treatment. We are also involved in the rescue and rehabilitation of puppy farm dogs. We are a small organisation doing a huge job to make sure all animals are looked after, rehabilitated and find them their perfect forever homes. We’re not just there for the animals however, we also run a food bank for anyone struggling to feed their animals. We would rather help with food than for people to have to surrender them to shelters!
What do you need to fundraise for?
We receive no additional funding, and we rely 100% on donations from our kind supporters and donors. Quite simply, we need funding to be able to deliver our care! Each year we invest thousands of pounds into vet treatment and medication, food, toys, blankets etc for the animals in our care. Without the funds, we cannot carry on doing what we love to do.
Why did you choose to join easyfundraising?
As explained, we are a small organisation and don’t have the resources to run a series of big fundraising events each year. We’re a localised charity too so we don’t have a huge wealth of donors we can call upon regularly. Easyfundraising provides us with extra funds with little effort from ourselves and no extra cost to our supporters. In our eyes it’s a no brainer!
What have the funds raised to date made possible?
We spend the majority of our easyfundraising income on food. It’s the one ongoing cost we have every single week, having a good supply is vital.
How have you promoted easyfundraising to your supporters?
Facebook has been the best channel for us. We have a really good following on there and being able to share our cause page link on there regularly has helped us get in front of people on the device they actually shop online with. We also make sure that if we are attending any local events where we have a stall etc. we make sure we talk about easyfundraising as a way to support us for free – we can demonstrate it live as well by showing the app etc. We currently have over 200 supporters who are contributing towards our work just by shopping and we can’t thank them enough.
What advice would you give to other causes like yours?
You have to keep banging the drum. You need to regularly post about your total and what a difference the funds make. Also share a ‘thank you’ every chance you get. We always try to get behind any big competitions or incentives easyfundraising are doing around events like Mother’s Day, Easter and Christmas for example.
How you can support St Giles Animal Welfare
They may be small, but the charity is having a huge impact on pets and pet owners in their local area. If you would like to get behind them every time you shop, sign up to support them here.
Connected with a cause that could benefit from extra funding? Register a cause.