Hi everyone!
Hope you're all off to an excellent start to 2019 so far. As we close out the year and look at our efforts for 2018, we're thrilled to report on our financial results for the past 12 months. Going into 2018, we had $32,700 raised to date from the generosity of the community since our inception in 2015. Today, we now have $42,800 for LFS, raising over $10,000 in 2018!
We're now less than $20,000 away from our first fundraising goal of $60,000, which will be used as a down payment toward property. Thank you so so very much to everyone - supporters, volunteers, advisors, board members - who were a part of making our year so special and progressive. We love you all and couldn't do this without you.
There were definitely some learning lessons and some successes along the way that shaped these results. We invested a lot of time, energy and funds into a few festivals and markets that didn't offer much of a return for us, so we've decided for 2019 to scale back on our event presence and sign making efforts for the time being. Our Party in the Park summer fundraiser was a resounding success raising over $8,000 in donations and bringing together over a hundred supporters for this great cause; we'll be working to plan a similar event for the upcoming summer to help push us over the edge and hopefully get to the $60,000 mark! Stay tuned for more on the date and details in the coming months.
Dave and I had the pleasure of furthering our knowledge and insight into farm animal care and rescue through our three-day attendance and participation at the Animal Rights National Conference. We also made not one, but two trips to Farm Sanctuary, both in Acton as part of a community day trip we hosted last Spring, and to the Watkins Glen headquarters where we spent four days learning about proper animal care, maintenance and habitat development at the Animal Care Conference in September.
This year, Dave and I will be increasing our personal contributions that we have been making to LFS; in addition, we are also currently in the midst of wedding planning and will be saying our celebratory "I Dos" this April. As part of our Big Day, we have asked not for gifts from a registry, but instead, donations made directly to Loveland on our guests' behalf. We're calling this Operation Wedding and will report in later this Spring once we're officially hitched to announce how much the OW campaign raised. :)
That's our latest - we truly are so overwhelmed with excitement and gratitude that we have come this far since we established as a 501c3 and decided to embark on this journey with nothing. Your kindness, support, and patience has really given us so much encouragement to continue working around our full-time jobs to find creative, exciting ways to bring people together for the animals; so many of them, every day, are desperately waiting in the wings for a new life and it breaks my heart every minute that we can't do this faster. We see you all and we are trying. We won't give up.
In solidarity and appreciation,
Paris