Week 2 - Rescued Critters Food Drive

Hi Folks,

Why Rescued Critters Food Drive

Works for Me and My Neighbors

See the cat food cans waiting on the edge of the chair and the Thank You Note stuck in the door? That’s why.

Kelly was busy last week when I started our new Miles Neighborhood pet food donation program, but her friend, who was in the front yard, was willing to listen to my spiel. He soaked it all in and said he would tell Kelly. Obviously, he did tell her because her donation was waiting for me this past Sunday.

When I walked up the sidewalk to her porch and saw the cans, an old feeling from those One Can A Week days came over me. A rush of the Oxytocin bonding hormone for sure.

Kelly and I are a team as I am with all of my participating neighbors. She puts out the donation knowing I will pick it up Sunday and help her do something positive for the Pima Animal Care Center. On my side of the commitment, I always smile when I see a donation waiting for me. Both of us personally get a lot out of those two cans of cat food. And it happens every week like clockwork. My drive is to help folks help and folks appreciate how my simple act of pick-up and delivery connects them and their small donation directly to an organization they really admire week after week after week.  

This Week’s Donation, Expert-approved

Moments after I set up this week’s donations to shoot, both Haley (left) and Cody moved in to check

it out. Guess it was the BarkBox pig’s ear that captured their attention, not the stack of canned cat food.

Many of my participants were otherwise occupied this Sunday but we still gathered more food than last week. The total was 10.3 lbs. and $22.00 in cash. With respect to participants, I signed up 8 more neighbors so I look forward to hefting a lot more cans this coming Sunday.

A $1 donation makes a big difference

over a little bit of time

My neighbor Tony, at the end of Miles, latched on to my point about Pima Animal Care Center’s purchasing power. He gave another dollar this Sunday. It is a small donation and there is some self-consciousness about it which I sense. So, I told him that he is feeding a lot of little dogs with his donation. After a slight pause I added, “Or one big dog.”

We both laughed and so did others who heard the story. My point is a dollar turns into a big thing if, say 75 people in the neighborhood joined Tony. In one year, that would be $3,900 or 4,333 lbs. (2.2 tons) of dog food. That will feed lots of big dogs.

Today I ordered a T-shirt with the above graphic on it which will remind folks that even a dollar is a very big donation in the long run. So there really is no reason to be shy about donating a dollar every week. We wish we had 75 more like Tony. 

See you next Sunday.

Peter