With FOTAS, All-Volunteer Means Business

Oh, FOTAS, how far we have come!  In June of 2009 a few of us held a benefit breakfast for the Aiken County Animal Shelter.  We stood in parking lots, sold tickets and made out-of-town friends buy them for bookmarks.  We raised over $2,700, our symbolic beginning. 

Two years later FOTAS, now a 501c3 public charity, committed to raise $100,000 to partner with Aiken County on a badly needed shelter expansion project, a momentous undertaking for all concerned.  The first phase of the comprehensive needs assessment study has been completed and is now under County Council review.   

Concurrent with working on the shelter expansion project, we have ongoing program commitments. Shelter  volunteers see that the dogs get out of their cages at least once a day, six days a week.  The dogs learn that someone cares, to walk on a leash and play well with others.   And our kitties need attention every day, especially afternoons.  Our volunteers also work with local vets and council representatives in the very important work of funding and promoting spay and neuter programs.

In two years FOTAS volunteers saved hundreds of county dogs through our transfer program with northern no-kill shelters.  Each occasion for a transfer requires many volunteer hours finding shelters, assuring dogs are selected, approved, spayed/neutered, fostered, and shipped healthy.

FOTAS’ foster homes offer most abandoned litters of puppies and kittens their only chance to survive the unavoidable contamination and afflictions of shelter life.  We are blessed with too few of these angels-of-mercy and pray for more all the time. 

The money FOTAS raises makes everything else possible.  Every fundraiser is conceived and implemented by volunteers including our signature Woofstock Festival.  Our equestrians hold hunter-paces; our golfers do golf tournaments.  Also, through their good works numerous civic organizations generously make FOTAS their beneficiary on behalf of the Aiken County Shelter. 

We appreciate all the people throughout the county who find our displays or read this newspaper* and send a donation to FOTAS’ P.O. Box 2207, Aiken, 29802.  Now you can even make one-time or monthly donations on our website.

 Being an all volunteer organization, every dollar is spent directly on shelter needs.  Since that first breakfast FOTAS has provided the county shelter with: numerous supplies; shelter and flooring for the overflow pens, a large-dog play area, a unique adoptable cat and kitten facility, post-surgery and cat-intake stainless cage banks, and the committed $100k for the needs analysis and shelter expansion design.  

FOTAS volunteers have also: designed and run our website,  database,  blogs,  broadcast emails, brochures and accounting system.  Volunteers secured our 501c3 status, report to the state and IRS, do the banking and issue honorariums and thank-yous.  And the leadership that keeps it all running is all-volunteer.

FOTAS is a membership organization.  If you care about our county shelter and its animals we hope you will join us.  Make any kind of meaningful contribution and you’re in.

  *The Aiken Standard posts these BLOG post articles each week.

FOTAS Volunteers work with the AIKEN COUNTY ANIMAL SHELTER, 411 Wire Road.  For more information, contact “info@fotasaiken.org” or visit FOTAS on line at www.fotasaiken.org.

Aiken County Animal Shelter:  “By the Numbers”

For October 10th thru 16th     

Dogs taken in: 56

Cats taken in: 40

Total: 96 

Dogs adopted: 15

Cats adopted: 1

 Total: 16

Dogs euthanized: 33

Cats euthanized: 41

Total: 74