Cat Friends Helping Friends

A number of folks are, quite reasonably, wondering what’s going on at CFHF. In the busy and complex process of trying to get up and running, we may not have communicated all that to you as well we’d like to or as well as we should. So I’m going to try to help out with that there.

One question that’s been asked is “What’s up with the Board?” We’ve had some Board changes, as you may have noticed from our About or Contact pages. This is quite common with start-up charities, according to several sources specializing on the matter, and is just a learning and growing process. All growth processes take time and some effort to work out. ML Sherwood had to resign her position as Vice President and Board director, because of time issues where she didn’t have the time to continue at CFHF and assist her disabled husband and everything else. We certainly understood that, as much as we hated to see her go. Morgen Pittman then became Vice President. Then Trisha was forced to resign her position as President because she got a job promotion that was simply too good for anyone to resist, but that requires a great deal more of her time. Again, we understand that, and in fact are happy for her. We’re also glad she’s still able to sit on the Board, and help us out in that capacity. When Trisha had to step down, Morgen Pittman became President, and I, Robyn Harton, became Vice President. Fortunately in all these changes, we’ve gotten good as a group as dealing with any changes that come up.

Another question that’s been asked is “What is it going to take for CFHF to start helping cats?” The answer to that is complex, but it boils down to 3 things: 1) We have to be sure we’re compliant with all federal, state, and local regulations, and 2) We have to have money to help cats, and 3) we have to have a process to help cats.

Compliance is important because it enables us to function as a charity. There are vertitable books of regulations concerning charities because of unethical people who have defrauded people in the past. Though we’re not defrauding anyone, and won’t, we still have to comply with all of those regulations. In addition, we have to comply with all regulations that have to do with corporations and businesses in general. That’s a whole lot of stuff to deal with, which is why we haven’t been moving as fast as we’d like. Since we’re an all volunteer charity, we don’t have any full-time people to just assign to deal with something, and so everything has to be done on a part-time basis, or split between several people. It’s a challenge, but one we knew when we started that we’d have.

One challenge is that we recently got some new information, and decided that rather than just assume it didn’t apply to us, we’d halt fundraising and take the time to be sure, just in case we needed to do something else to be wholly compliant. Once we’re sure we’re not affected by the new information, and can ensure we’re in compliance, we’ll be in action. We are as frustrated with all this red tape and paperwork as anyone, and very much want to be up and running and helping kitties. But we have to be sure we do it right, or the consequences could be very bad indeed.

And that bring us to number 2, we have to have money so we have something to give to cats in need. To date, the bulk of the gifts received have been to help us get up and running. Sadly, that’s an expensive proposition. Of course, the special donations to Mu Shue, Lilly Lu and Iris have been passed on to her, but otherwise we’ve spent as little as humanly possible along the way, and that’s extraordinarily little since we are all volunteers, are getting free web hosting from the Cat Blogosphere, and so on. The rest is being held to help cats and cover registration fees and the like. When possible, we even plan to reimburse what vet expenses we are able to cats in need who have already had large vet expenses, so that even though we’re stopped at the moment, we hope to be able to help retroactively as much as we can. As soon as we possibly can, we’ll be getting help out to cats in need, and raising funds for them as needed.

Number 3 is the process for getting help out to cats. We can’t just randomly do it. It wouldn’t be fair to cats, not to mention that the IRS frowns on that type of thing. So we’re working on an application process and guidelines for the Board to use to determine who we can help the most and when.

That’s the whys and wherefores of why things are moving slower than we like. But we are moving as fast as we can with everything. Thanks for being patient with us.

Robyn Harton
Vice President, Cat Friends Helping Friends, Inc.