Vote for ILRA!

So here’s what DogTime says about the contest: “You can choose as many categories as you like and nominate as many bloggers as you like. You can even nominate yourself! Once nominations are closed DogTime will select the four most popular bloggers in each category. Then you and your readers, friends, family and anyone else can vote for their favorites! The blogs with the most votes will win! Nominations close on July 30th, 2010.”

That’s right, you have until July 30, 2010! We would love if you would vote for I Love Rescue Animals in the Best Cause Related Blog category. We have been working super hard to bring quality content to our readers and to make aware all the great things that we can do for animals. We feel we’ve been doing an awesome job, and we hope that you do too! Show us some love and vote for us!

You can find out more about The Petties at the BlogPaws page, and we hope to see you all at our favorite conference: BlogPaws 2010 West!

Hey everyone! Be the Change and BlogPaws are at it again, asking bloggers to be the change they want to see for animals. This latest call to action involves raising donations for shelters, rescues & pet food banks to help animals in need. It’s called the “Dog Days of Summer Food & Supplies Drive” and starting today (July 19th), with your help, we in the pet blog community are going to be collecting cat and dog food for shelters all over the country. Here’s what you can do to take part!

How to Participate

• Find a shelter or pet food bank near you and call to find out whether they accept food donations. (For people in the US and Canada you can search for a local shelter and pet food bank here.)
• Print out the BTC4Pets flier then head over to your local pet supplies store to pick up a bag of food.
• Drop off the bag of food at your local shelter or food bank and have someone take a picture of you with the bag and flier.
• Write a blog post, tweet (with #BTC4Pets) and share on Facebook your pawsome achievement to inspire your friends to do the same. (Of course you can always write two blog posts — one calling your friends to join you in the food drive and the second talking about your group’s trip to the shelter!)
• Post the picture of yourself donating the food and a link to your blog/twitter account/Facebook post to the Be The Change for Pets Facebook wall along with the pounds of food donated. We’ll add this amount to the total food/supplies donated so we can all see our impact!
• Want to take the campaign to the next level? Find out how to start a pet food bank on a shoestring budget.

To help out in our town, I Love Rescue Animals is going to be starting a drive to collect food for a few local animal groups, including our favorite cat group Central Texas Feline Rescue. We are personally trying to gather donations from several different area businesses – our main being at Camp Bow Wow Austin. If you’re in town, stop by! What plans do you have for the Dog Days of Summer Food Drive and who are you going to help?

Blog The Change!

Hey everyone! It’s Blog The Change for Animals Day!

That means pet lovers everywhere are blogging to do their part to improve the lives of animals all over the world. We here at ILRA would like to take this opportunity to get our Last Chance Pets twitter project going again. Last Chance Pets is a sub-account of RescueAnimals and was started because we saw how the real time interchange of twitter was actually saving lives and we wanted to be able to harness that power to help even more animals on death row. It soon became apparent to me, however, that one account could never cover the vast scope of animals in need. And so it began – we put a call out for people who wanted to tweet about urgent animals in a specific state. Breaking it down into smaller areas means that it is not only more manageable for the person running the account but that other twitter folks can follow an account for their own area – one which they are more likely to be able to make an impact in. So, for instance, people in and around Connecticut can follow LastChanceCT and either look for animals that they can personally save, or retweet it to their own followers, many of whom are also likely to live in that general area. Thus the probability of it reaching someone who can actually step up and rescue the animals is increased.

Anyway, we had several people take on the challenge and thus our list of states began to grow. As time went on, however, we stopped getting new volunteers and some of the accounts became inactive. So here we are, relying on the amazing hearts & spirit behind the Be The Change movement to get the Last Chance Pets project going again. Below you’ll find lists of those states already covered as well as those needing to be taken over. We are also hoping people in the states not represented will want to join the cause. All you have to do is let us know and we’ll get everything set up for you, both an email account and a twitter account. From there it’s up to you to find animals in urgent need and post them. You won’t be alone, however, because you can always ask the established accounts for help (LastChanceCT is a plethora of knowledge on how to gain followers, find shelters & humane officers you can work with, etc.) There are also several ways to find animals in need, even purely searching the internet.

Here are the Last Chance accounts we have that are currently in action:

LastChancePets (Main)
LastChanceCT
LastChanceMI
LastChanceNC

Last Chance accounts created but have since died:

LastChanceCA
LastChanceKY
LastChanceNY
LastChanceMN
LastChanceMD
LastChanceNJ

And we will make one for any other state! As of this moment, all LastChance state twitter names are open except for Indiana (LastChanceIN) which we are going to try and work on. We are also desperately trying to snatch up all those names so that we can have consistency across the board making our accounts easy for anyone to find. We can also set up accounts for the different provinces in Canada or anywhere abroad you’d like! If there’s someplace you’d like to cover, let us know and we’ll make it happen! We really believe in this cause and I know if we all join together, we can make a huge difference! All that a lot of these animals and shelters need is more exposure. There is always someone out there willing to help – we just need to reach them. Wouldn’t you love to be able to make that happen? Then please join us! Comment below telling us which area you’re interested in. And if more than one person is interested in the same state, we can always work something out where you can both tweet for the same account. Don’t be shy! Let’s start saving more animals today!

What this campaign is designed to do is showcase the hard-working nonprofits in the animal community. Even with the economy slowly on the rise, animal groups are still suffering and in need of help. Not sure how you can help? Well that’s where this campaign comes in. Tell us about YOUR experience – how are these organizations having an impact? Which ones are great? Which ones need some improvement? Your participation in this campaign helps identify the nonprofits that are making a difference on behalf of animals, both wild and domestic, here and overseas.

In 2009 over 450,000 people read reviews of thousands of nonprofits at GreatNonprofits.org – written by donors, volunteers, board members and by the general public. These reviews are also visible on GuideStar. Whether you are a part of a nonprofit organization, a volunteer, a board member, a client served or a donor, we invite you to participate in 2010 Animal Welfare Campaign and help speak out for those nonprofit animal organizations that you love.

Benefits of this Campaign:

• Recognition: Every organization that gathers 10 or more positive reviews during the month of July will make the Great Nonprofits Top-Rated Animal Welfare Nonprofits List.
• Community Engagement: Great opportunity for nonprofits and their community members to interact and engage directly.
• First-person stories: Clients, volunteers, donors and others share with the public, in their own words, how this nonprofit serves its community. Nonprofits can use this resource of powerful and authentic stories to engage donors and volunteers.

How to participate:

Nonprofits: Invite people who have seen your work – your volunteers, clients, board members, and others – to write a review about you. It’s free, quick, and easy. You can:

• Send them an email with the link to your reviews page.
• Post the link on the homepage of your Web site.
• Use your Facebook fan page: post the link and opportunity to review to your Facebook status
• Tweet out the link for your followers to post reviews or retweet our tweets about the campaign (@GreatNonprofits)

Supporters: Take this free opportunity to raise support for this important issue by visiting http://bit.ly/awpartners.

The campaign deadline is July 31, 2010. Let’s hear your stories and experiences!

Check out the Great Nonprofits’ 2010 Animal Welfare Campaign site as well as the FAQs if you have any questions.

She also informed us that she is coming to our own Austin, Texas to talk with all the shelters in the area about what this project can do for them and why it is so very important to have a good, user-friendly and functional website. This mission is near and dear to my heart and I am so happy to help spread the word about it. This outreach program is open to all non-profit shelters who are interested in or need a service such as this. Click on the flyer for more details:

Click on this flyer to see it fullsize!

The Details!

When: Tuesday, June 15th @ 6-8pm
Where: The Cork Room @ J Blacks [website]
Address: J Blacks Feel Good Lounge
710 West 6th Street (Near Avenue C)
Austin, Texas 78701

If you would like to RSVP, please contact 212-598-4400, or email Tracy Blinder (tblinder@lippetaylor.com) or Allison Good (agood@lippetaylor.com) and let them know that your shelter or rescue would like to take part in this awesome event. We hope to see you there!