Hello Fans, Followers, Donors, and Supporters of BHF!
It is Christy, your humble founder and program director here! And, I am very excited to tell you about a significant change happening within BHF’s financial aid program.
Up until now, I have been personally handling and responding to ALL requests for aid submitted through this website. We used to average about one-per-day, which was pretty manageable, especially when I was working on BHF every day. Then I had a baby, who has now grown into a two-year-old. When she was born, I dropped down to working two days-per-week, which has been sort of manageable for a year-and-a-half. When I say “sort of manageable,” I mean, the program has been sustaining, but not necessarily growing in capability.
And you know what they say! As soon as things get comfortable, they will soon change! BHF is currently averaging about 50 inquires a month (sometimes more), and I am expecting another baby at the end of the year. I can officially say – without a doubt – that handling all of the financial aid program by myself has become quite unmanageable! Those of you anxiously awaiting word from BHF about whether your beloved pet might be one of our next grant recipients deserve so much better than a week-late response from me. So LET ME TELL YOU about our plan to grow this program into something much more self-sustaining and thriving!
VOLUNTEERS (aka: more manpower). At the beginning of 2015, the management of all active cases will be handled by a group of well-qualified and dedicated volunteers. These special individuals will be personally responsible for each active case as it comes in, so that each applicant has someone who is intimately knowledgable about their pet’s individual case and can answer questions and respond in a timely fashion. A “point person,” if you will.
In other words: If you share the load, everybody wins.
Because of this large internal change, the vastly increasing demand for help, and limited funding we have regrettably had to stop accepting new applications for the time being. I am using all of my time and energy to develop a comprehensive training manual for volunteers (along with my generous attorney brother who makes a living out of being thorough in writing!), and planning how exactly to execute this change with as little disruption to our programming as possible. And also, with the hope and expectation that this change will actually bring about growth.
Ultimately, the goal for this program re-vamp is a direct outgrowth of our vision of a world where NO dog or cat with heart disease has to go untreated. Taking this brief time away from case management to develop our program will allow us to be able to help even MORE pets upon re-launch.
So, stay tuned – and follow us on Facebook and/or Twitter for the latest news, and to be alerted the very minute we begin accepting our first applications under this new program!
Thank you for reading this, and thank you for your continued support of The Big Hearts Fund. I know I sound like a broken record, but we could not do this without the support of our generous friends.