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A Christmas miracle? Humane Society saved

LIBERTY — The Pickens County Humane Society, also known as Foothills Humane, pulled off the seemingly impossible by raising the $70,000 needed to forestall their Dec. 31 closure date thanks to an army of donors on a social media funding campaign page.

The shelter had originally found itself in dire financial straights when the County diverted 70 grand in funding from Foothills Humane to revamp and begin adoptions out of their own county run facility earlier this year.

Seeing no choice but to close their doors after losing a significant portion of their funding, Foothills Humane announced the end-of-year closing date and stopped accepting animals.

But now, everything’s changed.

“Thanks to the Christmas miracle our supporters have made possible, we will be accepting animals beginning January 2, 2018, giving them a miracle of a warm bed, full bowl of food and loving care while at our shelter and beyond,” wrote the shelter’s Executive Director, Samantha Gamble, on the nonprofit’s Gofundme page.

A time for celebration? Yes. Complacency? Not a chance.

The fundraiser was bumped from $70,000 to $525,000 with the goals of starting spay and neuter and low cost vaccination clinic as well as an enhanced educational research outreach program.

“We hit our goal of $70,000 that keeps our doors open for six months into 2018, giving us time to put into place our strategic plan to not only maintain our shelter, but grow,” said Gamble. “All donations coming in from this point will go directly towards funding our shelter operations for the remainder of 2018.”

To their credit, it seems to be working and donors from all over the country seem to be banding together to fund the shelter.

In all, as of the writing of this article, 1,383 people and organizations have donated $73,161 in 40 months — with the vast majority of donations pouring in at the “last minute.”

“I’m glad to see this progressing so well. I’m sure a BUNCH of these donations are coming all over the country (I’m from Mi.),” wrote one of the donors, Michael Ricketts. “Saving this shelter is so very important. There are many such places, and they all need a shot. Let’s do this good stuff, one at a time.”

“This is actually something that should be easy,” Ricketts continued. “If 30,000 people of our 300,000,000 Americans gave just one dollar — this would be done. Do the math and show your friends. God bless these people who do this work. We must help the innocents,”

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By Kasie Strickland

kstrickland@championcarolinas.com

Reach Kasie Strickland at 864-855-0355.A

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