| Upcoming Events!!! |
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12/11 6:30-7:30pm Focus Area Committee Orientation (FAC) ... come see if you'd like to be involved in the grant application review process this year.
12/14 FAC sign-up deadline
12/31 Membership deadline for FY08
1/7 7:00-9:00pm Come celebrate our fifth year of giving and membership attainment!
1/21 7:00-9:00pm Call for board candidates ... come hear about the requirements for board service.
2/16 9:00am-1:00pm Discovery Day ... a forum for understanding community issues.
Mark your calendars:
6/10/08 Annual meeting
6/12/08 Check presentation ceremony
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Make your Purchases Count
On Wednesday, December 12th, from 9am - 7pm, 25% of your pre-tax purchases at Sweet Charity (Seton Northwest's charity gift shop) will be donated to Impact Austin if you designate us as your charity of choice. This money will help offset operating expenses.
1201 W. 38th Street (in the 26 Doors Shopping Center) |
| Way to go, girls!!! |
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girls giving grants has been busy this year! A record 57 members joined this year, more than doubling last year's group of 26 members (see their financial training session in photo above). g3 is now analyzing the 30 grant applications they received, which is also significantly up from the 13 they received last year. Way to go, girls!!!
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| New Public Service Announcement
Click on the link below to see our newly produced public service announcement. It is being distributed to local TV stations who have no obligation to run it but will consider doing so. Keep your fingers crossed and watch for us 'in lights'!
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 Ask a friend to join Impact Austin!
For more information, please contact Dawn Skinner at dskinner@impact-austin.org or visit our website at www.impact-austin.org. |
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(Wo) man's Best Friend |
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"It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being." - Henry David Thoreau
It's been said often that dog (or cat) is man's (or woman's!) best friend. So it's virtually unthinkable that many low-income Austinites have to face choosing between needed surgery for their best friend and paying the electric bill. EmanciPET, an Impact Austin 2006 grant recipient,
provides this service so that low-income families can afford both their pets and life's essentials (see one of their 'patients' above).
With funding from Impact Austin, EmanciPET built an additional surgical suite and was able to purchase two shuttle vans to allow staff to travel to low-income areas to pick up pets that need surgery or spay/neuter services. These additional services contribute to the agency's overall goal which is to make Austin the nation's second "no kill" city in the U.S. by 2008. "No kill" connotes that euthanasia will not be used as a means to eliminate animals that are not adoptable.
Amy Mills, EmanciPET's executive director, is exuberant in her explanation of where EmanciPET is in achieving no kill. "Last year was the first year we saw a drop - 5 percent - in euthanasia in Austin. We've decided that we can move faster toward no kill if we focus more on "at risk" animals," she said. "Cats and large breed dogs are most at risk of entering shelters and being euthanized." She continues, "Most adopters want a small pet that doesn't shed and is already trained." Thus, she says the animal shelter staff needs to place dogs of this type in the limited cages as they stand the best chance of adoption. Unfortunately, dog breeds and cats who don't fit the adoptable model wind up being euthanized.
Mills believes prevention in the form of spay/neuter is the answer to controlling Austin's pet population. "The process of euthanasia is ineffective, inhumane and too expensive," said Mills. "Our overall strategy is to increase our [spay/neuter] capacity ... we want spay/neuter to be accessible to everyone."
She credits Impact Austin's grant for helping EmanciPET move faster toward its "no kill" goal. "The fact that we could get a grant meant that we would not have to pay for the surgical suite and the vans with money from our limited fees."
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Watching our Membership Grow |
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 Forty six (46) women attended another successful membership recruiting event at Grape Vine Market on December 3rd (see photo to the right)! A very special thank you to Grape Vine Market for hosting this evening's event along with a similar event in October and for serving the excellent wines, cheeses, and desserts.
We currently have 410 members and are on track to achieve our 500-member milestone by December 31st. Please share this special organization with your friends! If you know someone who is interested in learning about Impact Austin, there are two more 'coffees' scheduled this month in members' homes:
- Tuesday, 12/11, 7pm, near Hwy 183 and Anderson Mill
- Wednesday, 12/12, 7pm, off of Mt. Bonnell
RSVP to Dawn Skinner at dskinner@impact-austin.org to get directions. If these dates are not convenient, please email Dawn to schedule an individual 'coffee'.
Here's how to describe Impact Austin in 100 words or less when your friends ask about us:
"Impact Austin is a grass roots women's foundation where each member gives $1000 each year and all of the donations are pooled and given back to the community in multiple, $100,000 high impact grants. Because each member gets one vote when deciding who gets our money, our members feel a tremendous sense of ownership. Though some members only come to the annual meeting to vote, others are very involved in the committees who vet the grant applicants so the time commitment is totally flexible. We like to say that we're ordinary women making an extraordinary impact." |
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Impact Austin's award for Outstanding Philanthropic Organization of the Year for 2007 by the Austin Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals will be given at the Philanthropy Day luncheon on 1/29/08. Join us and take a bow for helping make this happen! | |
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