A Gentle Reminder Of Our Policies

But here comes the next part, which is more tricky – the part about caregivers who have the means to raise/source their own funds, especially through Facebook.

We aim to help caregivers who are also willing to foot a part of the bill by themselves and who do not go elsewhere to raise funds for their caregiving work. When multiple channels of fundraising is done, it is very hard for us to assess such cases. In other words, you need to have some money to do caregiving work, and if you do not have enough, we can help you. But if you go to many sources to seek financial help, this complicates things and questions of accountability will arise.

However, we totally understand that there are also caregivers who choose to raise funds from many sources. �The trouble with raising funds from many sources is that it might lead to duplication and if we also fund such cases, our donors will be very unhappy as there is no proof that duplication has not happened. This is why our policies do not allow us to help those who also raise funds from or are supported by other sources.

We work very closely with PetFinder.my. When we closed our medical treatment claims in January this year, the whole idea was to prevent duplication so that we will only fund neutering and vaccinations while PetFinder.my takes care of the medical treatment claims. So, if a caregiver goes to PetFinder.my for medical claims and comes to us for neutering and vaccinations, we have absolutely no problem with this as we crosscheck every case with PetFinder.my and vice-versa. But if the caregiver applies to us but also goes to Facebook, other organisations and individual sponsors for funds as well, then questions of accountability and transparency will arise.

So our contention now is this: If you have so many other sources of funds, you don’t need our help anymore!

There were also some issues in the past few weeks where applicants whose cases were subsidised by us claimed that the same cases were paid for by themselves. Our readers forwarded these posts to us. We then wrote to these applicants for clarification after which they corrected their posts. Such factual errors, whether intentional or not, can lead to misunderstandings which again, does not augur well for animal charity.

It’s always better to just tell the truth, isn’t it? With the internet reaching out so speedily and widely, a lie will be detected very soon and the truth always surfaces.

Then, there are also applicants whom we have helped initially, but when they later start raising their own funds, we inform them that we can no longer help them anymore. �We hope they will accept this decision and respect our policies.

In fact, we have always encouraged bigtime rescuers to start their own society and fundraise on their own. Use our model, if you think it might help. We also keep saying that it is not wise nor is it feasible for bigtime rescuers to keep depending on charity or outside sources to fund their work. It is better to be independent and self-reliant.

It is our hope that applicants understand our constraints and respect our policies.

Let the spirit of trust, goodwill and friendship prevail.

Thank you.