Community Concern for Cats, Inc.: Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

Community Concern for Cats, Inc., used the technology grant funds for the purchase of three wireless credit card terminals and data service for our adoption sites, per our grant application to you. The costs were as follows:

Three Ingenico Terminals (model IWL250G): $599.25 per unit
Three SIM cards: $20.00 per unit
Monthly data service fee: $19.00 per unit

Previous to the purchase of these credit card terminals, we were encouraging cash or checks at our adoption sites. If a credit card was used, it was batch processed after the adoption paperwork came from the sites. This created a situation where many of the credit cards were declined due to incorrect/incomplete information or lack of funds. We would then spend precious volunteer hours contacting adopters whose cards we were not able to process. Now we can accept and process credit cards in real time, which makes the adoption process much smoother.

How many pets did this grant help?

A third of our adoptions involve credit cards. So we estimate 205 cats per year will be helped by this grant.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Batman has a superhero name because this little 6-month-old black cat survived being hurled out the window of a moving car. A family drove to the local county shelter. The father stated that they were moving and could not keep the cat. The shelter had a temporary moratorium on pet surrenders and the man was told to take the cat to another shelter. Instead, he dumped the cat outside the shelter door. When he was stopped from doing this by a shelter employee, he threw his cat into the car and drove off. Our Community Concern for Cats member saw it all and suspected the cat was in danger. She followed the car several blocks in time to see the man toss Batman out the window and into a ditch. Our member ran to pick up the terrified cat.

Once safe, he got the CC4C pre-adoption treatment: neutered, micro-chipped, vaccinated, treated for fleas and worms, and showered with love. Despite his rough start, Batman is friendly and loves attention. He has been adopted through our pet-store adoption site and is now living happily with a lovely couple – a home much kinder than the one he used to know.

Thanks, Petfinder Foundation, for your technology grant! We have put these funds to good use improving our adoption process so we can focus on the important work of rescuing and adopting the cats.