WE NEED YOUR HELP!
You can help EENP emerge strong from this crisis
The coronavirus pandemic has challenged everyone, and EENP is no exception. While we are able to continue caring for our dogs and supporting our existing placements, there are many challenges. We have halted all events, including fundraising events, and are not able to move forward with our next cycle of placements. This dries up significant funding that is driven by events and placements. Meanwhile, we have 50 dogs in our care and 7 clients who were expecting to be partnered with assistance dogs this year!
We are rising to the challenge of rethinking how we train our dogs and make our placements in this new world, but we need your help to get us through this crisis. Please help us with one of our major funding needs listed below!
- Supporting our newest puppies – We have 11 brand-new puppies, and another litter arriving in a few weeks. Those little pups have no idea there’s a pandemic happening, and our goal is to make sure it never impacts their training. These litters are being named after heroes of this pandemic, and keeping them moving forward is what will keep us from having another “pandemic slowdown” two years from now when they would be ready for placement with clients. You can help us select these pups’ names by voting at https://eenp.org/followapup/pandemic-heroes-litter -- and you can make a donation to support their care and training.
- Supporting our current pups, trainers, and clients – We’ve moved to remote training support really quickly but it does require equipment and a time investment that we hadn’t planned for. In the last month, we’ve bought numerous webcams and phone tripods and other equipment to help us monitor our new litters from afar and make sure our trainers can participate in virtual classes. There are new technology subscriptions to support remote learning and filesharing. Staff have ably shifted to shooting, editing, and sharing video but the time investment is significant. You can help us make this transition by donating to support technology purchases and staff work on this transition.
- Holding space for our future placements – Virtually all of our clients are in medically vulnerable categories and our highest priority is making sure that we don’t endanger anyone with a placement. We had expected to make 7-10 more placements this year. It is now clear that we will have to delay making any of those placements, and in order to make them we will have to approach the placements from a completely new angle. Revenue from donations and fees related to placements accounts for up to 30% of our revenue in a given year, so delaying placements has a major impact on our operational funding. At the same time, we have had to cancel all fundraising and public events. You can help by making a donation to support operational funding while we work out a new plan for our placements.
