Hey everyone,
It's a new year coming up and we have a ton of changes to tell you guys about.
For starters, Pawsitively Famous is now officially Pawsitively Famous, Inc. We've incorporated ourselves, and set up our own bank account and post office box so that people can now make contributions directly to us...... and even better than that, we're currently in the process of working with the IRS to make ourselves into an official Not For Profit Organization so that your contributions will also be tax deductible.
Along with that stuff there's several other changes in the works with the way that Paws is going to be structured going forward. The main concept is still going to be the same as far as doing races and selling merchandise to raise money for animal organizations, but now that we're basically about to become our own charity, we're going to be making a few changes to the way we handle the money that we take in, and once we get our Not For Profit status taken care of, we're also going to be aligning ourselves closely with Ran's official organization, Pawsabilities. Here's how it's going to work - instead of all of the donations going directly to the HSOET like we did in the past, we're going to be dividing them up between the HSOET, TAILS, our other new group, Ran's Animal Care Express (or RACE for short), and possibly some other animal shelter organizations in the future.
RACE is the official name for the group of people who volunteer to do animal rescues/transports through the fan club, which we've kind of unofficially been coordinating up to this point, but we're going to be doing it officially now, and the way this is going to work going forward is that anyone who volunteers to drive, provide temporary housing for an animal, or help out with a rescue in any other way will now have the option of being reimbursed for their time and mileage through us (it's not gonna be a HUGE amount but it should help cover some of your expenses, and we're going to be working on some other perks as well over the next several months that we'll also be telling you about as we get them set up). As far as aligning ourselves with Pawsabilities goes, the way that's going to work is that once our Not For Profit status is official, Ran's organization is going to be making contributions to us as well to help with the rescues and to help RACE grow as an organization, so make sure you keep doing the search with Miranda stuff and supporting Pawsabilities because a portion of the money that they take in will be going towards helping with the adoptions that get done through the fan club. Hopefully we can continue to be just as successful with those in the future as we have been so far. We're also going to be putting online volunteer forms for anyone interested in helping to drive or house animals and adoption forms for anyone who might be interested in adopting one on our website soon too (hopefully very soon - they're almost done but we've just been busy setting everything else up that we haven't gotten a chance to finish them yet but they're coming).
One other thing to add - even though we're not officially a not for profit organization yet, the tax exempt status for donations we take in will be retro-active once the IRS approves the paperwork, so you can already start writing off any donations you make after January 1st on your 2009 taxes (anything you send in between now and the end of this year may or may not be tax deductible depending on the timing of the paperwork getting filed, etc so if you want to send something in within the next two weeks and guarantee a deduction on your 2008 taxes, make your check out directly to the HSOET or TAILS and then starting in 2009 you can make it out to Pawsitively Famous).
So like I said earlier, if you're interested in making a contribution, our new mailing address is:
Pawsitively Famous, Inc.
PO Box 389
Columbia, MO 65205-0389We also still have some
beer bottle koozies available for $4 each, so if you're interested in ordering any, let us know.
Thanks!
The Paws Crew
