My wife volunteers at the Central Missouri Humane Society, an open admission shelter. The shelter is participating in the Zootoo Shelter Makeover Contest in which the winning shelter gets up to one million dollars for, well, a makeover.
I've chronicled our foray into shelter volunteering in the comments section of C&J. We foster cats. It's gratifying and frustrating because we're overwhelmed and our adoption rates aren't nearly as high as we'd like. Getting a big financial boost from Zootoo can help.
Why is this important? The Central Missouri Humane Society is the largest open-admission shelter between Kansas City and Saint Louis. The shelter was built over 30 years ago and now serves a much larger area than was originally envisioned. We serve over 50 counties in central Missouri, taking in between 7000 and 9000 animals per year. Animals with nowhere else to turn. But we are a private, non-profit shelter with very little support in the form of municipal tax dollars. For more information on the shelter, go to www.cmhspets.org.
This costs you no money, just ten minutes of your time each day for the next seven days in order to vote us #1 in this contest. Details on how to do this below the fold.
The contest is being run by zootoo.com and the final phase of the contest is explained at http://www.zootoo.com/... Here is what you need to do to vote:
Step 1: If you are not already a member of zootoo, go to http://www.zootoo.com/... and sign up for an account. You don't have to name an affiliate shelter, but if you don't have one then feel free to select ours! Just enter our zip code of 65202 and our shelter is the first on the list.
Step 2: They will send you an email to confirm your registration. Follow the link in the email to validate your account.
Step 3: To be eligible to vote you must upload a photo for your profile. Click on "add photo" to the left of your username when logged in and follow the instructions. You can upload any photo from your computer, it doesn't have to be of you, it can be your pet or an avatar, whatever.
Step 4: VOTE!
Here is a quick tutorial on how to vote:
1 - Go to http://www.zootoo.com/... It should remember you, but if you are using a different computer you may have to login first.
2 - Scroll through the list of 10 shelters to find Central Missouri Humane Society (we have a bright green logo)
3 - Click on the radio button (circle) next to the shelter name. It should turn blue. If it doesn't, it's because the page is still loading. Give it a few seconds and try again.
4 - Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the gold button that says "cast your vote"
5 - You will be redirected to a new page that shows your voting status. Once there, click on the gold button that says "return to America Votes to Vote Again". Go to step 2 and vote again! Be aware, the position of the shelter on the ballot page is random so you have to look for CMHS each time.
Vote 10 times then you are off the hook until tomorrow! :)
One caveat, it appears that ZooToo only allows 10 votes per computer, so if you and a spouse or co-worker want both of your votes to count you will have to get rid of your cookies between votes.
The animals and I thank you!
One last request: please pass this on to anyone else you might know who would want to help these animals. Now for some gratuitous foster kitteh shots: