HELENA — The Lewis and Clark Humane Society (LCHS) is once again holding their “Paws vs Claws” fundraiserand challenge the community to some friendly fundraising competition.
The animal shelter is hoping to raise $65,000 and encourage individuals, teams and businesses to get creative on how they help raise funds.
LCHS Director of Development and Communications Cassidy Cook likens it to when someone uses their birthday on Facebook to raise funds for a charity.
“It’s just your friends donating to a cause you care about because they care about you.”
The LCHS Paws vs Claws is a replacement for their annual Spay-ghetti Fundraiser which usually sees around 800 people come together in one location. Due to local venue restrictions on how large an event, the shelter decided the crowd fundraiser was a better option this spring.
“Spay-ghetti usually brings in over $70,000 for the shelter and it’s going to be a big hit for us. Canceling our largest annual fundraiser is not a decision that we made lightly,” noted Cook. “However, we must take the safety of everyone involved seriously. We could not, in good conscience, hold an event with 800 people in a room given the health and safety risks it could potentially pose at this point in time.”
LCHS is not inexpensive to run. Every year the shelter cares for around 1,500 animals in need, with all requiring different level of care.
“It’s very expensive. You can imagine as a normal pet owner just how much it costs to care for your personal pets,” explained Cook. “lFood is expensive, veterinary care is expensive, maintenance things are expensive and then we just have that on a much larger scale. To put that into perspective we budget about $16,000 a year just for food.”
This year’s Paws vs. Claws will be a March Madness Edition fundraising competition that will allow people and businesses to participate in fundraising on behalf of LCHS with fun prizes for the top fundraisers.
More information about the fundraiser and animals currently available for adoption can be found on their website.
