By Nancy E. Hassel, AmericanPetProfessionals.com
Today, November 29, 2016 is #GivingTuesday, in it’s 5th year, Giving Tuesday is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration. Where you can help others through the gift of your time, donations, goods or your voice. I love to see the creativity that many people in the pet industry have come up with to help pets in shelters waiting for homes, giving back to help find a cure for pet cancer and other ways to give back to pets in need.
Even though Giving Tuesday is one day a year, you can use these ideas to motivate your own creativity in what you can do throughout the year.
Shelter Link, the non-profit rescue group that works with the Babylon Animal Shelter pet’s version is ‘The Giving Tree’ where people can go to the animal shelter, find an ornament on the Christmas Tree in the lobby, find an ornament with the item listed that pet would like, go buy that item (or a few!) and bring it back to the shelter. Or you can even have it shipped to the shelter via their Amazon wish list. The Giving Tree celebration will happen from now until their open house which is taking place on December 17, 2016 at Babylon Animal Shelter.
I love the play on words by Project Blue Collar – Support the Underdog’s– Giving ‘TWOsday.’ For their giving Tuesday promotion, when you buy any item from their BOGO collections on Giving TWOsday only, they will double their give back. How it works, you can Buy one, Give Two – when you buy one item they will give two of the same to their current BOGO beneficiary Fur-Ever Home Rescue. Or you can buy one item for your favorite rescue group and they will send it directly to them along with two more of the same item. When you purchase you just have to put the rescue group’s name and address to the ‘Ship to’ field in their check out and they will send all three items to your rescue of choice!
The Animal Cancer Foundation is participating in Giving Tuesday also – and they have partnered with Nationwide Pet for their take on it, and I just love how this gets people involved in a meaningful and fun social media way.
You can simply post a photo of your pet, or pet cancer story with the hashtag #CurePetCancer on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and with every post tagged in the month of November, Nationwide Pet will donate $5.00 to the Animal Cancer Foundation on your behalf up to $50,000. This I love so much – it’s a cross promotion in such a giving way – and will help the ACF to help cure pet cancer.
So how can you turn a holiday that is not pet specific per say, into a creative way to give back? I hope these stories above get your creative juices flowing and please let us know about them! Comment below or email us at info@AmericanPetProfessionals.com. ]]>