Currently we have 4 paid staff and 497 listed volunteers with 42 fosterers. The majority of the money spent on salaries goes to the campaign manager the other staff are part-time and on near to minimum wage. The campaign manager has organised fundraising so that she brings in considerably more to us than her salary. Without her we wouldn't have the £19K to spend on vet bills. If you had continued to read you would have seen that the way we run leaves us with our expenses lower than our income.
Having the other staff members means that we always have somone that is in charge, this ensures everything gets done, all cats are looked after and given medication etc. It also means that there is somone to handle any difficult people here, we have had people threatening violence if we don't take their cat, people threatening to bring us dead cats. We also welcome people with special needs to spend time here and therefore we need somone who is utimately responsible for them and we also need somone who will ensure our volunteers are welcomed and appreciated. Our volunteers are wonderful and essential but they do not want to take complete responsibility for the cats here, not surprisingly as it is very stressful.
We neuter every cat that comes to us (and trap, neuter, return if apropriate) and give every cat all the vet care it needs. Our older cats will get dental treatment while they are here and we put no limit on what we will spend on a cat in vet fees. For example we have spent £3000 on one kitten to try and find what was wrong with it, sadly we found he had found his organs were misplaced and there was no way he could survive. We also offer lifetime veterinary support for cats adopted with medical conditions (eg diabetes) and pay all age related veterinary costs for cats rehomed who are over 10 years old.
Some of our trustees thought as you did that we should not ever have paid staff but compared to when we were just run by volunteers we are, with paid staff, rehoming more cats per year (last year we rehomed 540 compared to 200-300) and we have more a lot more income. The income that will ensure we have money for future vet bills and we hope, to continue to expand with an assured future. The way we work might not be the best but we ARE all trying to do our best for the unwanted, stray and abandoned cats of Yorkshire.
