General Question

girlofscience's avatar

Will you take 15 seconds to help my animal rescue group?

Asked by girlofscience (7572points) September 11th, 2008

DISCLAIMER: I am the last person to spam people, but since I am a regular contributor on Fluther, and I have talked to many people here about their love for animals, I thought this might be acceptable.

Here goes:

I am a volunteer with Independent Animal Rescue. We are very active non-profit organization in Durham, NC, and we help all animals in need through our service programs. We promote spay/neuter for all companion animals, provide foster homes for abused/unwanted animals until they are adopted, work with ferals in the area, and take steps to prevent overpopulation of unwanted animals (trap/neuter/return).

I spend about 15 hours per week working with IAR, and we are truly improving the quality of life for hundreds of animals in Durham, NC. We regularly have bake sales, auctions, and other fundraisers, but our expenses still far exceed the money we bring in. All members of IAR are completely unpaid, and 100% of the money we receive goes to animal care (spay/neuter/medication/surgery).

The Petfinder Foundation is donating $5,000 each to the two Petfinder animal rescue groups who receive the most votes. Currently, we have 137 votes, and the organization currently in the lead has 515. If all of you vote, we will surpass them! We are in 7th place out of 11,884 organizations, and we need to be in 1st or 2nd to receive the $5,000, so we are very close! Please help us win.

This only takes 15 seconds. Thanks for helping!

Here’s what to do:
Click here.
Scroll down to “Get involved – Help your favorite shelter.”
Click “Vote here.”
Select NC, then Durham (you must pick Durham to get the correct group), then Independent Animal Rescue, Inc.

After you vote, please respond with the number of votes it says we now have, and I’ll be sure to give you lurve! Thanks! I really appreciate it.

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

101 Answers

damien's avatar

‘The ‘Independent Animal Rescue Inc.’ shelter has now 142 votes’

Good luck.

girlofscience's avatar

@damien: Fantastic!! Thank you. That moved us up to 6th place.

MacBean's avatar

The ‘Independent Animal Rescue Inc.’ shelter has now 144 votes

(I also passed along the message on my LiveJournal!)

girlofscience's avatar

@MacBean: You’re amazing!!! I added you as a friend on LJ. <3

eambos's avatar

157 votes!

girlofscience's avatar

@Eambos: WOW! 13 more votes in the past 10 minutes?! I wonder who else is voting!! Thanks!

yannick's avatar

166! Plodding along..! :)

girlofscience's avatar

We have moved up to 5th place! Super job, everyone!

We still need 242 votes to surpass the group in 2nd place. Keep them coming!! <3

AstroChuck's avatar

I just voted but it must be going backwards. I see it as 171.

yannick's avatar

It’s just your pessimistic mind, AC! No, I too noticed a discrepancy between the no. of votes listed on the main page (in the graph) and the number listed in the pop-up window once I had voted… Might just take some time to update the graph..?

marissa's avatar

vote #183 :0)

girlofscience's avatar

@AstroChuck: The value on the graph that corresponds to each organization is actually above the name of the organization, not below! That was confusing me at first too. What was the number it said on the pop-up after you voted?

flameboi's avatar

185 votes, I’m passing this to my gf, she loves good causes!!!

marissa's avatar

I’m trying to get you some more votes I hope it helps :0)

shrubbery's avatar

193! :)
What you’re doing is great.

autumn43's avatar

marissa forwarded this to me and I voted. Good luck!

mamasu's avatar

My vote makes 201 votes. Great job!

boxing's avatar

wow, you have a long way to go though, with mine it is 204 now.

Harp's avatar

206; good luck!

EmpressPixie's avatar

207, 49 away from 4th place!

boxing's avatar

by the way, suggest you post this in Askville too.

flameboi's avatar

My gf passed to all her friends, this is getting big!

sarapnsc's avatar

218 votes now…hope you get the donation, you seem so passionate about it. great thing your doing and good luck!

bigcountry1960's avatar

PC Makes it 222 Votes..:@)

paulc's avatar

You’re at 237 now but I must admit that I also voted for a rescue org. in my city as well because we got one of our dogs from them. Don’t worry though, they’ve got a grand total of 1 vote now.

girlofscience's avatar

You are all incredible! We are now at 246—you have helped us to get over 100 votes since I posted this 3 hours ago!

marissa's avatar

I posted a question on Askville for you. I had put a link to this question on another discussion board there, but this should get you more attention (the good kind I hope..lol)

jlm11f's avatar

just voted. 281 votes. Good of you to volunteer for such a nice cause. Good luck :)

Bri_L's avatar

Just voted

296!

If I were not deathly allergic I would do more I shall keep voting!!

Thank you for what you do!!

jlm11f's avatar

oh can we vote more than once?

dalepetrie's avatar

PnL,

If you have access to more than one computer…since it didn’t log you in, I suspect that would work. Not suggesting anyone “cheat”, but just pointing out that it “could” be done.

marissa's avatar

I just tried and found out that you can vote once a day! So we can all vote again tomorrow….yeah!

dalepetrie's avatar

I was just going to point that out, Marissa!

amandaafoote's avatar

The ‘Independent Animal Rescue Inc.’ shelter has now 307 votes (o:

Bri_L's avatar

I should have made it clear that was my intention. I didn’t want to push for that. I was just going to go back each day in support. Not dump my cache.

girlofscience's avatar

I cannot express my gratitude for all of your support enough!

Did you guys see the score for the people in first place?! They have gotten over 300 votes in one day!! I wonder what they’re doing to promote their organization!

jlm11f's avatar

ooh good, i will vote daily then. when does this “contest” end?

@GoS – you should create a facebook group, invite all your friends and ask them to do the same. Best way to advertise these days…

paulc's avatar

I’m so tempted to write a little app that would inflate the votes – it would be too easy on this. That would be cheating though and they’d probably figure it out. Resisting temptation.

girlofscience's avatar

@PnL: The contest ends on October 1. Good idea! I already wrote a facebook note—I will do the facebook group too!

Allie's avatar

Up to 343. =)
Good luck!!

amandaafoote's avatar

Can you post the facebook group on here so i can join? (o:

gooch's avatar

one more vote

trudacia's avatar

You’ve got 360 votes.
Great work!

girlofscience's avatar

@amandafoote: Sure, when I create it! I don’t have time at work today, but I will do so when I get home!!

arnbev959's avatar

+2. Once at school earlier, and one at home now.

loser's avatar

440 votes!!!

sndfreQ's avatar

462 :) pass on the lurve

BarbieM's avatar

I voted on all the computers in my computer lab at the university earlier today. :)

eambos's avatar

How close are we to first place?

Snoopy's avatar

Currently dropped back to 9th place! :(

girlofscience's avatar

@BarbieM: Wow!!! I am so impressed with your commitment to this great cause! Thank you!

boxing's avatar

Quick, you need to mobilize the whole town!!!

girlofscience's avatar

@everyone: OK, the facebook group is now set up!!! You have all been incredible with your support today. If you are interested in helping more, please join the group and invite all of your friends!

FACEBOOK GROUP FOR THIS CAUSE

tWrex's avatar

Vote number 511. =) I kinda felt bad though since the number 1 spot is a half hour away from my home. But helping animals is helping animals so it’s all good!

loser's avatar

Oh, this rocks!!! I’m gonna vote again tomorrow!!!

bluemukaki's avatar

Even better: Open the site in all the different web-browsers you have… multiple votes! (540)

loser's avatar

Sweet!!!

greylady's avatar

The ‘Independent Animal Rescue Inc.’ shelter has now 546.

Good for you, girlofscience!

eambos's avatar

553! 20 more and you are on the leaderboards!

AstroChuck's avatar

Just erase the cookie and you can vote as many times as you like.
Here I am giving votes to Independent Animal Rescue when I’m a member of PAWS (Performing Animal Welfare Society). What I do for my fluther family!

BarbieM's avatar

I sent tons of invites to my Facebook friends.

Also, how long does this last? I’m off work tomorrow, so I won’t be at the university, but I can vote in the lab next week if we still can.

girlofscience's avatar

@BarbieM: Great! This lasts until October 1!

bluemukaki's avatar

825! That seems like a big jump… and now its 886, we’re on the leader board! Someone must have posted a link to a big mob of people!

jlm11f's avatar

voted thrice right now again in diff browser…962 votes now (on the leader board…but at the last spot). tip for everyone – deleting history/cache allows you to vote as many times as others stated. basically what i did was open up IE and vote there, clean cache, vote again, etc. I use Firefox and so i didn’t care about my nonexistent IE cache being deleted :)

jlm11f's avatar

so that people don’t think chuckie is going crazy, i edited my response after voting 2 more times….and by then the # of votes had changed

MacBean's avatar

We still think he’s going crazy!

girlofscience's avatar

WOW—in 24 hours, you have all brought us from 137 to 2019! Absolutely amazing! I am so curious about how the 1,000-point jump happened at some point in the middle of the night!

EmpressPixie's avatar

(and 6th place)

damien's avatar

2126 (now in 9th place)

tWrex's avatar

Wow. Anyone notice that 10000 jump. Holy crap! Looks like everyone figured out how to cheat!

Bri_L's avatar

it says I voted today when I have not. I voted yesterday.

tWrex's avatar

It said it for me too. Just clear your cookies.

tWrex's avatar

The number one spot jumped from 15110 to 15453 in a little over a minute. HOLY CRAP! That’s ridiculous. It really makes me not want to support this cause, when there is such an egregious error with their system. It makes the smaller places that don’t have the technology available almost unable to even compete.

“Aussie Rescue & Placement Helpline Inc. – Honesdale, PA” In the time it took me to type this they rocketed up to 15947. No one sees their server being flooded?

dalepetrie's avatar

The #1 is at 18338. I went to the page, hit refresh over and over and saw it go up by 20 hits per second. Someone has written a program, unless this was publicized in the local media or something (the number just stopped climing a few mins ago).

tWrex's avatar

Yeah it’s been stopped now at 18338. And it doesn’t need a program. Disable cookies and use a firefox plugin – that I wont name because it’s cheating – and you’ve got a desktop that floods the server with votes for a single organization.

I say start the contest over. Make people login, even though it’ll be more of a pain. Then at least it’s somewhat honest.

girlofscience's avatar

:( :( :( I’m so upset.

Aussie Rescue didn’t even have 1,000 votes this morning. Now they have 24,000. (I’ve been taking screen shots of the score board periodically.) This is absurd and unfair.

I have been so excited about this and trying to do it the right way. We had active facebook groups, mailing lists, and everyone was showing support and being happy about it. All of the other volunteers at IAR were equally excited, and this morning (when we were still somewhat in the running), we were contacted by NBC17 Durham who wanted to run a story about us… Now it is just disheartening.

And I haven’t found any way to contact Petfinder.com.

:(

EmpressPixie's avatar

KIM SAUNDERS, Vice President, Shelter Outreach/Public Relations
908/810–1976

Snoopy's avatar

@girl of science. I bet your local NBC affiate could find a way to contact them…..but it probably isn’t a story that they would be interested in…at least from that angle. :(

EmpressPixie's avatar

Go here: http://www.petfinder.com/press.html

It gives you this:
KIM SAUNDERS, Vice President, Shelter Outreach/Public Relations
908/810–1976

BETSY SAUL, President/Founder
520/400–1279

Mitsu_Neko's avatar

Sept 12 @ 730 EDT:
The ‘Independent Animal Rescue Inc.’ shelter has now 2437 votes

jlm11f's avatar

3128…we need to have a faster rate :(

Vidtree's avatar

I voted! It now says “The ‘Independent Animal Rescue Inc.’ shelter has now 5446 votes”

tWrex's avatar

Did anyone else see that they shut down the voting today? Because of “very dedicated” shelter fans. =)

bluemukaki's avatar

Well at least they didn’t let those cheaters win…

tWrex's avatar

I agree fully. I actually got pretty peaved about the situation and became one of those cheaters. I took my local hospital who has no technology, barely any help and is really needy from 0 votes to somewhere around 500 or 600 thousand. They were in the number 5 spot. =) I don’t know that that was the right way to do it, but they shut it down so I guess I got someones attention. I mean I singlehandedly took a hospital from 0 votes to half a million in a few days. Not cool.

girlofscience's avatar

@all:

Thank you all so much for your help before. If you didn’t see the newest post, you can now help again (FOR REAL THIS TIME!).

http://www.fluther.com/disc/26261/would-you-like-to-help-my-animal-rescue-group-again/

gooch's avatar

Once again got in your vote and glad to help

girlofscience's avatar

@gooch: Thanks again!!! This one is so much more promising!

girlofscience's avatar

Hello, wonderful, helpful animal lovers!!!

I just wanted to reply to this post to let everyone know that, if you would like to help my animal rescue group again, I would greatly appreciate your generosity.

Tomorrow, I am running a 5K race to benefit the animals of Durham, so today is my last day to fundraise, and I have currently collected $630 out of my $1000 goal. This is one of our major fundraisers of the year, and kitten season is coming up, so we are in need of many donations. Even the smallest amount will help. I only have $370 left to go!

If you are interested in sponsoring me, you can read more about the cause and click on the donate link on the page below!!! Thank you for your kindness!!! Many animals will be benefiting from it. :)

http://www.active.com/donate/ghr2009/clarkborden

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