HoundsGood: Chronicles of a Virtual Volunteer

While talking about the great charity events to take your horse too, I almost neglected where to get some gear online.  My (horse) riding boots have seen better days and my motorcycle boots just won’t cut it.   Technically, they are a closed toe shoe and my feet would be protected from being stepped on, but I don’t like to wear shoes with laces that could get caught on something.

Cavender’s Boot City sells exclusively online. You can get everything from cowboy hats to tried and true Wrangler jeans, to, of course, boots!

The summer was full of dog walks to raise money for various charities.   Did you know there were some eventswhere you could take your must larger four legged friend…your horse?

On Saturday, October 4, Riders will “Saddle up for Babies.”   The ride the Double JJ Ranch in Rothbury, Michigan benefits the March of Dimes and your horse is welcome, and encouraged, to attend.  Just like a dog would need a rabies shot to come to an event, your horse will need a current coggins test.   There will be awards given to the riders who raise the most pledges, and there will be a raffle as well.

Check Out all the details HERE.

October 24 through November 3, 2009, World Horse Welfare will be hosting the ILPH Aztec Challenge. In otherwords you have a lot of time to plan, but you need it as you would have to check with regulations about bringing your horse, but I have heard its very doable.  Check their site for more info.

From the site:

Come and spend some time in this fascinating part of the world. Based around the huge lake Valle de Bravo, which is about 2 ½ hours drive west of Mexico City, youwill ride through evergreen forests enjoying panoramic views across the Sierra Madre Mountains.

There are many more that I haven’t mentioned. Maybe I will find an event you can take your goldfish to next!

As I recently wrote, I am starting to drive a little bit again. It has been a white knuckled process, that is for sure. For the month or two after my husband had a stroke, he didn’t drive. That was okay, because there were enough relatives who visited to help, so I was able to get groceries and run errands. I really appreciated, but sometimes all the togetherness was too close for comfort. Some people waited outside in the car, but most of the time people would keep me company in the store. That was great, until I was buying some medical items that my husband really felt embarrassed for people to know about. It was really nothing secret, it was just wanting to retain some shred of people not knowing all your businesses.

Luckily, there are a few websites now that offer some heavy duty medical items for home delivery from DHP. For example, the diabetic Travel Socks that they charge you 50 bucks a piece for at the hospital! More so, there are various wound care, diabetic, and surgical items as well.  I wish I would have looked into it earlier.

Now that I am driving A LITTLE, I sort of have being a shut-in down to a science.    There are so many things you can order online that the only thing one really has to go out for is fresh produce.   Of course, I don’t recommend you getting a medical condition that prevents you from driving anytime soon!

A few people wrote in and asked questions after my recent post about various fundraising tools for the web.  They wondered how exactly you could find out if a charity is real before giving money to them.  There are a few ways to go about this.   You can search within their state.  However, there could be times where public records could be a bit nebulous.  Someone may have a name registered as a D.B.A. (Doing Business As) or a Corporation, but it does not mean they are a 501(3)c non profit.

When an organization mentions in its literature that it is 501(3)c pending, it means that the necessary paperwork has been submitted, but the process will take some time.  Some organizations wish to post this, to let people know they are taking the steps and will soon be a 501(3)c.   That designation allows them to legally solicit funds.  You may, of course, give money to help their cause prior to that, but they cannot openly solicit (mount donation drives), and it will not be tax deductible for you.

Guidestar has a good resource (http://guidestar.com) for beginning your search on a charity.   Of course, this does not mean the charity meets your personal standards as far as mission goes.  That is up to you to choose a charity to give to or volunteer for whose cause you agree with.  However, it will answer the primary question: Are they a real organization?

New Orleans got lucky. Actually, it is not sheer luck. Many people cooperated and got on the buses to evacuate the city to prepare for Hurricane Gustav. It is not always that people are so compliant. I remember during Hurricane Charley, a man who lived not far from me was on the news, standing like a Buckingham Guard outside his mobile home with a shotgun.

When the reporter asked what he was doing, he replied, “I am going to stay and defend my property!”

I wanted to climb through the tv and say, “Hey look, Buddy, the storm isn’t going to be intimidated by you and your rifle. If it comes your way, and you don’t move, it won’t care.”

I know a number of volunteers who have done cleanup after the storms, but regular people don’t exactly have all the equipment needed to pump people’s houses out. A restoration company usually comes in and takes care of the things. Of course, they don’t work for free. Insurance companies pay for them sometimes, or individuals pool together and hire someone like Waterrestortion911.

Once the biohazards have been taken care of, volunteers can then move in and restore a home. Don’t try to be a hero, especially with water that has been standing a long time!  There are some people faithfully rebuilding homes in the Gulf area every single month.  They have let the pros come in first, and now that it is safe, volunteers are rebuilding homes and lives. I will talk more about them as the weeks go on.

In high school, I transferred to a very small school where we had a variety of fundraisers to meet the goal of new uniforms or a class educational trip.  One of my fondest memories was of selling Chocolate as a fundraiser.  You would think we would have eaten most of the profits.   Actually, what we did was sell them to eachother.  We would, of course, ask our family to buy them, and sat through every ball game hawking them, but we each carried our boxes to the lunch room and cleaned up.

In fact, they are probably the same ones that Gertrude Hawk Chocolates offers to this very day in a variety of flavors.

These days, everyone is reinventing the wheel when it comes to various fundraisers.  Sometimes old fashioned things are big successes for a reason. We could have just directly asked people for money, but I think we learned something about business better this way, even though we bought a lot from eachother.   I guess you could call that “knowing your consumer!”

What did you do to raise money for your class trips back in your day?

Here’s a neat site that I revisted today:

Talk Reviews is a site for WebSite Reviews. Instead of being an online journal of one person’s opinion, users can speak their mind about sites they stumble across on the web.   I found this site a long time ago, when there wasn’t as many reviews and now the site is hopping. There is also a list of Top Sites on the internet determined by their own algorythm. Since this is an international site, there are many that I have never, or seldom, heard of.