Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Mornings segment! Every weekday morning, Geek Alabama talks about and features one crowdsourcing project from crowdsourcing sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others. The hope with Crowdsourcing Mornings is to feature and help a project be successful and reach its fundraising goal. Please enjoy today’s featured project!
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1847587330/paulie-finds-his-forever-home/description
Thank you for being here! My name is Catherine Marie Stillwell and I have been a pet owner and pet advocate ever since I was ten years old. I love all animals, great and small and being their “voice” gives me a sense of purpose knowing that I am helping them in finding their forever home. Paulie was our very first dog that we adopted in November of 2014 and he was 8 years old. His owner had passed away and police officers found him wandering outside of his home. They didn’t know how long he was outside before they found him.
He was then brought into the local shelter as a stray. I quickly learned that seniors, black furred and special needs pets take the longest to adopt out. I wanted to help them find homes sooner, so Paulie and I ran fundraisers for the local county shelter from 2016-2018.The donations that we raised went into a special stipend for the seniors and special needs dogs. Our advocacy helped get the animals the medical attention that they needed to be adopted faster. In 2019 the shelter eliminated the special stipend so to keep Paulie’s mission alive, I assisted organizations that dealt with seniors and special needs dogs.
The shelter environment is stressful for any pet, let alone a senior. This was Paulie’s mission and he was very good at finding donors and our fundraisers always exceeded our funding goals. From 2021-present, I continue to participate in fundraisers to carry on Paulie’s mission and legacy to the animal shelter community. This book was written in his memory for the important work that he did for the senior shelter dogs. He was well known in the animal shelter community.
It was a few years later after adopting Paulie I wrote a poem about him. It was something that I entered into my phone and it was completed in five minutes. I titled it, “Paulie’s Journey.” I finally typed it up and asked for feedback. The comments were overwhelming! So, my vision was to make it into a children’s book. Years passed and Paulie was getting older and health issues arose.
In late 2020, Paulie because very ill so the book idea was placed on the back burner as I took care of him 24/7 until his passing in July of 2021. Paulie was 15 years old. After Paulie’s passing, I began volunteering at local animal organizations to fill the void and to assist them with their fundraisers. In May of 2022, I began writing blogs about the adventures my family and I took him on. It wasn’t until January of 2023 that I decided to write a children’s book based off my very first blog. That’s how this book came to be, “Paulie Finds His Forever Home.”
As of August 30th, this project has raised $1,500 of their $12,500 goal. This project has 6 days left to raise the $12,500 or it will not be funded. For a pledge of $25, you will get one autographed book. For a pledge of $60, you will get one book and one book will be donated. To learn more and to pledge money, go to: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1847587330/paulie-finds-his-forever-home/
Categories: Crowdsourcing Mornings Stuff
