Hi, and welcome to the Animal Welfare Junction. This is your host, Dr. G, and our music is written and produced by Mike Sullivan. Today we have an awesome topic. We are discussing an organization called Give Them 10, and to talk to us more about that, we have Deborah Cribs and Monica Tarant. So welcome both of you and thank you so much for being here. Thank you. So how about we start by introducing you guys, and if you can tell us about your background experiences and what brought you to we where we are today.

Thank you for the opportunity. We always like to talk about cats. Um, my name is Deborah Cribs. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I am actually a banker by day. I manage money for rich people. That's what I do for a living. And I have a client whose name is Joni Bernard. And she left all of her assets in the care of my company and me. And we manage that money now as a foundation purely for the care of cats because she loved cats. And over the many years that we've been doing this, now about 10. She died and we took over completely. We really wanted to try to solve the problem of cats being killed in shelters. So here we are today.

How about you, Monica? What brings you to where you are today?

You know, I, I, I kind of come from this on the other side where I think a lot of us in animal welfare did not get into this line of work deliberately. We were maybe on other life trajectories, and I certainly was, uh, many, many, many years ago when I bought a house in the rural Midwest and it came with a load of cats living in the barn that I was. Completely naive to how to handle or what to do with. Um, and I figured out about t n r and I learned the hard way, and I started getting involved in community cats and getting them spayed, neutered for the rural residents that were totally under resourced and had nowhere to go and also didn't know what to do. Um, so I kind of cut my teeth and, and learn the hard way, um, with my, with my own gateway cats as I call them. And that took me through a path of. Working in shelters around the country in operations, saving the lives of cats, um, especially those who are higher risk. You know, your ringworm cats, your neonates, your cats with retroviruses. All of those became my bread and butter. And along the way I started, uh, working for some foundations to help shelters around the country do what essentially we had figured out how to do in, in my shelter. And so I was traveling around the country helping others, but I was always kind of the, the lone cat nut in the back of the room, if you will, screaming that we're not paying enough attention to cats. Cats in this country were being wholesale euthanized at exceptionally disproportionate rates. And it felt very much to be like, no one was listening, no one is hearing us about the cats. Um, and along came Deborah and give them 10 and said, we only work on cats. And now I have, what I described to Deborah is my dream job, um, where I get to focus simply on cats. And so as the chief innovation officer, for give them 10. Man, I love my job. I'm not just saying this 'cause my boss is on the call. Um, I get to help architect what we want to be the most humane city in the country for cats and what that looks like and how we get the communities engaged and how we physically save the lives of these guys on a really regional scale in a strategic way. So that's a long-winded answer of how Gateway Cats brought me to Cincinnati with Give them 10 as well.

And I love it because I love, I love cats, right? I am owned by two cats. Uh, and I always think that people that don't like cats have just never had the experience of living with them because they're just amazing. And people that say, my cat doesn't care if I'm around, you're doing it wrong. Because my cats care about everything that I do. They're constantly following me around and chasing me around. But I have noticed about how more people pay more attention to the dogs and the dog problem, and the cats are kind of overlooked. And whether that is because cats are seen as potentially being outside, being feral, being wild, and I don't know. Overall, they're just not given the care and attention that the dogs seem to receive. And I'm happy to say that in the last 17 years of our work in the Rascal unit, we have seen a shift where we're doing more t n r clinics and we're doing more community cat stuff, and we are eliminating that mentality of people that the feral cat is this wild animal that, doesn't need anything from us. We need to, to help 'em out. So as far as the, give them 10, I had never heard of it until the H S U S expo, and you guys had the big cat walking around. Um, so that's how I became, uh, aware of the organization. So can you explain to us about the give them 10 name? What does that mean?

I'd be glad to, we as business people. Started looking at the problem. As I said, we really wanted to solve the problem with rather than keep putting band-aids on it. And even though we were all cat people, we all had cats in our homes. We had never really understood, um, all of these terrible things that were going on in cat communities. So we started doing research as much as we could 10 years ago and, um, talked to some national players at the time and understood. Um, basically what the problem was and decided, which was that cats were being killed in shelters at enormous, um, rates, as Monica said, and as you said, we decided if we're going to throw money at it, we wanna do it in a very strategic way and really actually try to solve the problem as the business people that we are. And we have a fiduciary responsibility, um, to the funds that we manage to be good stewards of those funds. So if the problem is that cats are being killed in shelters, what actually solves the problem. Of the research that we did, kind of with fresh eyes. You know, I always say with business eyes, we decided that spay neuter obviously was the single, the single thing that might change this dynamic. So we decided that roughly. We would put half the money that we spend every year and we're mandated by i r s rules to spend a certain amount of money. Every year, we would spend roughly half of the money on what we call on the ground work, meaning we've built plenty of brick and mortar. Um, and we've funded so many spay neuter, and I always say all spay neuter are good spay neuter. That's never a waste of money. We funded medical programs. I mean, we, we funded many things, but we decided after a couple of years or maybe only a year doing this, that. We wanted to talk to the public. If we didn't talk to the public, all we were going to do was keep chasing our tails, pun intended, and never really solved the problem. And it appeared to us without arrogance that that's what had been happening. Um, for as long as data existed and the data wasn't really very good, um, 10 years ago. It's much better now. So we hired some very smart advertising people. And, um, talked about how can we do a campaign that talks to the public about the fact that they should spay neuter? I. And at, at the beginning they came up with, and we agreed on give them 10 because it's kind of fun to say. People say, give them 10. What is that? Well, cats have nine lives, so give them 10. It makes sense once you explain it. Um, so that's how we picked the name.

That's awesome. And yeah, I, I really like the name. I really like the idea behind the name, and it's kind of perfect for what you guys are doing now. You said that the Joni Bernard Foundation is a big, has a big role, whether your organization, so is that your sole form of funding or how are you funded?

It is completely funded by the Joni Bernard Foundation. We are the funder, um, and the owner of the Give Them 10 movement. We started the whole thing and we are not a public, um, charity. We do not seek funding. We spend funding.

Why are you concentrating in Cincinnati and I guess how far does your organization take care of?

Because we live in Cincinnati. Joni lived in Cincinnati, died in Cincinnati. Um, the company that I work for is headquartered in Cincinnati and I have a day job. So we decided, first of all, we need to clean up Cincinnati and I can talk about that for quite a while. Um, what Cincinnati looked like at the time. So there was no reason to go further than our backyard. Um, but we work in a hundred mile radius because we can manage that and we very much believe that success breeds success. So we thought if we can clean up Cincinnati and when we first started working with very bad data, I like to say with the yellow sticky method of data collection. We think the live release rate was somewhere in the 30 percentiles, we say 37, but again, very bad data. It was probably higher. Um, so there was a lot of work to do, but we very much believed that if we started Cincinnati and radiate out that we can have success contiguously, um, basically along the highways. Um, so we work, um, we've worked in Indy, we've done some work in Columbus. Um, We have a Northern Kentucky program. We've done lots of work in Dayton, so we're basically making a circle around Cincinnati. Um, and we very much in the last couple of years, and Monica's been a huge part of this, we very much now think of it as a regional program. Um, so I'm not saying Cincinnati is perfect. By no means is that the case, but. The work that we've done for 10 years has actually made a huge difference. Our live release rate are, are continually in the high nineties. Um, again, not perfect. Some of the other statistics, you know, not perfect, but we're very proud of what we've accomplished. And, um, if we take the strong players in the Cincinnati area and have them mentor, you know, maybe some of the smaller counties, um, we think we'll get to success faster regionally. And I can't speak to what'll happen five years from now. Um, but the first 10 years were, um, well, I would say more the first seven or eight years were in the CI greater Cincinnati area and Monica is now very much approaching it from a regional standpoint.

I. Totally agree with the fact of kind of keeping it at home, right? I always think that we need to fix the problem at home before we start going into other places. For instance, as rascal unit, people are constantly saying, can you get licensed in Pennsylvania or Can you get licensed in West Virginia? And I said, as soon as the Ohio problem is taken care of, then I'll go ahead and, and go elsewhere. Because there is a dilution that occurs if you spread yourself out too thin. I, I love the research that is done as far as how to approach, for instance, like T N R and that if you just do five cats here, five cats here, five cats here, you're fixing five cats, but you're still allowing the population problem to persist. But if you concentrate in one group, one community, you're targeting better, and then you're actually getting better results. So, and yeah, if you, if you show people that your project works in your area, then others can see that, learn from it, and then potentially do the same thing in, in other places. So you have discussed about a cat culture shift. What does that mean?

Well, I'll start on that one, and then Monica, um, can chime in. Um, it's really an advertising or marketing strategy. If we don't convince the public, talk to the public and convince them whatever it is we're trying to convince them, but in this case, we want the public to understand that if they see a cat on the street, Who looks healthy and has a tipped ear, let it go. No problem. If they're feeding a cat because they're nice, crazy cat ladies and they haven't fixed those cats, they're just making the problem worse. So a culture shift is really changing the way the public thinks about something. And our favorite example. Say 20 years ago, if you had a plastic bottle of water in your hand, you would drink that water and then you would do what with the bottle? Throw it away. Nowadays, is that what you would do? No. You have cognitive dissonance in your hand. You have plastic. You know that you're not supposed to just throw that away. You are allowed to recycle it, but really you shouldn't even have a single use plastic bottle anymore. That's a culture shift. How did it happen? Somebody talked to the public about it. Um, we think we, we know, um, uh, a, a show a number of years ago that started talking about plastic in the ocean. That might have started that culture shift, but I think everybody's heard about this now. So we, we are very ambitious. We really, really want the people of the United States to understand that cats are okay as community cats. Um, and it's an ambitious goal, uh, but we think we've already made some headway. Monica.

Yeah. I, with my background working with shelters, I'm, I'm intimately familiar with working the intake desk or seeing the struggles that the folks inside the shelter walls go through every day. And when I talk about a cat culture shift, I think back to some of those moments, and I empathize with the folks working in the intake room, and one of my favorite quotes is that the electric light did not come about from the continuous improvement of candles. And shelters today, we are continuously trying to improve the candle for cats. We can maybe put some portals into cages. You know, we can, we can maybe try some cat enrichment to reduce their stress. But it really wasn't until Covid hit that we really drastically started changing things for cats in this country. Um, but what I, what I would see at the shelters is they're fighting the same battles every single day. And they can continue doing that until someone behind them wins the war so that they can move on to doing what work that needs to be done instead of just spinning their wheels every day with the same argument, with the, with, with the community, the same misunderstandings or apathy or lack of engagement with them. Uh, folks today are more than ever confused about what a community cat is. How do they. Care for them. What if I don't want them? I don't understand. For 150 years we've told people to bring loose animals into the shelter. Now you're telling me not to. All day long shelter workers are gonna be putting out these fires unless someone can make a culture shift happen quietly in the background or maybe noisily in the background in some of our marketing campaigns. So that you get your community on board. They understand inherently what a community cat is, what their resources are, how to deal with them, how to care for them, what to do if I have concerns or complaints. And we just start to accept innately that this is a community cat. This is how we care for them. They're part of our landscape. If I wanna help involve, here's how I do that. So that's kind of our bigger goal behind the scenes that I look at it from a shelter lens again, of going, we really wanna do this big picture culture shift, work in the background so that you guys in the shelter can do the work that really needs to be done saving those cats.

I love it. So one of my pet peeves is when people think that cats should not be outside and then they bring 'em indoor. Those cats are miserable, especially the cats that are either feral or semi feral, or they may be social enough with people, but they don't want to live inside. And then you have a cat that you know, starts having urinary problems, behavioral problems, and all sorts of of issues that would not occur would they leave that cat outside. The other issue that I have that I try to change people's minds is the whole ear tipping concept, because I think every cat that lives outside should be ear tipped, whether it is a feral cat or whether it's a social outdoor cat. I think people. Think of an ear tip cat as a bad cat, and we have to change that mentality. People need to understand that a tip just means I'm sterilized and I am vaccinated for rabies, so I'm safe outside is my home and I'm okay to be outside. So I really like the, that idea as far as changing the mindset of the outdoor cats so people can leave 'em outside. These, these cats do not do well in shelters, especially in small cages, and sadly, most of these cats end up being euthanized because they're not adaptable. So just leave them where, where they're at unless there's, uh, there's a danger in their environment that they're at that requires them being moved. You are concerned as far as the overpopulation, which is basically what we are concerned about, kind of like reducing the intake in shelters based on decreasing the number of animals that are around. So how does, uh, give them 10 tackle this issue?

Well, I'll start and then turn it over to Monica. Um, because my role is, is, um, you know, the business end of it, obviously. Again, we decided that if we didn't talk to the public and try to create a culture shift, Everything would just stay the same. Um, so when we decided that we had all of these resources to use that, frankly, most people don't for the benefit of cats, um, we knew that we needed to talk to the public public in a very specific way. So we've got this very clever advertising agency working as our partner, and over the years we've developed an ad campaign. To talk to the public. It's edgy and snarky and really funny. Um, and basically says, go spay, neuter your cat. And we've, we've changed the message slightly as we got feedback from each campaign. Um, and again, the success in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is, um, it's incontestable. It's, it's, Definitely success. Is it because of all the spay neuter money we had on the ground? Well, sure. Is it because we have a, a campaign that's all over town with pictures of our very fun mascot? Scooter, the neutered cat. Um, well, sure. Um, I think both things working together are what has, uh, have led us down this path of success, but, My answer is we decided to spend our resources to create something that nobody else probably had the ability to do because we do have a lot of resources. So we've created this campaign now, um, that talks to the public and we can say anything that we want to the public. Right now we're saying, um, a combination of spay neuter is good and community cats are fine.

I think why give them 10 has worked so well is they were really ahead of the curve on how we presented information to the community. And I think nowadays it makes a lot of sense. But 10 years ago it was, it was pretty edgy and smart. Now we kind of know that. Listen, you can hammer facts home all day long to people and it will just make them dig their heels in more. There's multiple examples I think everyone listening can point to where you just list off facts and people tune you out and they don't listen. Um, instead of doing that, give them 10. Really approach this in a fun and engaging way and made people get involved and made them laugh. Right. Um, and so you weren't flipping the commercial as soon as a sad song came up, showing Tatts in cages and, uh, it just got ingrained in your brain that it's hip to be snipped. And, uh, everyone sings the scooter song about hip spectacles and no testicles, and all of a sudden spay neuter is a part of the culture that's really cool and fun. And so we were able to convey really important messaging. Without turning people off or making them dig their heels in even more. And so we look at this now and it, it still engages, you know, we, some of our marketing campaigns talk about you're not reducing your, your pet's manliness if you neuter him. Again, people on the call go. Yep, I hear that all the time. Yes, yes, yes. We didn't wanna present a million. Here's a fact sheet on why neutering is good. No one's gonna read it. They're gonna dig their heels in even further. Instead, we're gonna show you this hilarious studly cat who's walking around in a gold necklace and sunglasses talking about how he's the coolest, neutered cat in the world and it's hip to be neutered. Um, and that has worked. It has worked with incredible success.

Yeah, when I saw, when I saw Scooter, I thought that that was, again, like, it was awesome, and just walking around and having photo up and I was too shy to go over and take a picture. I was like, thinking people are gonna be like, what? What's she doing? Uh, and, and I totally a hundred percent regret not having a picture of myself with Scooter, but hopefully there will be another opportunity to to get that done. How has your campaigns, how have they evolved over time?

Ooh, well, I'll start there. Um, we started out being in as edgy as we thought we could in our market. Um, and talked about every, every word that can be used to rhyme with or be a synonym of testicles we've found. Um, so we, we started out just being edgy. Um, and then as we got data from each campaign, we, uh, shifted our message slightly, um, just to try to refine what we wanted the public to learn from that campaign. Um, interestingly, during the pandemic, we couldn't, um, do full filming, you know, that would've been in person. We couldn't do it. So our very clever advertising agency, um, found a way to film locally, privately. Um, and use some stock footage and footage that we had already taken and we created what became our most successful from an engagement, from a data engagement standpoint campaign. And it was all about community cats. And the message, the call to action was, call this phone number. If you see a stray cat, you know, community cats are good, community cats are fine. They just need to be fixed. But call this number or go to this website. And it was by far the most engaging, um, campaign that we had in terms of the public actually clicking forwarding, liking calling. Um, it was the least funny. So, um, but after that one, it was so specifically targeted, um, that we decided to pull back after the pandemic. The campaign that we're running right now, um, is more just talking to the general public. Uh, spay neuter is the right thing to do, so they've evolved just depending on what we wanted the message to say. Um, Monica, you've seen all of the campaigns. Which one's your favorite?

I love the most recent one, the great debate one. So all these campaigns kind of started out with reaching the lowest hanging fruit of the community. You know, the folks that we needed the, the least unintended. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We, we, we've started them and then we, we've edged our way up to like the final holdouts who still are not on board with this concept of community cats and spaying and neutering. And that's kind of where the great debate focuses on is those, those laggards in our marketing agency would refer to them as, And the concept of the great debate is you can love cats or you can hate them, but we need to agree that they should be spayed and neutered. And so it's just a really, really funny take on, um, folks who love cats, encountering people who hate cats, um, and them coming to agree that, that I. But we need to spay and neuter and that's that, that it's really true. That's kind of where we are. It's certainly where we are in Cincinnati as a culture. Um, listen, we don't need to agree. You don't have to like the outdoor cats. You, I, we just need to get 'em spay neuter. Can we agree on that? And the answer for us in Cincinnati, after 10 years of Pan says, yeah, we can agree they need to get spay neutered. So it's personally my favorite. Yeah, I have

seen the, uh, billboards that say Love cats? Spay'em. Hate cats? Spay'em. It's like it serves everybody's purpose. Right.

Marketing. Where did you've seen it?

Yes. Right. Uh, so where did the name scooter, like why Scooter, the neutered cat? Like why did you choose him as your mascot? And how does that help make the, the movement successful?

That's a funny question. Thank you. Well, um, scooter rhymes with neuter. I, I mean, it's as simple as that. And it's interesting, um, our, our scooter cat actor out in Hollywood, um, is he is a boy. Um, and we learned from, um, that engagement that the striped orange cats are the easiest to train. I didn't know that, but the, the, um, cat actor people knew that. So scooter rhymes with neuter. That's really the reason. Um, and that's where we got our first jingle. And, um, yeah, I'm sure it was that simple. Scooter neuter, scooter n

I mean, I, I know that there are some facilities that call their spay neuter surgery creates neuter scooters.

So, yeah, we've seen those. Well, we also have another, um, mascot. She came after Scooter because we, scooter was so popular. Um, boy, those ads were popular. Everybody, like Monica says they're singing, um, the jingle. I can sing the jingle still. So we decided Scooter needed a girlfriend and her name is Marmalade and she just got spayed spayed.

One, one of my, I get the honor of escorting scooter, the mascot around the country, um, to, to shelter events from time to time, and it has been. Really heartwarming to watch people's reactions to scooter the mascot. So like Dr. G, you even said you saw him at h ss u s and you were drawn and you wanna get your photo taken. Mm-hmm. Um, he is mobbed. I mean, mobbed when we go to events, absolutely mobbed. Um, I have the most adorable videos of children dancing with him and running. Kids love him. They run up and just mob him. Um, it, I've never honestly seen anything like it. And we were at a scooter. Scooter and I were at a, a baseball game in Iowa, uh, recently, and he was up scooter. The mascot was up against the, the home team mascot, which was I think like a raccoon or something, and all the kids went right to Scooter. It was so, I don't know what it is about Scooter. I'm sure the marketing agency did this all very deliberately, but he is just so engaging and I love that the kids. So into Scooter, because that's our next generation, right? So yeah, he is, he is beloved, I can tell you.

Yeah. We have to train the, the pet owners of tomorrow so that we can get a better result of the results that we got yesterday. So in addition to overpopulation issues, are there any other cat issues that you guys work on?

We, I mean, we're a private foundation, so we accept, um, very specific, um, inquiries. And over the years we've certainly funded, um, medical needs for a variety of, of shelters within our footprint. Um, we have a really interesting program that we've funded over the years. Um, you know, the Holy Grail of all of our business is non-invasive spay neuter. For, um, boy and girl, cats and dogs, right? And there's that $25 million prize that's been out there for how many years. Um, in Cincinnati we have a very famous zoo, and while um, I can be very supportive of what I know to be a very well run zoo, I have to admit, I struggle with the whole concept of zoos except. Cincinnati Zoo has also in it, within its programming, a very famous, um, research facility. It's called the Crew Center. And it just so happened that we were looking for new programs probably eight years ago. And, um, somebody had the idea, ah, heck, it's hard to spend all this money. Sometimes I wonder if the zoo, you know, if their feline programs would be of interest. So we, um, found that in the crew center there, um, is one of the world's leading doctors of, uh, small cat studies. And while he did not at the time specialize in domestic cats, he had a brand new fellow who wished that she could. And we came along, I think at the right time and we funded a program that continues until today. Where she and her team, this fellow were part of a big program involving, um, university of California, um, and Harvard at one point, but they were working on, they were the, the crew center in Cincinnati was a, uh, important component. Of the study that got them to the part, the point where now they have just actually filed, um, a brief, uh, with, with a finding there is they have actually made a breakthrough and there is data that suggests a particular shot would work on females, doesn't work on males. Um, and it's the science. I've read it and I've listened to it so many times. It's far beyond me. So I can only say that the doctors involved, the fellow who is now a doctor, um, they have explained that this works. And so they are filing now, um, with the F B A. We think that it's a number of years before this comes to fruition, but we are so very proud to have been part of this study. So that's not a scooter, um, project. Um, although Scooter has visited the zoo, um, and he gets the same reaction, um, as Monica explains. The kids love him. But we're really proud of that project and that was, um, that continues to be something that we fund. But mostly we fund spay, neuter. Um, you know, Monica maybe can speak to this, but in our footprint we do not want to overbuild. Brick and mortar if we, and we have funded a number of spay neuter centers and there's one coming online, um, this year in northern Kentucky. Um, one came online last year, um, or the year before in Dayton. Um, those are great because they're in a key strategic geography. Um, within our a hundred mile radius, uh, you know, we kind of look for a spay neuter center. You know, it could be every 50 miles, it could be every a hundred miles depending on the population. Um, but you know, these were great additions. Um, and the one in North Kentucky will be a great addition to, um, all of the programming. But we don't wanna overbuild. We very much understand that if, as we believe will happen and has happened here, intake goes down. The brick and mortar that has been built can be easily repurposed to wellness, hopefully for cats, but um, for maybe cats and dogs. So we're very careful about not overbuilding in any area. Um, but we've done quite a bit of building in our first 10 years. We'll probably do less in the next 10 years. Um, and we do an awful lot of spay neuter. Um, but Monica might be able to talk more about the strategic placement of these. Investments.

Yeah. Um, I'll back up a second. One of my, my favorite parts of this foundation is that everything that we create is built to be shared and the knowledge shared with the rest of the country, so that cats everywhere benefit. And because we have this amazing research, Center at, at Crew, at the Cincinnati Zoo who have all these tools and knowledge built in, and they already have the, the capabilities to do such humane research. We're looking at some other options. Uh, we would love to really put forth best practices that are shareable globally for simple t n R. If you think about this, there has never been research into what's actually the best way to do that for cats as far as stress reduction. What stress load are they under and how do we drop it so that the live outcomes for for T N R cats goes through? Um, how do we. Increase humane lifesaving in shelters by stress reduction cats. What does it look like? Um, so we're kind of exploring some other options with the tools we have available since we have this world-class research center and such a great relationship with them. Um, and that's something that could benefit cats worldwide. Um, the other. A fun part of my job is that I get to be a free resource for all of our local shelters and organizations. And so I, I tell all my shelters in my footprint, please think of me as a free resource courtesy of the foundation. So I spend a lot of my time helping them figure out how to increase lifesaving. Do you not have a ringworm program and you want to? Put me in. I can help you with that. Um, you just got your first feline leukemia cat, and you're, you're terrified. You have no idea what to do. Call me, I'll walk you through it, I'll tell you how to do it. Um, so that's how I spend a big chunk of my time, is sharing the knowledge that, that, that we've gained and the experiences on how to do it. Um, and really coaching and helping these organizations. They don't have to feel like they're in it alone. I. I am here as a free tool to help folks in our footprint save the lives of more cats. However, that needs to happen. If I don't know the answer, I'll figure it out and help them. Um, so, so I like to think of myself. I'm, I'm a tool, I'm a tool in the kit, um, for folks in our area to help them save lives. Um, but strategically on our region, yeah, we, we've got our anchor clinics and then we are also. Really cognizant of the fact that lar, there's large pockets of rural areas in our footprint, Southeast Indiana and, and parts of Kentucky and Eastern Ohio are got some really rural pockets that we have to solve for. Um, and so we're, we're exploring that now. We, we've we're brought spay and neuter to five counties in rural Indiana for the first time this year. Some of them who have never, ever had spay neuter resources brought to them. Um, we're in one county. There's not even a single shelter there of any kind. And so we're really trying to explore, um, what is the best strategic way where we're not gonna build a brick and mortar in a county that is exceptionally rural. It has almost no population. What they do have, there are lots of cats that need help. So we, we are strategically exploring how to help those areas as well as our big anchor cities.

I hear a lot of people that say, oh, I'm just gonna build a shelter. I'm gonna build a clinic, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. And they don't understand, first of all, the everything that it takes to build and run something like that, or the resources that you have to have. And then the fact that in a very rural, small, populated area, It's gonna be very difficult to find veterinary, a veterinarian and staff that want to work there regularly, which is kind of why our project got started as far as the Rascal unit with traveling to different areas, we can bring that service to places and we don't have to set up shop, we can go there on an as needed basis. Right. So it's, it's a little bit smarter model because we're providing the service that is needed. When it's needed, but you know, not having to deal with all the overhead and all that stuff.

Yeah, you're exactly right, Dr. G. And the reality that we are all in nationally right now is all the money in the world could rain down from the sky and we cannot make enough veterinarians and tech appear. So yeah, we have got to think a lot smarter and strategically on how to bring spay neuter to all the areas that need it. But building a clinic in every city and town is not necessarily the answer.

Yeah, I completely agree. And one of the things that I found out recently is that you guys are going to be helping sponsor and fund the uh, community cat summit. So I wanted to say thank you for that because I am a board member of Ohio Animal Advocates and I work really closely with Together Initiative, and I have been, uh, a presenter for this. And I think it's such a great opportunity to get all of this information out to people as far as what they can be doing in their communities, how t n R helps what they can do, and even how to support the trappers. So I wanted to definitely say thank you for, for being part of that, of that project because it's, it's very important to me and it's amazing that, you know, a group like you guys are, are supporting that. You mentioned about how you started locally and then you started to grow from there. So can you tell me about that process, how you decided when it was the right time to grow? So people that are listening understand what the, you know, kind of what the process is.

Uh, I can just speak briefly to the business end of it and let Monica really fill in. Um, from our standpoint, we look at it as, Um, when we have success in the core, which was Cincinnati, we are willing to start spreading out county by county and looking for strong players that can help fill in the middle. So if we have a strong shelter, um, in Cincinnati that can mentor the next couple of counties, that's great. We might have to leap over and go to the a hundred miles to get to the next really big city. And if there's a strong player there, then maybe they can help fill in the gap and mentor a couple of counties around them. But for us, it's very important strategically that we help the strong ones get stronger and make them functional as businesses. And the key word for us is sustainable. We really want our funding. While, while there's no bad spay neuter, we want our funding to be impactful and, um, we're very careful about where we place our money. We do want it to be with organizations we believe to be sustainable so that they can grow to be mentors. Um, Monica's working a lot on this now.

Yeah, we've got lots of regional, regional mentorships happening now with our, our longstanding partners, um, who are a lot more able to speak to their local community issues. They know the players, they know city council, they know who sits on the board of others and, and they can get things done that an outside organization maybe can't or can't do as politely. Um, and so we we're in big support of those and, and. Support shelters being engaged and having a buy-in in their communities as well. And so spreading their success outwards. Um, one of the things that we have really been focusing on lately, I. As far as other communities is how do we bring the good work of scooter to, to communities even beyond our tri-state area? Um, and so Scooter, scooter is now, uh, being, he's, he's, he's all the way from Spokane down to rural Georgia, uh, is spreading across the country. So, um, we basically had 10 plus years of great metrics from Cincinnati showing how we have created this culture shift and how that has benefited cats. And again, because everything that was built from this foundation was meant to be free and, and to save the lives of cats everywhere. Um, we thought it was kind of a good time to start rolling Scooter out nationwide. So you saw him at HSUS, we kind of, we talked about how you can bring Scooter to your community and what that looks like, and since coming home from the Humane Society Conference, uh, we, we have been busy, as you can imagine. Um, lots and lots of folks want Scooter and more importantly, want the, the, the success in their cat programs and in their community that, that Cincinnati has had, um, in part thanks to, to give them ten and scooter.

So how many total communities are you, is your program in now?

There are over a dozen all across the country with several more in the works right now. Um, actually Hawaii. Hawaii is our furthest away, but we have Nice, New Zealand is interested in scooter as well, but yeah. Uh, so as far away as Hawaii, um, and then all across the country, um, you know, Everybody has the same cat issues. I, I work with shelters all across the country and sometimes we like to think that our issue is unique. And, and you know, you haven't heard this before and it's true, some, some people still surprise me and tell me things I've not heard before, but it's pretty rare. Um, but we are all feeling facing the same cat issues. We all need to communicate the same things to our communities. And so we, we, what we've been finding is. Every community needs the same thing that we went through in Cincinnati, and so we want to be able to share that success and start at the ground level. It's cool to be neutered. You can do it too. Here's what a community cat looks like. You know, all the way up to love 'em or hate 'em. We've agreed we gotta spam, so yeah. Scooter is, scooter is nationwide now.

So if somebody wants to be part of, give them 10, what do they have to do to be part of this?

We have, um, on our website. Um, so give them ten.org. We have information about how, uh, they could attempt to be what we call them licensees. They're licensing our scooter work. Uh, we're willing to do it for almost nothing. Um, and we're even offering some marketing support just based on, um, all of our very strong skillset, um, in marketing. Um, so we, we, as a foundation, as fiduciaries, we realized that we could leverage all the money that we spent on these campaigns and have scooter live in other areas, spread the message. It just makes the money that we spent more meaningful. So we're extremely, extremely excited and optimistic. Um, about this campaign, but if people are interested, go to the website and see if they qualify and we can walk 'em through the process.

And if they join the program, what can they expect to get from you guys?

We kind of start assessing what their needs are in their community. So where are you in terms of lifesaving? Are we starting at at ground zero where we need to convince folks that they're not taking away their pet's masculinity by neutering him? Or hey, no, we're a little bit past that, but we're really struggling to get the community to understand that community cats are okay and they don't need to be all quote rescued, end quote, and brought into the shelter. Um, what do you need in terms of lifesaving? And so we like to go over that with folks and really figure out what do you need for your individual organization and your community, and tailor the marketing that we can give to you. For that audience. Um, and then we kind of look at where do you want, do you want digital ads for social media? Do you have. Can you get this on tv? If you've got some, some resources to get a local news station to help you out. Are you looking for billboards? Do you have a special event that that scooter would, would really bring in some funds for help? You get the word out for what do you need, and then we can really tailor that. To, um, help you hit success in your community for whatever that looks like for you. But we're really cognizant that, um, not every community is exactly the same. We've got different levels of lifesaving happening all across the country and different levels of needs. Um, the good news is that we've been through pretty much all of them in Cincinnati and we have a solution for you. Um, but we are, we are able to kind of tailor it for each organization and say, here's the package, um, that we have. And also here's what our amazing marketing team, um, recommends. Because this is their jam and they, they know how to do that. They're professionals that can tell you. Um, and so we, we, we were able to customize that for each community and then essentially deliver it, um, at, at again, like almost no cost to, um, the organization. So this is not a moneymaking endeavor for us whatsoever. Um, we want Scooter out there saving lives, and, uh, it, it comes out, uh, in fact at a cost to us, but that is our job. Um, and so we are thrilled to do it.

So the, um, the Community Cat Summit, there's gonna be one in Cleveland and one in Cincinnati, and I think that you guys are planning on being there. So is Scooter gonna be at one of these?

Well, I'll have to check his schedule, but, um, I, he, he's, he's pretty busy these days, but, um, I, I would assume that, you know, it is his hometown. It's, it's his event. And I, I, I would be shocked if Scooter was not at the, at the conference in Cincinnati. Yeah. All

excellent. 'cause then maybe I will finally get my photo op with him. Fantastic. So I think that we have covered a lot of information and again, I think that that your program is really amazing and not just what you're doing locally, but what you're doing to educate others and then supporting the research involved in community cat programs and such. So is there anything that we have not covered that you think it's important for our listeners to, to hear?

I would say if anybody's interested, check out all of our websites. Give them ten.org. Scooter has a YouTube channel. Go, go look at scooter's work. Some of our work, uh, we can't show publicly just because of licensing, but most of it's out there. If anybody would like to see our campaigns, they're really fun.

I would add, uh, don't hesitate to reach out to us if you think that, that you can, we can help you save cats in some way. That's what we are here for. So don't, don't be bashful. If you have a question, reach out. Um, that's literally my job is to help everyone listen, to help you save more cats. So don't, don't be shy if we can help you do that. We want to.

Fantastic. So give them ten.org and we will make sure to share your information on our website and our social media so that we can get as many people involved as possible and, and give these cats 10 lives. So thank you so very much for being here. You both have been awesome. Keep on doing the, the good work and to everybody that's listening, I hope that this was informational and useful. And thank you for listening.

Thanks, Dr. G.

Thank you, Dr. G.