It’s been almost a year since COVID-19 arrived in the Golden Triangle, a year Lowndes County Humane Society Director Karen Johnwick described as a journey from “crazy” to “normal” during her appearance Thursday’s Columbus Exchange Club luncheon at Lion Hills Center.
“For us, like it was for most nonprofits, 2020 was a tough year,” Johnwick said. “The lack of fundraisers and off-site adoptions and other events really made it a crazy year. So this year, we’re hoping we will get close to normal and start up some of those events again. I think that’s something all shelters are looking forward to.”
In the first months of the pandemic, both traffic and donations at LCHS fell sharply, the first by necessity, the second by the shelter’s lack of exposure.
“On the fundraising side, we were not able to do our St. Patrick’s Day Paw-ty with Zachary’s, which always brought in a lot of donations and awareness,” Johnwick said. “We also weren’t able to do a lot of other events outside the shelter, which not only really hurt with donations, but hurt us in terms of being in the eye. So our donations were way off. We were forced to focus more on the basics.”
Fortunately, some revenue streams continued.
“Dr. Blanton at Animal Clinic of Columbus really helped us with some of their fundraiser events in their clinic,” Johnwick said. “I think we got about $1,000 from those events, which was a big help.”
An even bigger shot-in-the-arm came in October when 100+ Women Who Care Columbus chose LCHS for its Impact Award, bringing in $14,500 of badly-needed funding.
“That was a big, big thing for us,” Johnwick said.” It was wonderful that they chose us.”
Operationally, Johnwick said the primary work of the LCHS continued, although some changes were made because of the COVID.
“We never stopped our adoption program,” she said. “We just had to do the adoptions outside on our front patio. We were also able to continue our work with the program that sends pets to the northern states, where there’s a great demand, thanks to our partnership with the Oktibbeha County shelter, which runs that program. We were also able to continue our spay-neuter program.”
The LCHS is now open for people to tour the facility and see the animals in their enclosures.
Sarah Akins, director for the Oktibbeha County Humane Society described her experience with COVID-19 in much the same terms as Johnwick.
“We are still doing what we do, but doing it a lot differently,” Akins said. “We are still doing adoptions by appointment only, and we’ve had to cancel some of our programs and events. We have two main fundraisers each year, one we had to cancel and another we had to do.”
Like Johnwick, Akins said operations continue, however.
“Our donations are down, but we’re still working,” Akins said. “What I do miss is having people come in, which hopefully we’ll be able to do before too long. It’s been a difficult year, but we’re hopeful that it won’t be too long before we can get back to normal.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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