Catsey charity

[EmmaG]

Been thinking about this for a while....not sure if anybody would agree that it is a good idea. ;)

What would people think if we set up a charity whereby people could donate money and we could vote say every few months who we would like to help - could be a cats protection branch or a member who is fostering on catsey etc.

Comments welcome.

[angieh]

In principle, a great idea Emma. In practice, a nightmare I should think.

[Manyana13]

I think it is a great idea. I also think (as angieh said) facilitating it could be a nightmare.

I would be happy to help in anyway if need be.

[EmmaG]

I thought if we kept it simple. Just have a paypal account for donations and perhaps when we have a certain amount in there (say £100) we could decide on where it was donated - personally I don't mind who got the money as long as it went to somebody locally - I stopped donating to the RSPCA after reading a lot of horror stories. If we set up a small charity at least we knew our money would make a real difference.

We could also sell a bit of Catsey merchandise to help raise some funds?

[dandysmom]

In theory, a great idea, specially the PayPal account, which makes it easy for a non UK member like me to contribute. Catsey merchandise? Remember how we could never get the tee shirts started? And it took Matt to get the Catsey calendar finalized, and then not many people bought it. :( :roll:

So, I love the idea, but I think it's a case of herding cats. I welcome other opinions ....

[EmmaG]

Merchandise is a lot easier to buy now a days Eileen, also a lot of places don't have minimum orders like they use to.

We could keep it simple with the merchandise - mugs, bookmarks, coasters, etc. Just have a small selection, but with enough mark up to make it worthwhile.

[angieh]

I love the idea, but do remember the calendar and the tee shirts. I loved my calendar and would really like another ......

[dandysmom]

OK to make it simpler. suppose we decide on a Catsey mug. What color? What wording? Pic a generic cat or one of ours (decided how, by vote?) What vendor? Who picks the vendor and sets the price? Who negotiates with vendor?

I'm not trying to rain on your parade; I love the idea, but having been thru the tee shirt bit, am very much inclined to play Devil's advocate here. There is usually a lot of enthusiasm in the beginning, but it falls off when we get to the details.

Emma, I'd be glad to work with you if you want to take charge of getting this up and running.

I would gladly contribute a small amount monthly to the charity bit.

[dandysmom]

Any one else want to weigh in on this???????

[angieh]

Only really to day that I don't want to dampen Emma's enthusiasm as it is a really good idea and I would certainly join in. But I understand exactly what you're saying Eileen and certainly it has been true in the past ....... maybe things can change?

It would presumably need Az's approval to begin with as a first step.

[Phoenix]

Nice idea in theory, how would it work in practice?

[EmmaG]

OK to make it simpler. suppose we decide on a Catsey mug. What color? What wording? Pic a generic cat or one of ours (decided how, by vote?) What vendor? Who picks the vendor and sets the price? Who negotiates with vendor?

I'm not trying to rain on your parade; I love the idea, but having been thru the tee shirt bit, am very much inclined to play Devil's advocate here. There is usually a lot of enthusiasm in the beginning, but it falls off when we get to the details.

Emma, I'd be glad to work with you if you want to take charge of getting this up and running.

I would gladly contribute a small amount monthly to the charity bit.

Eileen I think you have got my idea of the charity merchandise wrong.

Catsey merchandise would have the catsey logo on and perhaps the URL

So we have white mugs, with the four cats above and www.Catsey.com (http://www.Catsey.com) on the mugs, buy them for say £10 and resell for £15 + P&P - the charity would get £5.

If we keep it simple it will work, try and make it complicated and it wont.

[dandysmom]

You're right, I did misunderstand the merchandise bit; what you propose is, I think, doable. I'm all for it. I did have to get an OK from Az for the tee shirts as Angie mentioned, to use the name and URL.

[Moli]

What do you mean by local charities Emma....we are spread about a bit..

[Shelley123]

Sounds a good idea, i like the idea of a paypal account for donations and the idea of donating once we get say £100.
Where would the money come from to buy the merchandise?

[Kazz]

I am paying attention but so excited by my new arrivals (garden tools) I can't concentrate so am reading and taking nothing on board but will reread tomorrow and try to say something useful.

Think its a good idea though.

[EmmaG]

Moli - when I said local charities I really meant not giving all of the money to the RSPCA for example. The money could go (for example) and help somebody who was fostering some cats/kittens, we could donate by way of food/vet vouchers. There are plenty of catsey members who foster or take in stray cats or help a local charity - it would be great to help some of them, even a small contribution would help I am sure.

Shelley - I would happily donate say the first 5 mugs - once they are sold we have funds available to buy new ones. Or we could set up an online merchandise account whereby we just provide a link to all of the merchandise and people buy direct (we set the prices) therefore we do not have to buy any stock. Once a purchase is made we would get the markup.

[EmmaG]

We could decide beforehand who we would donate the money to - once we reach target we distribute the money to those people (more than 1 would be good I think) With the money we could buy vouchers rather than donating cash if people thought that was more appropriate.

[dandysmom]

As I recall, the online merchandise account was what Matt did for the calendars.

[angieh]

Yes, that's right Eileen. But I think that because so few were actually sold, there wasn't much to give to charity, if anything. I don't remember the figures. The markup that the producers make is fairly hefty.

[dandysmom]

Yes, that's true; I don't recall ever having a surplus from that for charity. It would be lovely to have another calendar, but that would be a very big, time-consuming job for someone with a lot of time and patience.

[Phoenix]

Here's an idea, everyone find a pot or someting and put what they can afford in there.

Then we discuss on here who to donate the money to (makes it uncomplicated then)