It seems like the requests for donations to charities has been escalating for quite a few years now. And many of them are good causes that I want to support. But once you get on a "list" as being sympathetic to a certain cause, you discover there are many similar organizations that would like you to help as well. I get requests in the mail every day, I get the dinner-time phone solicitations, people come to my door despite the "No Solicitors" sign. And then there's the issue of how well my contributions are used; if you're like me, you don't want your donation to go to some telemarketing guru.

Wildlife Rescue, like many non-profit charities, needs your donations to fulfill our mission. Your contributions help injured and orphaned local wildlife, and helps to educate the public about wildlife appreciation and interaction with our local wildlife. We receive no Federal or State monies, and the City of Palo Alto contract just about pays our rent at Cubberley. So we depend almost completely on annual memberships, donations at the door, and contributions in response to our fundraising events. The Board of Directors this year has gone to great lengths to make those fundraisers a pleasure to participate in. Obviously, we need your donations, and we want you to feel good about it-not pressured or swindled or made to feel doom or guilt. What we do is simple: we help wild animals who would perish without our care. And we need to ask our friends for money to keep doing that. So when you hear from us, I hope you feel good about the way we go about fundraising, and I hope you feel good about what your contribution is accomplishing.

Despite our efforts, we sometimes find ourselves coming up short. It's costing more to do what we do, in part because we are doing more. The Wildlife Rescue Shelter used to "close" for the winter. For the first time-thanks to special contributions-we stayed open for the winter of 94-95 with our Animal Care Coordinator, Chrissy Piotrowski, staying on full time. We were amazed at how much Chrissy had to do, and at the suprising number of animals that came in during this "slow" season. It was essential to stay open and staffed to keep as much continuity as possible with our Animal Care Coordinator, as well as to increase the level of care that animals (typically injured adults) receive in the winter. We are benefiting from having an experienced Animal Care Coordinator and from having Nancy Rubin as our most capable Executive Director, but having these paid staff members work through the winter means it costs more to run the Shelter. So I have personally made a commitment to increase my donations to Wildlife Rescue, and I hope you will consider doing so as well.

There are no "Fat Cats" in this organization-just dedicated volunteers who love our local wild animals, and a small staff working hard to make it all happen. We won't sell your name to telemarketers, we won't call you at dinner-time. We'll just make sure our local wildlife gets the care it deserves when things go wrong.