Welcome to the March 23 issue of Shelter Scoop - news from Pima Animal Care Center

Last year, PACC volunteers contributed over 100,000 hours serving at our shelter.  The volunteer team is made up of over 1,300 dedicated people who simply want to take part in the lifesaving work we do daily at PACC. Among that group of volunteers are 80 distinct groups and civic organizations.  Groups schedule in their activities through our volunteer office and spend a dedicated chunk of time working on a given task together. It’s team building for the group members, and it helps us get some tasks taken care of that simply require multiple hands to pull off.

Recently, the Cornell Club gathered some of their members and spent a Saturday morning at PACC working with Friends of PACC operations manager Laura O’Brien. 

The Cornell Club members did some heavy lifting for us – literally. We receive a significant amount of animal food donations that are stored around the PACC campus. It’s important that we rotate the stock, so the food doesn’t expire. The Cornell group spent a few hours moving the bags and boxes of food around the shelter, assuring the oldest was the first to be grabbed as it’s needed. While the task itself may sound a little less cerebral than what a group of Ivy League grads can pull off, the benefit to PACC is worth a significant amount of money.

Last year, we had over 700 new volunteers join the team. Our volunteer unit won a Latham Foundation grant to begin a Humane Education program aimed at youth. Volunteers read to our pups through the Paws and Pages program. They also did laundry at the shelter, served as greeters in our adoptions lobby, helped out in our very busy clinic, assisted with licensing and working through a backlog of incoming calls for assistance. Oh, and of course, dog walking! Totaled up our volunteer work amounted to the equivalent of 48 full time staff members. That’s more than a third the number of our current paid staffing level.

If your group would like to get involved at PACC, or if you as an individual would like to take part in our life-saving work, please connect with our volunteer leadership through our website. We’d love to have you spend time with our critters – and our staff.