Newsletter

Fall 2022 Newsletter

Dear Friends,
We hope this newsletter finds you well this holiday season. We have had a very good year at the Bridge Home and would like to update you on our activities since our last communication. We continue to fulfill our mission to rescue homeless animals and care for them until we find them new loving homes.

We continue to build community partners to help support our mission and find ways to advocate for animal welfare. We always operate at full capacity and greatly appreciate the work of our dedicated staff and volunteers who help us care for our animals.

We have experienced rising operational costs as well. We have had to make costly repairs to our HVAC system in order to provide heat and air to all areas in the facility. We are continually challenged to meet our expenses and would like to ask for your help for our animals. We greatly appreciate the support of our community, as we rely solely on donations. 100% of your gift goes to taking care of our homeless pets while they wait for their new family. At the bottom of this newsletter are ways you can help, and how your gift will be used.

Thank you for your support! On behalf of all of the staff, volunteers, and Board of Directors, we wish you happy holidays
and good health in the New Year.

Highlights from Previous Events

A yard/bake sale was held in June at the Rescue, and two others were attended.
We also held Christmas in July hosted by Blackbird Bakery which yielded much needed supplies for our animals.
We’ve had numerous adoption events at PetSmart where cats and dogs found their forever families.
The rescue served as a vendor at Bristol Pepperfest, two car shows, and fall pumpkin patch. We hosted a Halloween Party/Cat Adoption event at PetSmart.
Lastly, we attended the adoption and vendor event at the PetExpo in Kingsport.

Sincerely,
Alexa Serfis, Volunteer and Executive Director

SUPPORT OUR RESCUE

Spring/Summer 2022 Newsletter

Dear friends welcome to the Spring/Summer edition of the Bridge Home Newsletter! We would like to let all of our newsletter readers know about recent happenings.

EVENTS

Our holiday pet angel tree program was a great success, garnering hundreds of items for community pets and pets staying at our facility. We hope to further expand our collection sites next year. We held a pop-up cat café Valentine’s Day weekend, with both Saturday and Sunday events. This is the first cat café ever held in the Tri-Cities area. Our community cat room was transformed into a café and people were invited to come and enjoy a hot beverage, music, and enjoy the company of free-roaming cats. This proved to be a good fundraiser, and adoption event and brought new people to the facility. A second was held on April 23rd and our cats played host to another group of cat lovers. We also brought cats to the Downtown Yoga Center in Johnson City on April 30th to have a Yoga With Cats class/adoption event. These events are a great way for us to interact with our community and increase the exposure of our animals. We have adoption events planned for May, and a yard/bake sale will be held at the rescue on Saturday, June 4th. All events are posted on our Facebook page and our website. Please feel free to come to an event and check us out!

ADOPTIONS

Our dog adoptions have been very steady, while our cat adoptions are exceeding past numbers with the addition of our satellite location at the Bristol, VA PetSmart last fall. This has been a true blessing for us, as we are able to help more animals as more get adopted. We post all our adoptions on our Facebook page, and it has been very busy.

We have also been able to take in some rabbits and guinea pigs and help find these animals new homes as well. We continue to operate at full capacity, with waiting lists for cats and dogs. Our website continues to develop, and we now have the ability for people to sign up for our waiting lists online through the website.

VOLUNTEERS AND OUR RECYCLING EFFORT

All of these wonderful things happening at The Bridge Home occur because of the dedication of not only our fabulous staff but also with dedicated volunteers. We have regular volunteers that come every week to work with the dogs and rotate them out on the runs. We have recently cleared space around the perimeter of our property so that dogs can be walked on leash and explore the grounds. Volunteers tend to the cats, help with landscaping, drive animals to vet appointments, do laundry, and help raise funds through our can recycling.

We would like to highlight the efforts of one of our long time volunteers, Steve “the can man”, here:

The rescue has been collecting and recycling aluminum cans for over 10 years! This volunteer-based effort provides funding for the rescue operations. Aluminum cans are collected at three locations, then transported to Renew Recycling in Kingsport. We receive commercial rates because of the number of cans recycled, which amounts to several hundred pounds per month. The three locations include:

• A chain-link fenced pen in front of The Bridge Home facility at 2061 Highway 75 in Blountville
• A small wood box at Companion Animal Hospital at 3315 Roller Drive in Kingsport
• A large chain link fenced pen at Air Works HVAC, 5633 Memorial Blvd. in Kingsport

Aluminum is a cost-effective recyclable because of its utility as a packaging or construction material. Its price per pound is high, even 10 times that of steel. Recycling aluminum makes a meaningful contribution to the rescue, which amounts to $25 per hour of volunteer time. The earnings from this recycling effort support the general operations of the shelter, which include: utility bills, cleaning supplies, animal medications, vet bills, paid staff, food, and more.

Aluminum is the only material that is requested in our recycle bins. Crushed cans in large plastic bags are optimum donations. When other materials are mixed in, such as plastic, trash, cardboard, and dirty food cans, they have to be sorted and discarded by the volunteer. It is a huge effort to collect the aluminum and bring it to the recycling center. We appreciate the efforts of our dedicated volunteer! We always welcome volunteers at the rescue and there are a variety of things to do, including helping with this recycling effort. Every task benefits the rescue and we appreciate the extra hands.

HELP US HELP MORE ANIMALS

Our rescue depends on the help of volunteers and support from the community. As a charitable non-profit organization, we do not receive funding from any governmental agency. We exist because of the generosity of our supporters. There are many ways you can help us in our efforts to save animals. Please visit our website (bridgehome.org) and see our wish lists for General Needs, Chewy, Amazon, and Kuranda (cat and dog beds). Even a small purchase off of these wish lists makes a significant impact on our animals. Items can be ordered and sent to our facility at 2061 Highway 75, Blountville, TN 37617. Items can also be dropped off at the rescue.

If you shop online at Amazon, please consider shopping at smile.amazon.com. You can identify us as the beneficiary of donations that Amazon makes for your qualified purchases. For each eligible purchase, we will receive 0.5% of that purchase from Amazon. It is an easy way to support our animals at no cost to you. If you would like to participate in our yearly sponsorship program for cats and dogs, we will recognize your sponsorship with a plaque on a dog kennel, cat condo, or on the plaques in our lobbies for isolation rooms and the kitten nursery. Details of the sponsorship program are on our website. All monetary donations can be sent to either our P.O. box or our facility address.

From all of us at The Bridge Home, we thank you for your support and for helping us in our mission to rescue homeless animals and help them find new loving homes. Have a wonderful and safe summer!

Sincerely,

Alexa Serfis, Volunteer and Executive Director

December 2021 Newsletter

Dear Friends:

We hope this newsletter finds you well. We are excited to update you on our happenings this last year!

We have continued to operate during this pandemic by appointment only for adoptions, and it has proven to be a successful way to match serious adopters with new pets. Our dog adoptions slowed this spring and summer as we worked to repaint and refurbish the dog kennels and kennel gates. In addition to this project, we have refreshed the paint on the interior of the building, established isolation areas for new/sick dogs and cats, and put in some fenced-in areas for dogs to play and meet potential adopters.

We have developed a website (https://bridgehome.org) that highlights our animals, mission, and events. Most of this work was completed with staff and volunteers working together. We have been doing at least one event per month in the community. Kitten yoga was one that was a great success and is being planned again in December. As we grow our volunteer base we hope to do more. Look for us in the Bloomingdale Ruritan Christmas parade in Kingsport on December 11.

We are thrilled to announce that we have expanded and now have a satellite adoption center at the Bristol, VA PetSmart for cats! We can house up to 10 cats in the store in beautiful cat condos. Our staff is responsible for their care and conducting adoptions. This is a great opportunity for us to expand our reach north and serve communities that may not come as far as Blountville to adopt a new feline friend.

We have hired Jessica Vazquez as our Rescue Manager. Jessica came to us from the Washington County-Johnson City Animal Shelter and brings 11 years of experience in animal shelter work. With her guidance and expertise, we are now microchipping animals at the rescue, doing in-house testing for cat and dog health conditions, and modernizing our record-keeping on a cloud-based shelter management system.

All of the work we do depends on donations, as we are a private rescue and do not receive funding from any government sources. Every dollar that is donated benefits animals. We do pay staff to take care of them on a daily basis, and it costs a substantial amount to vet the animals and just keeps the facility operational. At this time we are unrolling a new sponsorship program. Would you consider sponsoring a dog kennel, a cat condo, or cats housed in our community cat room? Your name will appear on a plaque on the kennel door/cat condo/community cat room. We also have sponsorships for the animals kept in isolation and our kitten nursery. If these sponsorships are not in your budget, we truly appreciate any amount that you can give now or in the upcoming year to help our animals. Your donations allow us to provide care for our cats and dogs so that they may be healthy and adoptable pets. Your donations are tax-deductible, as we are a 501c(3) charitable organization. Details of this sponsorship program are found on the reverse side of this newsletter.

We have enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope and a notecard to return to us. We ask that you please fill out the card and return it to us so we may keep an updated mailing list, even if you cannot donate at this time. We plan to do mailings three or four times per year. We will have pet angel trees at businesses in our community and at the rescue again this year. The program was a great success last year, and we were able to help community animals as well as our own. We also invite you to attend our open house on December 4th at the rescue. Please come and see the work we have done this year to improve the facility; enjoy holiday refreshments; and participate in our raffle. We will also have the raffle online for those that cannot attend in person. Follow our Facebook page and view our website to stay up to date on all our events.

On behalf of all the staff, volunteers, and animals, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and thank you for supporting Bridge Home.

Sincerely,
Alexa Serfis, Volunteer and Executive Director