Welcome to Dholes.org
The home to all things Dhole and The Dhole Conservation Fund
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What we've been up to
January 4, 2021
Dear Supporters,
Well, I won’t lie, it’s been a rough year. Almost all field project stopped due to Covid-19. No grants were given out this year to help with dhole research and if it wasn’t for our amazing supporters, we wouldn’t have any donations coming in. You are the ones that help keep us afloat this year.
We didn’t sit ideal when Covid-19 hit, but many of us work other jobs and we were fortunate to have hours often pick up rather than drop off. So, it was busy but still possible to grow the organization. During these hard times, our board got to thinking about if we can only do one thing to help dholes what would benefit them the most. After some soul searching and long thinking we came to the difficult decision to change our mission. We will still be known as the Dhole Conservation Fund but now we will be focusing on education and awareness. We realized that more people would be willing to promote research if they just knew such an animal exist. With this new direction, we are currently working with educators to create curriculum for all ages to do virtually with students and interested audiences. So rather than spend endless hours entering grant information and maybe getting a few hundred dollars for hours of work we will be focusing on educating the public. We believe our time doing such could really do a lot to turn the tides on this forgotten species. Right now, we will be focusing on the United States, where we are currently based. We will try to expand them to other countries depending on the success of the programs here. We are really excited about this change and can’t wait to educate new minds about the amazing life of the dhole.
What about our projects? Most of our projects ended with the virus. So sadly, we don’t have any projects at the moment.
What about wild dholes? Oh, we haven’t forgotten them. This we think is the coolest part of our change. We haven’t given up on funding wild dhole projects, oh no. But we are giving up control on picking who gets what, that position will now be going to you, our supporters. As projects get submitted to the Dhole Conservation Fund our board will screen them to make sure they are legitimate and have a lasting impact. At that point, we will present them to you, our supporters. You can choose to donate to the project or not. We will promote different causes at different times, but all the money will go to that cause. Some projects will need funds right away so there will be a smaller window of time to fund those but others will be long-term projects that we hope to support.
I have a reoccurring donation and I don’t want it to go to the new mission what can I do? There is a way for you to deactivate that auto donation, if you’re having trouble just email me and I will do it for you. We understand this is a big change and not everyone will be willing to support it.
I use to be a teacher can I help in some way? Right now, we are lucky to have so many talented teachers writing for us. We are planning to do everything virtually at this time to have the greatest impact. We really appreciate the offer.
What are you doing with general donations? We do have a small amount of overhead to pay for the website and a few other filing expenses associated with being a nonprofit. When those expenses are taken care of money is funneled into an emergency funding fund. This fund helps with projects that have an emergency need. So even general donations can help with projects.
This change is not permanent and we hope to get time to start looking into grant funding for the project again but we think this is a pretty good way to have the greatest impact for dholes and dhole conservation.
If there is a dhole project you think we should hear about please have them email me at Chelsea@dholes.org we would love to hear from them.
We want to say thank you so much and hope that you and your family are safe and well. Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Chelsea Davis
Chelsea@dholes.org
Dear Supporters,
Well, I won’t lie, it’s been a rough year. Almost all field project stopped due to Covid-19. No grants were given out this year to help with dhole research and if it wasn’t for our amazing supporters, we wouldn’t have any donations coming in. You are the ones that help keep us afloat this year.
We didn’t sit ideal when Covid-19 hit, but many of us work other jobs and we were fortunate to have hours often pick up rather than drop off. So, it was busy but still possible to grow the organization. During these hard times, our board got to thinking about if we can only do one thing to help dholes what would benefit them the most. After some soul searching and long thinking we came to the difficult decision to change our mission. We will still be known as the Dhole Conservation Fund but now we will be focusing on education and awareness. We realized that more people would be willing to promote research if they just knew such an animal exist. With this new direction, we are currently working with educators to create curriculum for all ages to do virtually with students and interested audiences. So rather than spend endless hours entering grant information and maybe getting a few hundred dollars for hours of work we will be focusing on educating the public. We believe our time doing such could really do a lot to turn the tides on this forgotten species. Right now, we will be focusing on the United States, where we are currently based. We will try to expand them to other countries depending on the success of the programs here. We are really excited about this change and can’t wait to educate new minds about the amazing life of the dhole.
What about our projects? Most of our projects ended with the virus. So sadly, we don’t have any projects at the moment.
What about wild dholes? Oh, we haven’t forgotten them. This we think is the coolest part of our change. We haven’t given up on funding wild dhole projects, oh no. But we are giving up control on picking who gets what, that position will now be going to you, our supporters. As projects get submitted to the Dhole Conservation Fund our board will screen them to make sure they are legitimate and have a lasting impact. At that point, we will present them to you, our supporters. You can choose to donate to the project or not. We will promote different causes at different times, but all the money will go to that cause. Some projects will need funds right away so there will be a smaller window of time to fund those but others will be long-term projects that we hope to support.
I have a reoccurring donation and I don’t want it to go to the new mission what can I do? There is a way for you to deactivate that auto donation, if you’re having trouble just email me and I will do it for you. We understand this is a big change and not everyone will be willing to support it.
I use to be a teacher can I help in some way? Right now, we are lucky to have so many talented teachers writing for us. We are planning to do everything virtually at this time to have the greatest impact. We really appreciate the offer.
What are you doing with general donations? We do have a small amount of overhead to pay for the website and a few other filing expenses associated with being a nonprofit. When those expenses are taken care of money is funneled into an emergency funding fund. This fund helps with projects that have an emergency need. So even general donations can help with projects.
This change is not permanent and we hope to get time to start looking into grant funding for the project again but we think this is a pretty good way to have the greatest impact for dholes and dhole conservation.
If there is a dhole project you think we should hear about please have them email me at Chelsea@dholes.org we would love to hear from them.
We want to say thank you so much and hope that you and your family are safe and well. Thank you again.
Sincerely,
Chelsea Davis
Chelsea@dholes.org
