Friends of Animal Charities - Volunteer Story Comp 2022

The Story of the volunteers of Friends of Animal Charities

Friends of Animal Charities (FOAC) is ten years old this August! We are a committed group of active volunteers who together run what we feel is the best little Op shop on the Kapiti Coast raising money for animal charities in Kapiti and beyond!

It has been good to take a moment to look back over the ten years and view where we came from and where we are now. Our journey started as a group of volunteers who met cleaning out cat cages at a local animal charity. We became aware of the constant fundraising that has to be done to keep animal rescues running. So with this shared love of animals and armed with a range of backgrounds and skills including retailing and antiques, the idea for Friends of Animal Charities was born!

Garage sales and market stalls were our modus operandi for the first two years. Then with increasing success of selling donated and second-hand goods, and with expanding support from the community, we took a leap of faith and opened an op shop in 2014. This was exciting times but also put massive demands on our then small band of volunteers to keep the shop open 5 days a week, maintaining stock levels, sorting and pricing donations, cleaning and transporting goods. Home garages were our storage facilities, and many volunteers turned their lounges into ironing and mending workshops! Husbands and partners were dragged in to assist with fixing and maintenance. The behind the scenes work and the learning curve of starting up a charitable business was a challenge for us all.

Since then we have grown each year, in our sales and most importantly in what we are able to donate to animal charities. Our monthly meeting highlight is deciding as a group which animal charity to give money to! We are now a registered charity and have expanded our business into two shops and an extra storage facility.

The range of tasks needed to keep an op shop ticking over feels enormous at times, but that lends itself beautifully to the wide range of skills and time availability our volunteers have to give. It’s like a wonderful big job share! Some of the tasks our volunteers do include: a weekly shift in the shop, others do the valuable job of covering shifts when we are short. Some volunteers pick up ironing and take that home bringing it back beautifully pressed ready to go straight into the shop. We have wonderful window dressing skills amongst our volunteers and a great knowledge of antiques ensures we get the best prices for our goods. We have a volunteer who runs our facebook page and keeps our followers up to date with what’s going on, we have a volunteer who manages all our finances and pays the bills, plus many, many more….. We have currently 25 volunteers, 6 of whom have been with FOAC for the full 10 years!

What makes the volunteer or team of volunteers special?

Not everything has been plain sailing, for us as an organisation or for individuals in our group. There have been a number of significant challenges along the way; from sickness, passing of loved ones, rent increases, flooding in the shop, and most recently Covid to name a few. Any one of these could have caused volunteers to walk away and our organisation to suffer. But the recurring theme from our volunteers throughout the ten years has been commitment; we have never questioned our purpose, failure has never been considered an option! As a charity we can see what we do makes a difference in the lives of animals; the wonderful thank you letters and emails we get from the rescues we donate to regularly confirms this. Yet I feel pretty confident in saying that we as individuals can also see what a difference volunteering has made in our own lives. In hard times it can be a distraction or a reason to get out of the house, in better times it motivates you, teaches you new skills and gives you membership of a fantastic inspiring team of people!

I think a lot of our success might be contributed to the fact not only are we Friends of Animal Charities but we are also just friends!
The power of shared aims combined with the enormous gift of people’s time and energy can achieve great things! To date we have given nearly $400,000 to animal charities.