Salary Worthy?

I am a full-time volunteer for MickaCoo Pigeon & Dove Rescue spending my savings to support myself and pay for gas, tolls, bird food and supplies while I rescue homeless, unreleasable pigeons and doves. I'm busy 7 days a week and average almost 10 hours every day. Of course, that is purely my choice and I'm doing exactly what I want to do.

I never intended to become a pigeon rescuer. Three and a half years ago while volunteering at the SF Animal Care & Control Shelter (SFACC), I met a king pigeon named Gurumina, that was tame and sweet and trusting and facing euthanasia for lack of an adopter. I knew I could find her a home and so I fostered her for a month until I did.

The next king pigeon that came in to SFACC was sick and dirty and scared but, thanks to Gurumina, I knew her secrets- that she was smart and noble and saveable and so I rescued her too. I named her Rocky (because she was such a wing fu puncher) and, since then, I have, with your help, saved several hundreds more from shelters and surrenderers throughout the Bay Area.

My first career was 14 years as a director for a non-profit social service organization, Women in Community Service, that reduced poverty by developing self-sufficiency and upward mobility for low-income families. After that, I took a job as a producer of educational toys for LeapFrog for 7 years. When I was laid off a few months into my pigeon rescue efforts, I had more time to help the birds and that time was quickly filled up with the ever-growing workload required to save more and more pigeons and doves slated for euthanasia as "surplus". Now I'm wondering if I could generate enough donations and funding to sustain this effort. Would YOU contribute towards a salary for me to become the paid director of MickaCoo? Do you think this work that I do is salary worthy?

In the beginning, a fellow SFACC volunteer would caution me, when foster numbers climbed, with the wise words "eight is enough". Later I would stress when we had 25 pigeons and doves in foster care. I was really alarmed when we had more than 50 in foster care and how many times have people heard me say, "MickaCoo is FULL!"?. Recently we were super, super full with 92 birds in foster care when we were asked to rescue more than 200 Persian High Flyers surrendered to Berkeley Animal Care Services by a pet shop owner. And we did it. That same week we were asked to help 34 surviving king pigeons of 60 that a business man released in Milpitas for good luck.

Amazingly, at every crisis, thanks to supporters old and new, we've been able to stretch and grow and to say yes to the call to help pigeons and doves with no place else to go. We've saved the lives of more than 400 birds in the past 3.5 years by placing them with carefully screened adopters willing to provide wonderful forever homes. Currently we're caring for 291 surrendered and abandoned pigeons and doves in top-quality foster homes and, on Tuesday, we're taking in 11 more (that I know of right now). This month we've placed 19 in homes and we're currently working with 7 potential adopters.

While I've been at the center of this, I am in no way alone in my efforts. I'm very proud that I had the good sense to reach out to Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue for help right at the very start and I will always be deeply moved by the warmth with which I was welcomed. Mickaboo has, in addition to rescuing thousands of parrots, always saved every bird they could and their volunteers were helping pigeons and doves and roosters and ducks and peacocks, etc. long before I came along. I have a deep and profound respect for Mickaboo and their incredible commitment and effectiveness. I was honored when they allowed me to create a new division- MickaCoo Pigeon & Dove Rescue within their organization.

It was announced this way in July 2008:

Mickaboo has a new wing! As you know, Mickaboo is a companion parrot rescue organization, but we just can't stand it that other companion birds like doves and pigeons are suffering and being euthanized in Bay Area shelters. Tina, a very long time Mickaboo volunteer and foster parent, just about single-handedly rescued scores of doves and pigeons and placed them in great homes over the last several years. Then Elizabeth joined Mickaboo and took up the cause of doves and pigeons in a big, big way. Because Mickaboo struggles to keep its head above water just dealing with parrots in shelters, the only help we've been able to offer Elizabeth is posting birds on the Mickaboo website. She's been taking doves and pigeons in, fostering them, and paying all the vet bills herself---sometimes thousands of dollars a month. In an effort to support Elizabeth and help the cause of doves and pigeons, we decided to form MickaCoo, a division of Mickaboo. This should help Elizabeth with her fundraising efforts for the cooing kids, and give them more visibility. The MickaCoo part of the website is still under construction so keep visiting often to see it as it takes shape! http://www.mickaboo.org/mickacoo.html

And MickaCoo has thrived. We have incredible support from the Mickaboo network as well as from many new volunteers that have joined our efforts. We have 15 incredible foster homes that provide model care for the birds. We fundraise and invest whatever is required to provide proper avian vet care to injured and/or sick birds and have saved and improved the lives of many that would otherwise gone untreated (or been euthanized). We attend adoption fairs and special events constantly and have introduced thousands of people to the plight and potential of unwanted and unreleasable pigeons and doves.

If I could afford to continue this way I'd gladly do it but I've stretched my savings about as far as they'll go. I've thought a lot about going back to paid work but find that I don't want to stop doing this. I'm good at helping pigeons and doves find homes and I've built up an incredible network of resources and supporters and knowledge and momentum. I feel as if I'm helping to redefine what is possible in animal rescue. I've been doing the impossible since the beginning when I was told these birds were unadoptable and I believe that, with your support, I could raise funds to make this a sustainable role for me.

My MickaCoo work and success in helping these birds, whether volunteer or paid, is completely dependent on YOUR support. I could have never accomplished a fraction of this without all of you. I want and need YOUR feedback on this issue.

There are lots of questions and issues to address. Being an all volunteer organization is very pure. Would MickaCoo still be supported if I was paid to do the work that I do? I am already doing as much as I can and, while I know there are ways I can work smarter, I don't have enough hours in a day to work harder. Will volunteers still step forward and say Yes to all my many, many requests for help if I am being paid to do what I do? And we've never put finances ahead of birds and I wouldn't want to start. We do what's best for the birds. Period. We don't euthanize because a bird would be expensive to treat, we just fundraise more and better. Also, a change like this might necessitate that MickaCoo become an independent nonprofit, growing from its current role as a division within Mickaboo to a full-fledged rescue. What would the ramifications of that be?

I posed the question, back in 2009, whether it even made sense to rescue king pigeons (escaped meat birds) in a piece I wrote entitled Rescue Worthy? I was blown away by the responses people offered and I learned a lot.

This time, I'm asking if you think this work I do is salary-worthy. Please share your comments here and please complete this short survey on the topic. I will share the results in a follow-up post.

As always, thank you.