Dear adopters, donors, business partners, and other supporters,

You are receiving this email because we value your relationship more than anything, and we wanted you to hear this difficult news straight from us and before it is announced publicly.

After months of agonizing over the future of our organization, we have decided to close the animal shelter and disband Haven Animal Rescue. While we have been blessed with incredible support from all of you and from our community, our volunteer resources have been steadily dwindling since we opened our Howard shelter location in May 2018.

As a volunteer-run organization, we rely on volunteers to do everything from daily care of our shelter pets to event staffing and fundraising. We have been unable to retain new volunteers or encourage our loyal ones to step into other roles, such as joining our Board of Directors, which no longer has the legal, state-required minimum number of members to operate. The workload is overwhelming for the few of us who have been sharing it, and -- honestly even if we could recruit 50 new volunteers today -- we are burnt out with the responsibility of leading our team. As busy full-time working moms with young children and our own pets who need us, we have decided it's time to reinvest in ourselves and our families.

Our focus now is to adopt out the rest of our shelter pets and work to distribute our remaining supplies and resources to other smaller, like-minded organizations. We have already shared numerous supplies with Green Bay Animal Rescue, the Oconto Humane Society, the Neenah Animal Shelter and Shawano Cares About Critters. We also are working on a way to network to bring spay/neuter services to the area to assist the rescues and shelters that have been left without access to them since the Fox Valley Humane Association discontinued their services.

I can't tell you how incredibly grateful we are to each and every one of you. Many of you have seen us go from a foster-based rescue to a shelter-based operation, back to a foster-based rescue and back to a shelter-based operation. Because of your support we were able to rescue and rehome hundreds of animals since we first incorporated in 2012 (including over 70 pets just since we opened our doors in Howard). So many pets have found forever families and second chances because of our work, which was made possible because of our partnerships and relationships with each of YOU.

Thank you again for all you have done for us and for the homeless pets who needed you!

Leigh Ann and Jamie