Quarterly Report February 2025

Official / General

  • Switched insurance to Chubb through Bender Hatch Feb 12. Insured for $935k replacement. Cancelation Form has been sent to Liberty Mutual Feb 13.
  • SEC annual report filed in January

Financials

  • State Tax Form 3ABC for Fiscal Year 2026 was filed on 2/17/2025 for House Rabbit Network Inc. with the assessor’s office for the Town of Westford. The renewal exempts HRN from being accessed real estate taxes on the shelter.
  • The 2024 books for HRN have been closed and the appropriate schedules and reports have been delivered to our tax accountants for review and preparation of financial statements and tax returns.

Adoptions

381 Adoptions for 2024! 

Fundraisers

  • Anthony’s Pizza Feb 8 raised $1296.41 ($941 from the sweepstakes, 355.41 from Anthony’s)
  • Winter Bunderland Dec 18 raised  $2369. $882 from Zeffy sales (sweepstakes, ornaments & bake sale), $525 from photo purchases. $887 in cash donations for all types of sales during the event. $75 was raised via the Kiosk screen in donations.
  • Vegan Culinary Experience Feb 1 raised $500
  • Bunny Snuggle Event Feb 24 raised $1,275.00
  • Bunny Snuggle Events scheduled for March 16th and March 29th in Westford and March 30th in Rockland. 
  • Paint your Pet scheduled for Mar 2 in Norwell. We are estimating a total of $1,800 from this event.
  • Candle Making Workshop scheduled for Mar 23.
  • 25th Anniversary Party has been booked for April 27th at the Establishment in Chelmsford. 
  • Lauren is working on a Bunny Block Party for June 7th. The goal for this event is to make at least $5,000 for the rescue. 

Services (Spa Days, Bunsitting, Bonding)

Spa Days

  • Westford Spa Day was on January 11 held at the Westford Library.  The team saw 62 rabbits .  The spa raised $1,860 in pre-sale and collected $65 in additional donations.   We can not collect any cash at the library so we use a Zeffy QR for any other donations.
  • South Shore Spa Day was held on February 1 in Norwell, MA at Devine Feed and Pet.  The south shore team saw 19 rabbits during the 4 hour event.  The spa raised $570 in pre-sales.  It should be noted we had a skin tear occur during grooming on a bunny.  The owner was informed and instructed to ensure the bun saw a vet.  The owner was contacted and just said the bun was fine but did not indicate if it had been seen by a vet.
  • Westford Spa Day scheduled for March 1, 2025 at the Westford shelter has pre-sold 59 spaces and collected $1,800 in pre-sales.  We have a short waiting list for 4 additional buns that will be added to the schedule.

Bunsitting (as of 2/21/25)

    • 93 paid requests since November update totaling $21,230
    • 35 requests are scheduled up to 10/2/25 with 6 open requests
    • 10 new sitters were onboarded and 2 asked to be removed from the group 
  • 6 bunsitter sitter discounts were given totaling 33 days between them
  • A new Google Doc “Boarding Home Agreement Form” was created to onboard volunteers. Current volunteers were asked to complete it as well so all volunteer forms can be recorded and tracked in one location (since many of the old forms the current volunteers filled out were not available in the bunsitting account).

Bonding (as of 2/21/25)

  • In person bonding total since November update: $525 
  • 10 virtual bonding consultations totaling $430
  • We currently have 7 people waiting for in-person bonding (although some are attempting themselves with the assistance of virtual consultations). We are a bit backed up due to volunteer vacations/personal issues, but hope to be scheduling people in March and April. The program can definitely benefit from a few more volunteers. 

Grants

Submitted MAC grant for 2025 requesting $22,500

We received an invite to apply for the Richard and Marion Graham grant with awards up to $20k. Submitted for Feb 21 due date and to purchase cages for the clinic / intake area or medical equipment.

Donation Management & Development Committee

Subscriptions

Monthly  

Bringing in each month $1224

1 for $100 / month

13 for $50 / month  

10 for  $25 / month

20 for $10 / month

4 for $5 / month

1 for $4 / month 

Condo Sponsorships have been implemented by Lauren. We have 7 cages sponsored currently with very little advertising to date. We are working to have all 28 condos on the main adoption floor sponsored by the start of the summer. Sponsorships are $50/month and include email updates of the bunnies in residence, adoption announcements, and a personalized plaque on the condo door – all managed by Lauren. This new initiative will be announced in our February Newsletter. 

The Friends of the House Rabbit Network is creating an Etsy Shop to sell handcrafted goods to raise money. Lauren is helping to lead this team. The first meeting for this was Monday, February 24th at 7pm. This team is composed of volunteers Cara C., Kari O., Garance M., and Kaitlyn R. This should be released around April. 

Lauren continues to create and send out newsletters regularly to our community. 

Shelter 

  • A lot has happened since the last report. With the holidays fast approaching and the shelter not ready we were able to appeal to the town of Westford and were awarded with partial occupancy of the main shelter space and the hope of using at least one adoption room. Unfortunately, the bathrooms were not ready and were part of the active construction area, meaning we could use the porta potty in the parking lot or venture out to a local restaurant. But, we were excited to bring the bunnies back. On Sat Dec 14th Jessica, her husband Karl and volunteers Bonnie, Maureen, Lisa and Jamie B came to unload the cages and cage supplies from the storage container. They washed the floors and walls to clean the construction debris and dust. On Monday December 16, Judy and Yolanda brought the first group of bunnies from Suzanne’s. Afterwards Jessica and her daughter drove to Suzanne’s to meet Lauren and take the extra cages from Suzanne’s back to the shelter. There are a total of 28 cages in the main shelter space. 
  • Over the course of the next 2 months we have worked alongside the construction team, keeping the bunnies happy and healthy, planning for the reopening, making contacts with volunteers, facilitating adoption appointments on weekends, continuing to take intakes of surrendered bunnies and stray bunnies from animal control and getting our bunnies to their spay and neuter appointments. 
  • As we rolled into February, construction was substantially complete and we began the process of completing the necessary inspections.
  • The long awaited day has come, the shelter renovation is complete. On Tuesday Feb 11, 2025 we gained our occupancy permits. Over the next few days Jessica with the help of many volunteers including Bonnie C, Kay, Kari, Maureen, just to name a few , began to set up the shelter spaces and organize supplies. We were able to get a few of the larger items out of the storage container but will need a few more days to get everything out and placed inside the shelter. The Grand Opening Open House was on Saturday Feb 15 and was a huge success. Many volunteers put in long hours at the shelter to help get it ready. There were signs and posters to let visitors learn about what the future of the HRN shelter will look like and the names of the rooms were revealed. The next steps will be to obtain equipment needed for the clinic as well as learning how to efficiently maximize the utilization of the new room layouts.
  • Currently we have 39 people on our intake waiting list, for a total of 69 bunnies.  We have spayed and neutered 37 bunnies so far this year with 27 waiting for their appointments.  We have adopted out 49 bunnies and have 94 available bunnies and a total of 148 in our care.
  • Jessica was excited to bring back volunteers to the shelter to start to help with AM and PM shifts. She has rolled out and implemented the new SOPs for cleaning as well as a new log book to help simplify duties and tasks. The new cleaning SOPs will help reduce hay, litter and food waste as well as help minimize the need for excess laundry. As volunteers return to shelter shifts they are emailed the new cleaning and task roles as well as where to find everything including the new log book. It is also highly recommended that they come before their first shift to have a walk through, learn where supplies are and see first hand some of the changes that have happened. If they are not able to come in beforehand, Jessica has been working on a video to send to them.
  • So far the volunteers who have been using the new log book all like it and appreciate the changes which included less time at the sink washing dishes. 
  • As we get used to the new space and looking closer at biosecurity there will be some fine tuning tweaks to the protocols. 

Clinic

Significant work in December 2024 through January 17, 2025 to complete the renovation of the Westford facility into a clinic / rescue.  The initial partial occupancy was obtained on December 13, 2024 for the rescue area.  The construction on the remaining areas continued through January 17th.  We began the process of completing the series of final inspections necessary for occupancy the week of January 20th.  Inspections included HVAC final inspection, plumbing final inspection, electrical final inspection, fire system inspection, engineering affidavits from each discipline and the design architect.  Then we moved to the fire system inspection with the Westford fire department and review by the assessors office.  Then all paperwork and affidavits were submitted to the building inspector to schedule the final building inspection for occupancy.  We obtained the occupancy certificate on February 11, 2025 for the entire facility.  Although we have several punch list items to complete, we are significantly complete at this time.  I expect punch list items to be completed before April 15, 2025.  We also have help from Ryan Tate (volunteer) to paint the second floor area scheduled for March 1 and 2.  After that the flooring can be installed on the second floor and I am organizing a volunteer team to get that work completed around March 16, 2025.  Final review of the contract payments for the remaining scope and small additional costs that came up during the build out will be presented to the Board as soon as they are available.

Foster Homes 

  • Specific Roles/Duties for each committee member are working out well 
  • Planning 3-4 virtual foster home meetings throughout the year to go over protocol, procedures etc so everyone is on the same page.
  • Currently working on a bunny care info packet (in addition to our care video) as a handout upon onboarding
  • Considering if our info sessions are bringing in enough good foster home candidates to make it worth our while

Hotline

  • Everything is running smoothly on the hotline. We have had one new addition:
    • Tyler L.
  • This quarter has still been relatively quiet, so we have more than enough coverage. I don’t anticipate needing any new volunteers until we have volunteer departures (none upcoming that I know of).
  • No substantial changes to hotline procedure

Outreach, Volunteering & Events

  • Events attended:
      •  None
    • Upcoming events: All are tentative and dates/times still being confirmed.
      • Kids’ Education Event at Allston Public Library
        • Kayla N. to lead education w/ Nikki to lead bunny interactions
      • Education and Bunny Meet & Greet at Dracut Senior Center
        • Maura L. to lead event
  • Volunteers: 
      • Spreadsheet of potential shelter volunteers who applied during shutdown sent to Jessica
      • Sharon H. took over info@ account
  • Other outreach:
    • Nikki coordinating partnership with The Paper Store to collect donations at registers leading up to Easter w/ social media campaign
    • Nikki gave presentation at Unity Farm Sanctuary on 12/7
    • Nikki gave presentation at NHSPCA on 1/15
    • Suzanne gave presentation at Tufts on 2/20

RHD

We have scheduled 2 RHDV-2 vaccination clinics for the public on February 22nd and March 15th due to an overwhelming amount of demand. We vaccinated 91 HRN bunnies on the 22nd and will be giving them their second dose on the 15th. 

We emailed the entire list of clients who brought their bunnies last year for their vaccinations, including the shelter bunnies who were vaccinated at the time, ensuring that as many bunnies as possible are boosted between these 2 dates. We are still working on the number of personal bunnies that were vaccinated on the 22nd. 

Lauren is in contact with the team who is investigating the potential positive case in CT. We should have an answer in the beginning of March for if this bunny died of RHD. If this is a positive case, we will be taking measures at the shelter to better protect our bunnies from this disease. 

On February 22nd, the clinic team offered nail trims for a donation to HRN. We made $570 from this. Exotic Pet Mobile Vet has chosen to donate the 91 doses of the vaccine to our bunnies. These clinics are organized & led by Lauren and operated with a highly skilled team of volunteers including Christie T., Nikki L., Kari O., Lisa W., among others. 

Intra-Meeting Board Decisions