At Cadence Charity Services, we help people do good, and we love to celebrate the heck out of them when they succeed. This month, we’re featuring Cadence client Nicole Wilks of Animal Food Bank, who started the non-profit just months before the pandemic hit – only to see it blow up (in a good way) once the world went into lockdown.
It all started with Odin: a beautiful, beloved black lab cross whose human was experiencing homelessness. Because Nicole has, in her words, “an unhealthy love of dogs,” she went up to Odin (and his owner, who she’s certain also had a name) to give him a pat. As she engaged with this kind, beautiful canine, she wondered: how does his owner feed him?
That was Tuesday. By Thursday, Nicole and her husband had launched the Animal Food Bank, a low-barrier-to-access resource for pet owners to obtain food, preventative veterinary care, and emergency pet services. Since its launch in December 2019, it’s grown from one site in Kelowna, BC to include sites in Winnipeg and Calgary, with plans to go national by 2022.
Cadence has had the privilege of helping the AFB navigate the complexities of nonprofit regulations and assisting with its incorporation in BC and extra-provincial registration in Manitoba.
We asked Nicole why she started AFB, how it’s fared during the pandemic, and what she envisions for the future of low-barrier resources for pets (and their humans) in need.
The Animal Food Bank has clearly hit on an unrecognized need. Why are your services so essential?
“If a food bank is providing pet food, it’s because they’re choosing to, but it’s not in their mandate. When something like a pandemic hits, initially, food bank funding is reduced because the public is strapped for cash. So they’re not able to give as much as they normally would and don’t have the luxury of providing ancillary services, like serving pets.
Because our client is the pet, not the human, we can fill in the gap if food banks aren’t able to help owners feed pets.
We also provide pet owners with vet care, spay and neuter, emergency services, basically acting as a bridge between a food bank and an animal welfare organization.”
What has the public response to the Animal Food Bank been?
“What we’ve found in the past year is that pet lovers love our own pets, and we also love everyone else’s pets. People have been really willing, in my experience, over the last year, to set aside whatever mistakes humans might be making in order to help the pet, so we’ve found our community to be incredibly non-judgmental. We also believe that when we help someone’s pet, we are helping them too; it can be incredibly detrimental for someone who’s struggling to have to give up their pet.
The media has also been incredibly helpful in support of what we’re doing. I think they recognize that we’re doing something really unique.”
The AFB has been featured on CBC, CTV, Global News, and more.
How did COVID affect your non-profit?
“We were fortunate in that we already had a COVID-friendly model, where drivers drop off food deliveries with no contact.
But, because most of the food banks had to scale back to offering only their core services, we quickly had to grow to meet a huge increase in demand.
There was a huge spike in March and April, which tapered off as CERB and other benefits went out. From April to December 2020, we received 1,800 requests for help and distributed 50,000 pounds of dry food and 17,000 cans of wet food.”
What’s in store for AFB in the next few years?
“We want to be the organization that puts ourselves out of business. I would love for nobody to ever need us. That’s my goal.
We are working with our clients to offer programming and education webinars on things like basic pet first aid and care, but also on things like resume writing and financial management.
We’re also working on a platform called ‘Good for Good’ that invites those who use our services to more actively participate in the AFB, by becoming volunteers, participating in educational webinars, and more.
Finally, we recently launched the AFB Pet Club, a membership-based service for pet owners to access pet food and services discounts and other exclusive coupons for a monthly fee of $4.99, which goes directly to support the Animal Food Bank programming.”
Read more raves about the Animal Food Bank or join the AFB Pet Club to support their incredible work.
