Day 353

I should have learned by now never to let my bookkeeping slide. When I get busy, I tend to let bills and invoices accumulate in piles to deal with later. Well, later was today. What a mess! It took me most of the afternoon to get everything in balance again. My business isn't large enough to justify a full time accountant, so I do everything myself and then get a real accountant to sort things out whenever I get totally confused. Things used to be easier when bills and payments always arrived by mail. Now, in this enlightened age of electronic payments, someone might send you money using Paypal and then forget to tell you about it. Other people might want their invoices sent as PDF files, but not have the right viewer to read them. Everyone wants you to go "paperless" but few people have come up with a convenient way to keep track of everything.

Money seems to have acquired a life of its own. It ebbs and flows all over the place without any human intervention. I don't even have to pull my wallet out when I buy something from the Apple store. I think they just read my brain or something. I never stop at toll booths anymore either. There's a little electronic thing on my windshield that automatically calculates which toll road I'm on and debits my bank account. It's a brave new world. Despite all these seemingly automatic ways to spend money, there unfortunately still isn't any automatic way to make money.

I definitely need to make some money for the Dalmatians tomorrow. We're having the second of our three planned holiday Santa Paws pet photo events up at K-9 University. We made almost $1500 for the dogs a few weeks ago, so I'm hoping that we can do as well this weekend. Dalmatian Rescue certainly needs the money. We've had several dogs that required complicated surgeries this year and the vet bills really add up quickly.

It would be nice if animal rescue was just about walking dogs and cleaning kennel runs. It's mostly about raising money though. The dogs need food and medicine. There are boarding bills to pay. Almost all the strays have health issues when we get them. I guess human charities must be the same way. That's probably why the March of Dimes robo-dialer relentlessly calls the house five times a day, always asking for money. This is the dilemma just about every charity faces. How do you raise the money you need to stay afloat without totally irritating your potential donors?

I don't think blogging is the anwser. Using the blog for fundraising is kind of like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip. I've had the Paypal donation tool sitting over in the left column with all the other widgets for over a month now and nobody has given one dime. Curiously, I tried something very similar on Facebook recently and we raised over $435 in less than a week. I don't know if Facebook users are more generous or if they just have more money. It is odd that there's such a difference though. Hmm, maybe if I disguised my Dalmatian Rescue widget as an EC or Adgitize badge, someone might click on it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day