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Mission Mayday is a non-profit organization established in January 2022 as a virtual shelter. We don’t have a building in which our animals are housed, which means all our activities are managed from home, in the form of “tele-volunteering.”
How it works
Mission Mayday is made up of volunteers who are highly committed to our rescues. No one on the team is paid. 100% of donations and profits from sales are used to help the animals and keep the organization running. Every minute our volunteers devote to Mission Mayday is therefore extremely valuable. If you work in the animal health field and would like to help us manage our protégés, click here.
We specialize in raising funds for a variety of medical cases. Our team has expertise in clinics and benefits from the help of multiple veterinarians who have joined our network of foster families, who advise us free of charge, who provide us with specialized food, and who help us get more accessible prices than average.
Fostering
The dogs and cats we take in are placed with foster families who care for them as if they were their own pets and who provide care at home, following the treatment plans set up by our partner clinics.
These families are responsible for transportation, providing for the animals’ basic needs (taking the dog out, cleaning the cat’s litter box, feeding the pet, etc.), attending medical appointments, and other tasks. They play a very important role in our rescues and must therefore be readily available when agreeing to foster a pet that needs a lot of follow-up and medication.
Medical care
Our organization was set up to give sick and/or injured animals the chance to be cared for properly and quickly. We collaborate with emergency and specialty centres (24/7), which allows us to hospitalize animals, as well as accept animals in the evenings and on weekends, which unfortunately few shelters can afford. We have partnerships with different veterinary hospitals and clinics that also offer us discounts on treatment.
We also call upon specialists for more complex cases. If necessary, our animals are evaluated in ophthalmology, surgery, internal medicine, behavioural medicine, etc. We often go further than other shelters can afford, as we don’t take on many animals at once. We can therefore focus on dogs and cats that need emergency and/or long-term care, to help them avoid euthanasia.
Intakes
We evaluate intake forms according to different factors but, being a small organization, we unfortunately have to turn down many animals. We prioritize requests from clinics, animal services, and shelters for animals at risk of euthanasia, but we also take on cases that have no resources (e.g., stray cats and kittens, puppies from native communities, etc.) to prevent them from dying without medical assistance. We only accept a small number of surrenders from individuals each year, as this often entails more management.
Fundraising
Donations from the public, corporate support, product sales and events are our main sources of revenue.
We fundraise online on Facebook and in stories on Instagram, as these usually enable us to cover the bulk of bills for emergencies. For general expenses, benefit events are extremely important. If you would like to organize an event to support us, click here.
We rely on the availability of our communications and medical specialists to decide whether or not we should accept an animal. If no one is available to collect donations, we know it will be impossible to cover a large bill once there is no more emergency. The reality is that we receive donations when the animal's life is at stake, but not so much afterwards. So, we have no choice but to adapt to this reality and make ourselves available for each case. We sometimes spend several consecutive days writing texts, calculating donations, visiting the animal daily in the emergency centre, and answering people’s comments.
Our monthly donation and sponsorship program is an essential part of our operations, helping us to cover all kinds of expenses: dentals, administrative costs, emergency phone line, pet food, accessories of all kinds, and much more.
To help us with a general contribution, click here. To sponsor one of our animals, click here. To help an animal with a one-off donation, click here.
Adoptions
When an animal is ready to leave us, it is posted on our website and on adoption platforms such as Petfinder, Les Pattes Jaunes and Déniche ton chien. We also share the news on our social networks to give it maximum exposure. We can't schedule visits, as this would require too much management given that our animals are in foster families.
Families whose applications we find interesting are contacted by email to schedule a phone interview. When a potential adopter really stands out after discussing the matter as a team, we accept the adoption application. We send the contract by email in advance, and the family makes an Interac transfer for the adoption fee. We visit the family to conclude the adoption, and if the match is as good in real life, they share the answer to the Interac transfer with us before we leave.
It is essential for us to place our protégés with families who are prepared to do anything to care for them in case of need. Pet insurance is now available and is a great alternative when you don’t have much in the way of savings. However, just like us, pets often need dental care, so you also need to budget for what is not covered—or only to a limited extent—by insurance.