![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's official
May. 31st, 2024 05:40 pmThe feline spay/neuter clinic* where I work is moving two months early (which is also three years early, as our lease was originally set to end in 2027) because the new owners of our building are going to start demo work at the end of June. Our last clinic day at this location will be June 13, and we have to be out on the 25th.
So it's been an... interesting couple of weeks to be the comms person, plus this has pushed our fundraising campaign into overdrive and messed up the timetable.The uncertainty around the developer's decisions has also changed my newsletter deadline repeatedly, but that should be going to the printer next week--including news about the move. We sent out notices to everyone we work with this week, including volunteers, and it went up on social media yesterday. Monday we'll do an e-blast to try to catch everyone else who might be some sort of stakeholder.
We'll be closing for two weeks (I try not to think of the kittens who will be born outside because of this and not survive) and then we'll be doing surgeries out of a portable in the parking lot of our new location, which won't be ready until September at the earliest. Admin staff will mostly be working from home, which may be nice for a while, except for my extremely non-ergonomic desk situation which probably won't be fixed by then.
Ultimately this will be fine and possibly better, because we'll have a chance to expand our services in the future. (Currently no one anywhere can hire a new vet, so it won't be right away.) In the meantime, it is going to be A LOT and much sooner that we were planning on.
At some point I will have to deal with the emotional aspect of this. The organization has been at this location 16 years, since before I started volunteering there in 2009. Most of us, staff and volunteers alike, don't have any memory of it being anywhere else. And I've been thinking that there are four things that have been consistent in my life over the past ten years: my marriage, my car (and that may be changing this year too), one of the cats (only one!), and this clinic. There's going to be a grieving process, when we finally have time to do it.
*We have a south end location in collaboration with another organization, but it's open only on weekends and that variably, and it shares space with other groups. They do a heck of a lot of surgeries, but it's not a location we can pivot to.
So it's been an... interesting couple of weeks to be the comms person, plus this has pushed our fundraising campaign into overdrive and messed up the timetable.The uncertainty around the developer's decisions has also changed my newsletter deadline repeatedly, but that should be going to the printer next week--including news about the move. We sent out notices to everyone we work with this week, including volunteers, and it went up on social media yesterday. Monday we'll do an e-blast to try to catch everyone else who might be some sort of stakeholder.
We'll be closing for two weeks (I try not to think of the kittens who will be born outside because of this and not survive) and then we'll be doing surgeries out of a portable in the parking lot of our new location, which won't be ready until September at the earliest. Admin staff will mostly be working from home, which may be nice for a while, except for my extremely non-ergonomic desk situation which probably won't be fixed by then.
Ultimately this will be fine and possibly better, because we'll have a chance to expand our services in the future. (Currently no one anywhere can hire a new vet, so it won't be right away.) In the meantime, it is going to be A LOT and much sooner that we were planning on.
At some point I will have to deal with the emotional aspect of this. The organization has been at this location 16 years, since before I started volunteering there in 2009. Most of us, staff and volunteers alike, don't have any memory of it being anywhere else. And I've been thinking that there are four things that have been consistent in my life over the past ten years: my marriage, my car (and that may be changing this year too), one of the cats (only one!), and this clinic. There's going to be a grieving process, when we finally have time to do it.
*We have a south end location in collaboration with another organization, but it's open only on weekends and that variably, and it shares space with other groups. They do a heck of a lot of surgeries, but it's not a location we can pivot to.
