Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Carla Etzold. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Carla, thanks for joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

This was not something I was truly prepared to do, when starting a nonprofit you are first required to build your board. It took us a few weeks to come up with who we wanted on our board to be essentially a partner with. My co-founder and I of course had board seats, but we were required one more. We looked at who we knew within the rescue world, who we thought could advise us when needed and then we reached out to them. We were lucky the accepted and our board of 3 was complete. I do wish that I had found board members who were going to play more active roles within the rescue organization, but I then had to find volunteers who would help fill the gaps. Instead of stopping at simply filling the required spots, board members who were in charge of certain aspects of the organization. I do think this may be an issue a lot of small volunteer run nonprofits have. While I had experience in the area of rescue, I did not have experience with running one only what I had observed from others. While building our volunteer base we have had many ups and downs, mainly volunteers do not stay. It has become a revolving door which makes training people a constant. I did decide to create a manual for our volunteers, this helped front load the general information prior to them committing. Then, once they were sure we would do a meet and train them individually on aspects of their roles. Still, volunteers do fizzle out, so we do have to keep adding on new members but the manual has proved useful!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always had a passion for animals, and as I grew up and began looking for a career I looked in to the helping fields. While animals remained a passion of mine I didn’t go into the animal field. I stumbled across a stray kitten and that is where I really learned about the animal welfare field. I learned all about trap neuter return to manage the cat population humanely, I was shown a whole world of fostering animals with the goal of getting them adopted. While I started volunteering I learned that animal welfare is also about people. Animal rescues run solely on donations, we do not receive funding from the government like traditional animal shelters do. While that is a heavy burden to find funding we can choose which animals to save. Our favorite at Cali’s Misfits are orphaned underage kittens. They are classified as the most vulnerable in shelters, they have underdeveloped immune systems many may need bottle feeding and some may come in injured. While the idea of saving animals is overwhelming we try to focus on our immediate area. One of our favorite saves was one that I found in the street. How I spotted him, I don’t know, it was fate truly. He had likely been hit by a car, and was about 7 weeks old. We rushed him to the emergency vet to get him stable, unfortunately the vet gave him a poor prognosis, and thought he would never walk again or be able to urinate on his own. Thanks to our amazing friends in the community I reached out for some advice and we decided to try some physical therapy and see if we could get him healthy again, even if he was a paralyzed cat we believed he deserved a shot at love and a happy home. What happened shocked everyone, even our regular vet! Robbie began to gain movement in his legs and even started to urinate on his own! After a few weeks Robbie made a full recovery, the only sign that he had been through something traumatic was he had lost his tail. Nothing was going to slow him down, cases like Robbie remind us why we do this work. It is not easy, but it is so worth it.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I am lucky, my co-founder is my husband! We had begun dating long before I got in to the animal welfare arena. So while I started this journey he was also along for the ride. We learned together and he supported my passion. It was him who really wanted us to venture on our own to create Cali’s Misfits, he believed in it before I did. He assists with more of the back end admin work while I do a lot of the front facing and direct hands on with the animals we rescue. You definitely want someone who can balance you and be a good support when you need it!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think building connections within the animal welfare field was vital to this piece. I had worked with so many rescues and volunteers prior to starting Cali’s Misfits. Many knew what I was doing for foster kittens, how I ran adoption events, created adoption profiles, etc. Essentially I built a name for myself prior to opening our own rescue. I would recommend anyone work in the field they want to build a business in. Don’t just jump in with our own business on your own, those connections are vital when you get started. It also helps for people to begin to associate your business with you, and hopefully they have positive views on you if they have seen how you worked before!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.calismisfits.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calismisfits/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/calismisfits

Image Credits

I took all the photos