Logo 'Animal friends feel good insurance'
Logo 'Animal friends feel good insurance'

Elaine Fairfax’s Guest Blog: Animal friends pet insurance

Hi everyone!

As some of you may know, I set up Animal Friends Pet Insurance as a means to generate funds for animal welfare charities and I am pleased to say that it has been a roaring success.

Helping animals has always been my strongest motivator in life and it makes me so happy that the business is able to donate such a large amount to wonderful charities such as SPANA.

Blonde smiling woman Elaine Fairfax

We have a great working relationship with SPANA and over the last three years or so everyone here at Animal Friends Pet Insurance has come to really appreciate just how wonderful the charity is.

Being a great lover of equines, I have followed SPANA’s work closely and helped out where I can. The very first donation that came from the funds we generated was back at the beginning of 2011, since then we’ve donated to SPANA on a number of occasions, bringing the total donation figure to £62,450.

Most recently we became aware of SPANA’s vital lameness programme and were so impressed that we decided to donate £40,000 to give the project the huge boost it deserves.

Something that we pride ourselves on here is the fact that all of our staff are huge animal lovers, I know what you’re thinking, we’re bound to say that, but it really is true. A number of the donations made to SPANA have actually come at the request of members of the team.

Back in March 2011, some of the staff took part in the Heartbreaker Half Marathon in the New Forest to raise funds for animal welfare charities. Each member of staff that took part was allocated £200 to donate to a charity of their choice, and, you guessed it, SPANA was one of the charities chosen.

We also run an ‘Employee of the Month’ scheme whereby every month our standout employees are allowed to choose a charity for us to donate £1,000 to, and in one of the months SPANA was the name on everyone’s lips.

Not content in getting just the staff to help us choose who we donate to, we also run a highly successful competition on our Facebook page ‘Feel Good Park’.

Titled ‘Vote for a Charity’, the premise of the competition sees four charities each provide us with a video that details what kind of work they do and how a donation would help them. We then encourage everyone on our Facebook page (over 150,000 people) to vote for their favourite video. At the end of the month we’ll donate the following amounts depending upon the vote count; £5,000 for first place, £2,500 for second place, £1,500 for third place and £1,000 for fourth place.

SPANA took part in the slightly older version of the ‘Vote for a Charity’ competition (no videos needed to be submitted) and came first, meaning they not only received a lot of promotion, but also a £5,000 donation.

Every day I sit back and think about all of the pain and suffering that animals go through, and although it is deeply saddening, I always find solace in the fact that charities such as SPANA are working tirelessly to help animals in need. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need animal welfare charities at all, but until that day comes, I am thankful for SPANA and every other animal welfare charity that puts animal before themselves.

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