Mid-Atlantic Border Collie Rescue

MABCR is thrilled to be accepted to the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) for the second year in a row. For those who are not familiar with it, CFC promotes cost-effective philanthropy by consolidating charitable giving by hundreds of thousands of federal, postal, and military personnel so that charities such as MABCR are not only eligible for their contributions but receive consolidated donations instead of bearing the administrative cost of many small donations. These employees can donate with confidence knowing that the organizations approved for participation in CFC have been appropriately screened. The application requires status as tax-exempt, as determined by the Internal Revenue Service under 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code, an extensive application, submission of tax forms, and description of the benefits that the charity provides to the population it serves. CFC is the world's largest and most successful annual workplace charity campaign, with more than 300 CFC campaigns throughout the country and internationally to help to raise millions of dollars each year. (MABCR is one of nearly 4,000 charities in the 2008 Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area.)

Federal employees, postal and military personnel can give to CFC-approved charities through payroll deduction; contractors can make one time donations using the same form. CFC publishes an annual catalog of the approved charities, consisting of a 25-word description that charities provide, along with other information about us, including the percentage of donations spent on administrative costs. In past years CFC disallowed participation by organizations spending more than 25% of their budget on administrative costs. When CFC changed their rules to all such organizations to participate, more were accepted to the CFC, increasing competition for donations. However, CFC does advise donors to consider how much of a charities money goes to such overhead as opposed to the organization's core mission, when making their decisions about whom to donate to. For the tax years for which MABCR submitted our applications, our administrative costs were 0%!

Our Entry in the CFC Catalog of Caring states:

Kent County Border Collie Rescue.
Provide intake, medical care, training, rehabilitation, love, foster and permanent homes for border collies and mixes. Provide education, referral services, mentoring to adoptive families.
CFC # code, used for making designations: 49668. Employer Identification Number: EIN #31-1720049. Phone Number: (410)708-6534. Website Address: www.mabcr.org. Overhead: 0.0%. Program Areas: D M.

No individual charity is guaranteed donations; donors decide to whom they will donate. The stakes are high! In 2007 the CFC posted a fifth-consecutive year of record pledges, with the federal community donating $273.1 million to thousands of non-profit organizations across the country; the 2007 Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area, in which MABCR participates, raised $60,799,022.84! Donors can make undesignated contributions. CFC divides all undesignated contributions among CFC charities to whom some money has been pledged, in proportion to how many of the designated donations they receive.

To give to MABCR through the CFC, eligible donors can fill out the form provided in their office or go to http://www.cfcnca.org/e-Giving to sign up online. You will need to designate us as the recipient; use our CFC Code 49668. We are listed as Kent County Border Collie Rescue because that is the name we used when incorporating so it is still our legal name even though we now do business as MABCR.

This year we were invited to the September CFC Leadership Conference, at which the executives of the federal agencies, postal, and military organizations gather to kick off the 2009 campaign. As a result of this visibility, MABCR was invited to the CFC Fairs at the Department of State, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington Headquarters Service of the Pentagon, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and two fairs held by the DC Air National Guard! We actually covered all of these events between October 1 and October 14! We also received invitations to additional fairs that we could not cover because we did not have the volunteers available to do so, so if you have ever thought it might be fun to bring your dog to an event and spend two hours talking about him/her and MABCR to everyone within earshot, please think about volunteering next year!

Sarah Ruckelshaus, Barbara Ellis, and Patrick and Robin Eddington fanned out across the greater DC metro area, with dogs in tow, to meet the employees of these organizations and introduce them to MABCR. We had conversations about adoption, our processes, where our dogs come from, and even educated some deaf employees at the Department of State about how service dogs can help them. We provided all kinds of education about dog care in general. Jibblet enjoyed climbing onto the display tables to ensure that he was not overlooked and hugging everyone in sight, and I do believe that some people actually fell in love with him...We hope that many of these employees will choose MABCR from the many approvedl CFC charities that they can support.

For more information about the Combined Federal Campaign, see http://www.opm.gov/cfc/. For more information about the CFC for the National Capital Area, see http://www.cfcnca.org/AboutCFCNCA