Our Vision... 
The Cape Ann Wildlife Center brings people together for education and preservation of nature in a fun and exciting way. We instill passion and stewardship for the natural world in people of all ages thereby helping to save our corner of the world.

Wildlife Center Accomplishments

In order to achieve Our Vision we have set a timeline with strategic goals. On this page we will share our accomplishments so you can take the journey with us. It's a pretty exciting adventure and we hope you'll be a part of Our Team.

November 2017 through February 2018
Team Planning for Wildlife Center Donor Solicitation
In November our team began planning how to fund the Wildlife Center planning process for one to three years. We met frequently, creating our Vision, Mission and Values for the Center. We developed a presentation about what we've accomplished with the Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team. In addition, we created documents describing the Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team Impact and the Wildlife Center Impact. These documents describe how we make an impact immediately and locally and subsequently how we change lives and impact the world. For the Wildlife Center we described features we anticipate will be included in the facility. We also prepared documents including a five year timeline, accomplishments so far, and donor benefits. We are now poised to ask donors for funding.

July 24, 2017
New England Wildlife Center
We spent a day at the New England Wildlife Center (NEWC) in South Weymouth, MA with Greg Mertz (CEO) and Katrina Bergman (Executive Director). They gave us an extensive tour followed by a very open and honest discussion about the challenges and realities of building the NEWC facility. In addition Katrina sent us home with lots of plans and financial documents for some light late night reading (ha) to better prepare us for what's ahead. They were super kind and gracious and encouraging and their insights and suggestions are helping us move forward with clearer direction.

January through April 2017
Website
After a great deal of research trying to decide just what we actually needed in a website, we decided to go with a company called Wild Apricot. What made them so attractive was their focus on small membership driven non-profits. What made us choose them is that we could do it ourselves with volunteer hours and the yearly fee was very reasonable. We now have a secure website that also hosts our entire membership and contact list. It's all-in-one place so we can easily deliver e-blasts to our Team, log and track donations and memberships, maintain our calendar of activities, and provide numerous interesting articles and photographs to our readers. It has really helped us bring everyone and everything together so we can stay connected to Our Team while informing the greater public about the Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team. We really hope you like it!

December 2016/January 2017
Finances and Taxes
We set out to get our financial ducks in a row, so to speak, so they become the solid foundation upon which we can build our Wildlife Center.  After a bit of research we set up a new bookkeeping system. We chose this system because it allows us to share our financial status and reports through our website. The graphs and charts are easy to read and interpret and we hope you get a chance to see what we're up to with money that is so generously donated to our organization. Following  the revamping of our bookkeeping system, we got our taxes done in record time and now have them posted on our website along with our annual report for the past three years. Yahoo!

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