At House with a Heart, the days are long and often hectic. With the resident dogs and kitties, short term care visitors, and the volunteers all wanting / needing just a little something, Sher is often “out of touch” for most of the day.
House with a Heart started in 2006 when Sher’s husband, Joe was still alive. Starting a forever sanctuary for Senior Pets was a novel idea in those days, and Sher was truly a pioneer – in a lot of ways.
One of the first things she did was setup a website on Yahoo.com (yes back in those days, you could get a website from Yahoo). She would post things that were happening from time to time, in an effort to encourage others to support senior dogs (and cats).
Times changed and someone came forward and offered a hosted website, with multiple pages and content. But again Sher was doing it all. She did get help as time went by, with more volunteers able to post and manage the site.
In July of 2009, we created our Facebook page to add to our communications – what an experience that was! Posts were sporadic in those days – Here is our very first post: https://www.facebook.com/HousewithaHeart/posts/107394392146.
Today we have over 23,770 followers
That same year, we had our first “Holiday Open House” – a way for local supporters to come and visit the residents, and share some Holiday Cheer. We have now changed it to a virtual Open House, but we still love to share the Holiday Spirit.
Our first annual newsletter in 2011 was quite an undertaking – that was the year that House with a Heart was on the Today Show with Jill Rappaport (https://youtu.be/LwRbHRzt6hE) as well as NBC4 Twelve Days of Giving. Our story was reaching more and more folks…
We use our annual newsletter as a way to reach folks who are not “online” but still care about House with a Heart and our happenings. (It is the only mailing we do). Last year we mailed to over 5,600 names.
Then came Blogs – and House with a Heart was right there, again sharing our stories with the those who wanted to stay in touch (here is the first blog – https://housewithaheart.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/saturday-3242012/
We joined YouTube in March of 2011, Twitter in April of 2014. We then decided to try and get a large number of Instagram followers too. It was hard going at first to gain many followers, we had loads of recommendations from friends, who are successful on the platform, to use certain apps in order to get free ig followers, so trying one of those might be our next move. In any case, our Instagram account went live in November of 2016 with this post:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BM-CFpvhKtl/?igshid=12tdrwrjm7xc2
In December of 2014, we had a new website designed and built using WordPress, but with all of the custom features we need to share and spread our message. Check us out at www.housewithaheart.com.
We also stay in touch with Constant Contact, an email service that allows us to create custom emails to share with anyone who signs up. (Scroll to the bottom of our website home page to sign up). We currently share with over 4,500 contacts. We now do a monthly e-newsletter to keep folks up to date on the HWAH Happenings as well as the Sanctuary Scoop for our Volunteers. Here is our most recent edition: https://conta.cc/2Xx0Arg
With senior and special needs dogs/cats as well as our short term care visitors, it is unlikely our ‘Messenger’ response time will ever get to “instant” – the residents come first. But we do our best to stay in touch and respond as we are able.
So give us a shout at [email protected], on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/HousewithaHeart/, on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/housewithaheart/, via Twitter at https://twitter.com/HWAHSeniorPets , or YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/hwah6409 and read our latest on our Blogs page: https://housewithaheart.com/category/blog/
And finally, check our most recent addition:
Friends! House with a Heart has published its very first book about the current residents and forever fosters! We would love if you would buy a copy as all profits will go to support our senior dogs:
Get your copy here: https://www.blurb.com/b/9377230-senior-dogs-tongues-and-tales
And Thank You for staying in touch – your cards and letters are read by all of us here at House with a Heart, and we enjoy hearing your stories…
Are there any new ways we can keep in touch with You?