08/06/2026
A long but important update from Community Cat Support Network 🧡
This is a post I have started, stopped, rewritten, and avoided publishing several times because Community Cat Support Network means an enormous amount to me, and there is no easy way to explain this transition.
I recently began an accelerated MBA program at the University of Arkansas. I am genuinely excited about it and what it may make possible for my future, but completing it successfully will require a significant amount of my time and attention.
Because of that, and because the way CCSN has operated is no longer sustainable, I am stepping back from much of the day-to-day leadership and coordination of the organization.
I am not walking away from the mission. I will still volunteer when my time and capacity allow, particularly with specific projects, partnerships, mobile clinics, advocacy, training, and work where my experience is especially useful.
However, I can no longer be the person coordinating the majority of CCSN’s operations or the person who automatically steps in whenever a volunteer, program leader, or board member needs to step back.
That distinction is important.
CCSN has never been the work of only one person. Many people have given an extraordinary amount of their time, energy, money, expertise, and care to make this organization possible. Volunteers have fostered animals, transported cats, trapped colonies, cleaned cages, distributed food, managed medical care, assisted with adoptions, maintained the facility, staffed clinics, raised money, created content, and handled countless other responsibilities.
But much of the coordination between those moving parts has fallen to me. When someone could no longer manage a responsibility, the work usually did not disappear. More often than not, I stepped back into that role so the program would not stop.
Over time, that meant I was not only helping operate programs. I was also serving as the default backup plan for many of them.
That is the part that cannot continue.
Since CCSN began, we have helped facilitate more than 3,000 spay and neuter surgeries. We have supported community cat caregivers, transported animals across Arkansas, coordinated medical treatment, supplied pet food, assisted large colonies, fostered and adopted animals, built clinic partnerships, and helped rural communities access resources that frequently did not exist anywhere else.
I am incredibly proud of that work.
But growth without enough structure, leadership, funding, and dependable people eventually becomes unsustainable.
CCSN is a volunteer organization, but “volunteer-run” cannot mean that missed responsibilities continually roll back onto one person. It also cannot mean that programs continue regardless of whether there are enough people available to operate them responsibly.
This is not about a lack of compassion.
It is about capacity.
🧡 What is continuing
The mobile spay and neuter work currently has volunteers helping move it forward, and we hope that work can continue as leadership, clinic availability, volunteers, and funding allow.
Affordable spay and neuter remains one of the most important things we can provide to rural Arkansas. It does not always receive the attention or funding that emergency medical cases and adoptions receive, but it is how we reduce the number of animals entering an already overwhelmed system.
Animals who are already in CCSN’s care will continue to need food, shelter, medical care, and responsible placement. Those commitments do not disappear simply because our capacity has changed.
We will continue scheduling posts for Sadie, Jolene, and Cheddar until homes can be found for them. Until more volunteers step forward, their in-person feeding and check-in schedule may need to be consolidated to once a day, with their food, water, litter, safety, and health still monitored.
We will continue honoring existing commitments when we have the volunteers and resources to do so, although response times and timelines may be longer than they have been in the past.
🧡 What is paused or significantly limited
At this time, new fostering and adoption activity is paused or significantly limited unless dependable volunteers step forward to manage it.
That means taking responsibility for more than temporarily holding an animal. It includes communication, applications, veterinary care, transportation, adoption events, follow-up, recordkeeping, social media, and placement.
Most new animal intake is also paused.
Taking an animal into the organization creates a responsibility that may last weeks, months, or even years. We cannot responsibly accept animals based only on the hope that the necessary foster home, funding, transportation, medical care, or adopter will appear later.
Individual spay and neuter transportation and appointment coordination are paused or extremely limited outside of organized clinic days and previously arranged commitments.
Responding to an individual request often requires finding an appointment, arranging transportation, coordinating trapping, communicating with the caregiver, transporting animals, managing surgery paperwork, and arranging their return. We do not currently have enough people to consistently provide that service.
The Pet Food Pantry is also paused unless a dependable team is available to manage the full program. That includes obtaining and transporting food, managing inventory, communicating with participants, preparing distributions, staffing pantry days, and maintaining records.
Programs cannot restart simply because the need still exists. The need has always existed.
They can restart when people are willing and able to take consistent responsibility for operating them.
🧡 What CCSN needs now
CCSN needs more than occasional assistance. Occasional help is valuable and appreciated, but an organization also needs people willing to take ownership of clearly defined responsibilities and follow them through.
We need people who can lead or coordinate specific areas such as:
* Spay and neuter clinics
* Foster and adoption work
* Volunteer coordination
* Transportation
* Fundraising and donor communication
* Social media and community outreach
* Facility maintenance
* Administrative and financial support
No single person should replace everything I have been coordinating. That would simply recreate the same unsustainable structure with a different person.
The goal should be to divide the work into manageable roles, create clear expectations, and build enough shared leadership that no individual becomes the permanent backup for the entire organization.
I am also willing to help train people.
I can explain what is currently being done, how it is being done, why certain processes were created, what has worked, and what has not. I do not expect someone else to do everything exactly the way I have done it. Once someone understands the purpose of the work and the responsibilities involved, they can make the role their own and find better ways to operate it.
You do not have to walk in already knowing how to run a nonprofit program. You do have to be willing to learn, communicate, follow through, and take responsibility for the part you agree to own.
Social media is one example. We already have people in Slack who are willing and able to help write content, and I am not the only person who has posted on our pages. However, I have still been doing most of the actual posting, scheduling, responding, and keeping the pages active.
My hope is that someone else will step into more of that work, even a little bit. One person does not have to take over everything. Several people consistently doing one small part could make an enormous difference.
CCSN also needs sustainable funding.
Some responsibilities require consistent attention every week, and consistency is difficult to build entirely through unpaid labor. Even a relatively small paid position—such as someone receiving $100 per week to consistently manage social media and community engagement—would require approximately $5,200 per year.
A donor, business, foundation, or community partner willing to sponsor a coordinator, clinic, transportation fund, medical program, foster program, or part-time position could dramatically change what CCSN is able to provide.
There are also people with the ability to give significant financial support who may not have the time to volunteer. Funding dependable people to perform this work is every bit as meaningful as doing the work personally.
The long-term answer is not continuing to ask exhausted volunteers to sacrifice more of themselves.
The answer is defined leadership, dependable funding, realistic expectations, and enough people sharing the responsibility.
🧡 This may be your opportunity
If you have ever thought you might want to start a nonprofit, become more involved in one, learn how community programs are built, or help change the future for animals in rural Arkansas, this is your chance.
It is not polished. It is not simple. It is sometimes frustrating, unpredictable, and messy.
But it is also meaningful, educational, and absolutely worth it.
You could help shape what CCSN becomes next rather than simply stepping into a finished role someone else designed. You could help improve a process, rebuild a program, create something sustainable, or develop an entirely new approach.
You do not have to commit your whole life to it. You can take responsibility for one defined piece and do that piece well.
🧡 What this transition means
My availability will be significantly reduced, particularly over the next several months.
I will not be able to respond immediately to every call, text, message, tag, email, or request. Some messages may need to be handled by another volunteer, and some may not receive a response if there is no one currently available to address them.
I will also no longer be able to continuously make exceptions or rearrange my schedule when information, paperwork, receipts, requests, or responsibilities are not completed by the stated deadline.
In the past, I was frequently able to squeeze something in, stay up later, change my plans, or find another way to keep things moving. By doing that, I may have unintentionally taught people that deadlines were flexible and that I would eventually absorb whatever had not been completed.
That is no longer possible.
When a deadline is given, it needs to be treated as an actual deadline. Something received afterward may have to wait until the responsible person is available again. That could be the following week, or it could be significantly longer.
The problem we are facing is structural.
When someone needed to step back, there was rarely another person trained and ready to assume the responsibility. Too often, the role eventually returned to me so the program would not stop.
For CCSN to survive and grow, that pattern has to end.
Please do not interpret this transition as evidence that the work was a mistake or that it did not matter.
It mattered enormously.
Thousands of animals received care they might not otherwise have received. Caregivers who felt completely alone found support. Communities gained access to spay and neuter resources. Clinics, rescues, volunteers, and residents worked together in ways that had not previously existed.
We proved that community-based spay and neuter programs can make a meaningful difference.
But CCSN must become an organization that can function without one person coordinating most of the moving parts and repeatedly stepping into whatever role becomes vacant.
My hope is that this is not the end of CCSN.
My hope is that it becomes the point when CCSN develops into what it has always needed to be: a genuine community organization with shared leadership, shared responsibility, sustainable funding, and programs built to continue even when one person needs to step away.
I am deeply grateful to every foster, transporter, trapper, feeder, caregiver, volunteer, veterinarian, clinic employee, donor, rescue partner, business, board member, and supporter who has helped make this work possible.
A special shout-out to Amy, Donna, Lisa, David, and Payton for continuing the work 🧡
There is no way to adequately acknowledge everyone who has carried a cat, opened their home, driven across the state, cleaned a cage, distributed food, donated supplies, staffed a clinic, treated a sick animal, shared a post, created content, or contributed money when that was what they were able to give.
This is not goodbye. It is a necessary transition.
The next year, and particularly the next several months, will be challenging, but I believe they will also be worth it.
My long-term goal is to return to corporate leadership, rebuild financial stability, and use that stability to help fund sustainable programs providing spay and neuter services for cats and dogs throughout rural Arkansas.
The dream was never supposed to be one person personally carrying every program forever.
The dream is to build and support systems that can continue helping animals and communities for years to come.
Thank you for giving me the grace and space to take this step, and thank you to everyone willing to help determine what the next chapter of Community Cat Support Network will become.🧡
- Jenn
