R&B Car Company, 2105 Biomet Drive, Warsaw, held an adoption event and fundraiser Saturday for the Animal Welfare League of Kosciusko County.
R&B Car Company tries to hold the event for the AWL every year to help them out, said Chad Laughlin, general manager. “We try to find different things to give back to and we’ve seen (AWL’s) posts and what they do and we’d thought they’d be a good organization to give back to.”
Nine dogs and four cats were available to be adopted through the event and R&B was covering the adoption fee. As of about halfway through the event, one of the cats had been adopted.
Laughlin said he just hopes R&B can help out with things like covering the adoption fee if money is tight for people interested in adopting. Also, the AWL gets a lot of animals every year “and we’re just trying to get homes for them.”
R&B was also having a fundraiser event where they were taking donations and supplies for the AWL.
AWL Executive Director Tonya Blanchard said AWL appreciates R&B helping them out.
“Times are bad right now and they’re willing to help” to get the animals adopted, she said.
On top of that, Mark Olson, sales department with R&B, said $100 is going to be donated to the AWL for every car he personally sells for the month. This is the sixth year he’s done it, with R&B possibly doing it for eight years.
He said he has a couple charities every year “that I do and the shelters have always been a big place in my heart. I have two shelter dogs and two shelter cats, so that’s always meant a lot to me. So it’s nice to give back, to have a little sliver, to give back a little bit.”
In the past, donations have averaged about $2,500. Olson’s goal is always to raise $3,000. As of Saturday, Olson said he has sold 12 cars so far this month, so $1,200 will go to the AWL, with a little more than half of the month to go.
Olson said he wanted to see every dog and cat available Saturday get adopted, but worst-case scenario, he wanted more exposure for the AWL and R&B.
“We’ll always have a couple people a couple days later that might have missed it say, ‘Hey, where was Athena? Oh, down at the AWL, right down the road.’ We’ve had a couple after the shindig that have gone down and adopted dogs. And we’ll pay for those dogs, too. If they come in and say, ‘Hey, I couldn’t make it Saturday, but I want to come down next Thursday.’ Whatever. We’ll take care of it,” Olson said.
Olson said R&B is possibly planning on doing another event later in the year, depending on the AWL’s schedule.