Ep229 - Natalise Kalea

12/30/17 • 22 min

Interview! Natalise Kalea, CEO of poundWISHES

"We want to save animals, help animals, and better the lives of animals around the world. We aim to execute on our mission through creative innovation and community."

Natalise has always been an animal lover, who always dreamed of using her business skills and put them to good use. Now that she is the CEO of poundWISHES, she is doing exactly that!

Natalise is a graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business, who did an internship between her first and second years that encouraged her to create an environment of impact in business. When she was younger, she regularly volunteered with Best Friends in Los Angeles, which opened her eyes to how many different programs needed funding. She remembers seeing people take in 5 to 10 animals at a time, which would only put them into debt. Because of this, she wanted to move into a role where she could directly impact the future.

poundWISHES is a crowdfunding platform for animal welfare non-profits that started about 2 1/2 years ago by a little girl who suffered from Leukemia. As a young girl, her family utilized the Make-A-Wish foundation, which always stuck with her. When her family adopted a pet from a shelter when she was 5, she remembered how sad the shelters were and wanted to create a “Make-A-Wish” foundation for them! When she was 12, her and her dad created poundWISHES to help these animals in shelters and elsewhere.

poundWISHES receives crowdfunding request for animals in need who may require surgery, medication, or transport. There are also crowdfunding items for natural disasters, or even things like the creation of a dog park!

It is similar to GoFundMe, but for animals and is much more hands-on. poundWISHES helps rescues craft and optimize their campaigns and shares campaigns to their community of over 90,000 animal lovers. They also highlight campaigns on their social media platforms, which allows shelters to not have to solely depend on themselves to get the word out.

Natalise shares tips on running successful campaigns, such as focusing on the quality and content of the story. Great pictures and videos are a must, along with successfully framing the story to bring an emotional response.

poundWISHES is also working to expand into the e-Commerce industry, similar to an Amazon Wishlist. They are aiming to be a one-stop-shop for rescues so they can strictly focus on the work they have to accomplish at their facility. Donors are able to contribute through physical items, along with monetary donations, allowing rescues to worry less about how they will fundraise and bring needed products and medicine in the door.

Learn more today at poundwishes.com.

Interview! Natalise Kalea, CEO of poundWISHES

"We want to save animals, help animals, and better the lives of animals around the world. We aim to execute on our mission through creative innovation and community."

Natalise has always been an animal lover, who always dreamed of using her business skills and put them to good use. Now that she is the CEO of poundWISHES, she is doing exactly that!

Learn more today at poundwishes.com.

Previous Episode

Ep228 - Haydn Hilton

Interview! Haydn Hilton, Owner of Java Cats Cafe in Atlanta, GA

“If I would have known how much work a cat cafe was, I might have turned around, but the cats are where the magic is. They market the coffee shop all by themselves when people walk by!"

Meet 26-year-old Haydn Hilton, owner of Java Cats Cafe. This is Georgia’s first cat cafe in the heart of Atlanta and definitely wasn’t where Haydn expected to find herself! Initially going to school to be part of the film industry, she dropped everything to start this business and now enjoys giving advice and mentoring other female entrepreneurs looking to start a business in a male-dominated society. Her business also support local charities and she enjoys being a positive influencer on social media.

Because her cafe can’t cook their own food directly in the cafe, Haydn farms out the work to a local homeless charity, where the people work in a kitchen creating the food that the cafe receives on a daily basis. What a great way of giving back to the local community!

Haydn was always involved in animal rescue growing up. It’s in her blood to be very caring towards animals. When she was younger, she spent about a year doing TNR with her family at a neighbor’s abandoned barn that had a large population of barn cats left behind. The cats ended up hanging out at her family’s house after that and the 20 cats that stayed were like a dream come true to Haydn. She developed a real passion of working with feral cats to tame and nurture them.

But she didn’t expect to make a career out of it! She was a senior at Georgia State and was in a film class, where she learned about a cat cafe and was immediately drawn to the idea.She quit school, left her job, learned how to be a barista and started the long journey of opening up Atlanta’s first cat cafe!

Java Cats Cafe is heavily regulated and cats are partitioned in a completely different area. People come into the coffee shop portion, where they can purchase what they want to eat or drink, or just pay a fee to go straight into the cat area. People than can sit in a room with up to 20 cats that are all up for adoption. Who wouldn’t love that?! The fee is than used to help support the local shelters that supplies the cats in the cafe.

Haydn also discusses the entrepreneurial struggle and how hard it was being a woman to just get into renting spaces. She had a really hard time getting taken seriously, which has caused her to start awoman’s entrepreneurial group at Java Cats to make sure that other women can find the support they need. She wants people to feel safe to share the struggles of what happens trying to open the business, while potentially finding a much needed mentor.She also does special activities and events in the cafe. Woman’s clothing swap, game nights, paint class, movie night, documentary series, and many other things that brings the community and women together with a bunch of different interests to support the cause.

Haydn also discussed the pros and cons with using Kickstarter to help raise her initial equity.Because she wanted to get things open, she needed to get money on the table ASAP. She also wanted the publicity to make sure she was being taken seriously. Which worked. However, between taxes, fees and other things that get taken out, you need to make sure it’s actually worth going through the work of setting up a crowdfunding area.

She completely believes in the idea of cat cafes, though. Java Cats Cafe has already doubled the adoption rate with cats with PAWS Atlanta. People can see them right away and have a more natural exposure that happens at the cafe. It’s more of a playground for cats, rather than the sad environment many shelters tend to have. It’s a game changer for cat adoption!

Learn more about Java Cats Cafe at their website, javacatscafe.com, or on Instagram and Facebook.

Next Episode

Keoni Vaughn, Executive Director of Lanai Cat Sanctuary

Interview! Keoni Vaughn, Executive Director of Lanai Cat Sanctuary

“My job has helped me instantly get to the heart of what I want to do, which is rescue and protect animals that can’t speak for themselves."

Keoni is the Executive Director of the Lanai Cat Sanctuary, and oversees a staff of only 6, who provide daily care for almost 600 cats! Prior to working here, he was the VP and Director of the Hawaiian Humane Society, where he worked hard to rescue animals. The Humane Society found themselves working as mediators in the midst of an abundance of free roaming cats on the islands, due to constant nice weather and a lack of natural predators. A bulk of his time there was collaborating with colony care givers and housing associations to mediate on how to best handle the overpopulation situations.

Keoni was born and raised in Oahu and has worked hard to position the sanctuary as the #1 place to visit in Lanai. He has worked with travel websites to create viral content that has increased the awareness of the sanctuary in the area. 95% of the sanctuary’s donations come from visitors and a quick commuter plane or ferry ride will bring in tourists for a great day trip to visit.

When given the opportunity to work at the sanctuary, he jumped on it. Despite only having about 3,000 people on the island and it being remote, he was determined to help solve the cat overpopulation issue, despite the limited resources. Him and his team focus attention on where endangered birds live and breed, in order to create the safe environment they need. By using trail cams, along with help from the community, they are able to watch for the colonies and take cats they find to the sanctuary when needed.

Believe it or not, 95% of the cats that come to them from the island have never seen a human before! That is why it’s also important for Keoni to work on socializing these cats, as well, which about 40% of them are doing well with at this time. Most adoptions they do make happen tend to come from off of the island, so it’s important to work with the cats’ socialization at the sanctuary on a daily basis.

He has also written an article about building sanctuaries in other parts of the country and what the tips and ideas are relevant that he would give. It can be a struggle, but he has learned how to be efficient. He discussed the many requests he gets to build sanctuaries in other parts of the country, but he is adamant about really being able to sit down and evaluate the specific scenario and to start slow!

For more information, head to lanaicatsanctuary.org.