You spoke and we heard you! Get ready for some changes here at Holistic Ferret!
Monthly Photo Contest: We will be starting up a monthly photo contest on the HF forum. All pictures submitted will go towards a HF calender. I am hoping that between all of us, we can scrounge up a prize for the winner of the photo contest each month. Eventually the resulting HF calender will be sold along with our other HF merchandise on cafe-press.com to raise funds for the HF forum. Mentors and moderators WILL be able to participate in the photo contest. There WILL be a minimum post count required in order to enter the contest though.
A new sub-forum has been created in the "Show Us Your Babies!" area of the forum. The sub-section is where all threads pertaining to the HF Montly Photo Contest will be held.
Our first contest will take place in December. If you would like to donate natural ferret food, a giftcard to rodentpro, pingford's porridge, ferret.com, homemade bedding or ferret toys, or any other items, please PM Giuli as soon as possible so we can have a prize ready by the time the contest begins.
We will post an announcement on the forum when its time to start submitting your photos.
Monthly Raffle:I am hoping to get people to donate items that we will raffle for each month. The funds generated from the montly raffles will go towards a new program that will be set up on the forum (see below). Raffle items will runt he gammut from homemade bedding, to natural ferret foods/treats, to official HF merchandise, gift certificates to various places, fun ferrety items, books, and more! All members (regardless of post count) are elidgable to participate in the monthly raffle. In addition, people on other forums (that are not members of HF) are welcome to enter the raffle as well.
The Holistic Ferret Emergency Natural Food Fund:With the American economy the way it is right now (and having gone through a financial crisis recently myself) I really think its important that people on our forum can get the support they need to continue feeding their ferrets natural food, regardless of their fiancial situation.
We will be creating a community fund (from money generated from direct donations, selling items, and raffle profits) that people who are having financial difficulty can use to TEMPORARILY feed their ferrets. How it will work (and this is still in the planning phase) is as follows:
*They will be required to fill out an application to recieve funds.
*All members who have donated money to the fund will have to vote on whether or not the applicant can be approved for funds, and for how much.
*No money will be given to the applicant if they are approved, instead, we will place an order with the natural feeding provider of their choice (hare today, rodentpro, prey4pets, etc) and the food will be delievered to their home.
*Anyone applying for the fund must have been a member of HF for a mimumum period of time and have a minimum number of posts
*The fund can only be used to feed a persons pets for 3 months, if additional financial assistance is needed, other arrangements will need to be made
*When the person gets "back on their feet" financial they are not required (but are strongly encouraged) to make a donation back into the fund, to replenish it for future use. We arent asking them to pay back the WHOLE amount they borrowed, but to make a decent effort to try and "pay it forward".
*We will list the current balance of the fund, along with all deposits and withdrawls into the fund.
*Direct donations to the fund will be made via mailed personal check, or paypal.
More on this coming soon!
A new chat room!Soon all you chatty kathys on the forum will be able to converse in real time. The HF forum has heard your request for a chat room, and we are in the process of getting that set up for all of you. Stay turned for details!
Holistic Diet/Care Mentoring:Still working out the legistics of how this would work. If it should be combinded with the HF DIET mentor program, if it should be a seperate program. If it should just be a montly email newsletter that you subscribe too, etc. We will let everyone know more details soon, but rest assured we WILL be adding something like this to the forum, and soon. The thing is we need to find out HOW.
Reduced Number of Stickies:Stickies have been condensed in order to make scrolling through the lists of threads more manageable.
Additional Emoticons, Graphics, and Skins:In the future we will be adding some new emoticons. In the meantime we would like to get suggestions for what emoticons YOU want to see. So PM any emoticon suggestions to me and I'll add them to a list.
In addition to new emoticons we will be adding (in the near future) festive Holiday "skins" to the forum. You will have the option of selecting what you'd like the background of holistic ferret to look like. You can pick our standard background or you will be able to select festive "decked out" holiday backgrounds: variations on our current background to make them more "festive". Keep an eye out for more info on this. Coming soon!