The Truth Shall Set You Free

There is a lot of confusion about Pets Alive and Manos Por Patas and what happened and why Chrissy is no longer working with us.  We will state for the record that the previous director of Manos Por Patas was the ONLY member of the organization.  The sole director and sole board member.  When she could no longer run Manos Por Patas she appointed the Pets Alive board as the NEW board of Manos Por Patas and then she resigned, effectively turning over Manos Por Patas to Pets Alive.  Once that was done, Pets Alive legally filed a DBA (Manos Por Patas – Doing Business as Pets Alive Puerot Rico), filed our by-laws with the state, and filed all the other legal paperwork to take over the charity.  All donations received for Pets Alive Puerto Rico went to the EIN for Manos Por Patas (DBA as Pets Alive Puerto Rico).
Chrissy Beckles was a volunteer with our organization, and with Manos Por Patas.  For over a year we had a very amicable relationship, at one point even offering her a paid position which she opted to not accept for various reasons.  When we disagreed on some basics philosophies, Chrissy decided to start her own rescue.  We were glad to see her continue rescue and glad to continue to support her doing so. Personally we have great admiration and respect for Chrissy. She is a passionate, loving person with a generous spirit. While Chrissy and Pets Alive no longer share a common dream, we do share a common goal, and that is to save the lives of dogs in Puerto Rico who are abandoned and abused. I know I speak for everyone at Pets Alive when I say that we wish her nothing but success in this mission.
However, the problem was that her new rescue was started under the Manos Por Patas name and was raising donations with that EIN#.  This is not legal, as Pets Alive is legally responsible for all donations to that EIN.  We are responsible for your tax receipts, we are responsible for claiming those donations on our 990’s, and responsible for many other federal regulations.  We asked her to stop raising money under that EIN and things didn’t go well from there.
We HAD discussed turning over the name and EIN to Chrissy and allowing her to continue to run as Manos Por Patas, and all of us resigning, and leaving it to her alone,  but in the end this was not possible as our organization had to at least complete the year and file our 990’s and handle all donations legalities, and then we found out a bunch of other legal issues that made it very complicated to now separate from that EIN and “DBA” (Doing Business As).  Our board voted to continue running Pets Alive Puerto Rico under the current EIN – JUST AS WE RUN PETS ALIVE WESTCHESTER under the EIN# of the Elmsford Animal Sanctuary (Central Westchester Humane Society.)  That TOO is a separate EIN from Pets Alive Middletown.  We have DBA there as well.
We are very sorry that there has been confusion about this and some people do not understand all these issues and believe that somehow we have done something unscrupulous.  I assure you that this is not so.  Pets Alive works closely with many other organizations.  We always do.  As for  “stealing ideas”, we don’t even understand that accusation.  At Pets Alive we give ALL our ideas to ANYONE that can use them.  Recently we came up with the Christmas morning pet delivery idea, and asked YesBiscuit! and other bloggers to blast it out so other shelters could make use of the idea.  We share every single one of our legal forms, applications, adoption contracts, waivers and anything else we can think of with other organizations and tell them “Don’t recreate the wheel – take our logo off and slap yours on and use our stuff!”.  So I’m unsure what ideas we supposedly stole, but I assure you that if we have an idea you want – TAKE IT!! USE IT!  SAVE ANIMAL LIVES!  If we stole yours (like our calendar idea we first saw at Boxer Rescue and we loved it and used it) then we apologize if we have somehow overstepped in some way but we use any great idea we see and we encourage others to use ours.  TOGETHER we can save more lives, and any idea we have taken, or given, we hope has been to that effort – to save lives.
So I hope that clears up misconceptions.
This blog will now be closed for comments because this is the last comment we will make on this issue.  So far in all the years we have operated, have we ever lied to you or steered you wrong?
No.  We are upfront and honest with you.  At this point our reputation and our history should speak for itself.  So we address this, this ONE time and will make no further comment on it.