 OAKS NEWSLETTER AND UPDATES FOR 2023 HAPPY NEW YEAR!! We are so thankful for everyone who has come alongside us in 2022 and we are so excited for what’s to come in 2023! So much happened this year and this is only the beginning!  Photos from our WISE School Debrief Workshop in 2021 So much happened in 2022! Here is our Year-End Recap and some updates for 2023! OAKS RESTORATIVE RANCH YEAR-END RECAP 2022 We got our Nonprofit Status! This year we celebrated getting our 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Status approved by the IRS in April! After 13 months of waiting and then revisions, we are officially a Nonprofit effective February 10th, 2022! Since this, we have worked towards getting all of our ducks in a row (or horses in a barn?) in order to get started offering sessions. Bank Account and Donor Thank You's  Photo from left to right: One of our First Donations, and Custom painted Thank you Cards. We got our bank account set up this year and ran our first fundraiser!! This is such a huge step for us as it means we can now accept Tax-Deductible Donations! We jumped through a few hoops setting up our Nonprofit Fundraising platforms but for now we have settled on Paypal for ease, and Zeffy for fundraisers. Zeffy is a nonprofit fundraising platform that is created specifically for nonprofits and takes 0% of the donations! (Where Normally 2-3% is taken from each donation as a fee for the service.) Zeffy also has amazing customer service! I was trying to set up a Venmo Charity but because this feature is so new, their customer support was not able to assist us with our specific case. After probably 30+ emails back and forth, and a very stressful couple of days, I got a phone call from the Customer Support at Zeffy asking if I needed any help setting up our first fundraiser on our account. It was such a relief to talk to a person after the email tornado I had just gotten out of! I had set up an account with Zeffy a few days earlier, and after talking to them about their program over the phone, I set up our first fundraiser just in time for Giving Tuesday the next day! (Thank goodness!) We also made custom Oaks Thank You Cards for some of our donors while we waited for our stamp to come in! They are acrylic watercolor and the outline is freehanded in pen. Each one is unique, so it was very fun to pick out each card for each individual donor! (To our Donors; You guys are the best!) We set up our Social MediaI’m not going to sugar coat it… Posting regularly on Facebook and Instagram was very intimidating for me(Kali) at first. I always worry I am not doing enough, or what I am doing is not noteworthy enough to take up this space. Fortunately, I received some encouragement from a few sweet humans which helped me get started! Each time I would set up a post, I would tell myself, “It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be.” (Thank you Encanto). We now have a lot of updates on our Social Media pages! As I was posting regularly, I realized that a lot of the people who follow us don’t know our whole story. “Walking through healing” with people, horses, and the community sounds great, but it doesn’t give the history of how we came to be! In order to help with this, I created our “Storytime Sunday” videos where I tell a short story - a chapter, if you will - from the odyssey of how we got started! These have been so much fun to share and I am super excited for some of the client interviews we hope to share this year! What's Next in 2023 This year we hope to reach out to our community and make an impact. We want to create spaces and opportunities for healing, reflection and growth, and we want to offer this for all ages! We are keeping our eyes and hearts open as we look for our own future space, but because we do not have a “home base” yet, in 2023 we want to bring our program straight to you! We want to offer pop-up sessions for schools, at ranches, and other groups that want to participate. Just like our sessions, these workshops and group sessions are always free, in order to be accessible to everyone. So what will this look like? More Details Please! Who: Horses in the community who are in need What: Pop-Up Sessions and Workshops for ALL AGES Where: Hosted at Local Ranches, Schools, and other Locations I have a Group, How Do I Sign Up?
CLICK ON THE BUTTONS BELOW FOR MORE INFO Final Thoughts 2022 has been a great year and we are so thankful for everyone who believes in us and in this dream! We look forward to giving back in 2023 through sessions and volunteer work in the community. As always, reach out with any questions, we love hearing from you guys!
Thank you all for being here, and welcome to 2023! It’s going to be a great year! With love, Kali and Oaks Restorative Ranch
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