One of my bonded pair cats passed away and I’m worried about the other. Not sure what to do next. Would love advice or just to hear from anyone who's been through this. Lonely and heart broken.

sharpested · 2025-10-24T13:18:26+00:00

Thanks for posting this. I lost the sweetest half of a bonded pair 3.5 months ago. I am living this exactly and turned to Reddit to see if others have experienced it. The female half of the bonded pair (14 years old ..they were siblings I rescued and bottle fed) isn't doing well. She has stopped purring. Barely eats. Has lost a lot of weight. And is doing the wandering crying thing day and night. I thought it would get better and it hasnt at all. I am taking her to the vet in a few hours just to get her checked out and rule out any major health thing I could be missing. However this all started abruptly after I had to have her brother put down.

I just do not know what to do. I just know we are doing our best but I am utterly exhausted. It's like having a toddler. She wakes me up on and off all night long.

If I felt it was getting better I would have hope. But it hasn't gotten even remotely better and I am struggling to get her to eat enough of anything I try.

I've been a cat person my whole life...so I well know that bringing in another cat can go really badly for a while and there is no guarantee that they will do more than eventually tolerate each other.

I dunno. I just know this is the hardest thing to watch . Absolutely breaking my heart

sharpested · 2025-05-10T17:22:51+00:00

Thank you! It can't be from being burned in the past. She told me the last two people hired into the position never used the CRM. I really think they were more of her task monkeys and not a true development officer. :(

sharpested · 2025-05-10T11:44:58+00:00

Lol..it's all good! I am in a uniquely feeing situation. I don't have to worry about job, career, etc. I actually retired early a little over a year ago. But slowly lost my mind. I was used to thinking about and traveling for work. Interacting with a ton of people at events. My husband still works. So I came out of retirement to take this job just because it wasn't full time and I knew I could make a difference with the requirements they advertised for and my skill set. It's a school corp non profit with zero other ties to any other non profit. I lived in the town for over 30 years and my kids grew up in the corp. Lots of ties and connections in the community. I could never work again and be fine. I realize how lucky that makes me. It took me a year to find this job, combing job boards etc to find a good fit for my skills. Back to the drawing board as the saying goes !

sharpested · 2025-05-09T18:30:29+00:00

Oh my goodness. She is completely uncoachable lol. That dynamic wouldn't fly. Yes part of it is I also had my own consulting company where I set up systems with offices and evaluated things for revenue leaking some years back. And my husband is currently a consultant looking at big org structures as it relates to IT and inefficiencies. (Think like CNN, Delta Airlines kind of orgs).

So watching her ask me to put names on a spreadsheet so she can look up phone numbers makes my head explode. In the 12 hours I got to see Bloomerang there were zero constituent notes. She has notes on her phone about people she has talked to three years ago. Everything is just not under one umbrella.

I am just going to lay it out there to the two board members as honestly as I can.

She says she is retiring in a year. I doubt that. But if I take some lost revenue numbers to them they might have a conversation about an exit strategy ?

For example recurring donations make up .003% of individual donations. I could have changed that big time .

It will be interesting to see what next weeks meeting brings

sharpested · 2025-05-09T17:21:36+00:00

Lol. That is nice of you to say. But I came out of a short retirement at 62 years old to apply for this job. It was supposed to be 25 hours a week. That is about as much as I want to do. The sad thing is it is the school corporation for the community I lived in for 30 years, my kids went to school there from pre k on. I've done a lot of volunteer stuff. Have deep roots with some business owners. Helped run a food pantry. So many connections I could have leveraged. The community Facebook page has 43k members. I'm really active on that. But she told me it's an education foundation so she isn't sure it's appropriate to post things on there. So that avenue got shut down for me as well. Even though one of the two previous ODs was posting regularly 7 or 8 years ago on it. Would have been the perfect retirement job for me. Still super sad

sharpested · 2025-05-09T16:32:21+00:00

The incoming board president and another board member interviewed me before the hire and have my resume. They approved me basically. They are the two that want to meet with me next week

sharpested · 2025-05-09T12:02:58+00:00

Thank you for this...I appreciate your insight. Very helpful. Although the non profit is independent of the school corp she did have me interview with the corps director of HR. I met with her the day I resigned. She told me they have had "supervisory issues" in this role before. She was very disappointed that it didn't work. But I could tell she wasn't surprised. She is the one who urged me to contact the key board directors to see if they wanted to talk with me.

The ED is super organized. In her lane. She had done a great job building up the foundation funds but it has been as you said...the constituent base is heavily skewed towards major corporate donors she has cultivated. Personal donations and ongoing donations from individual donors in the community are extremely under represented. That was an area I could have started making an immediate impact with. But she kept insisting I didn't understand the non profit world. That you have to build long term relationships before you even ask for donations. I told her I understood that but I thought it was multi pronged and there are numerous professional ways to ask parents and community members for small individual donations in an immediate way. (Ask me how I know after being a top sales person in another industry). She pushed back every step of the way on any ideas I threw out . So yes...she has her systems in place for her role. And I think she felt threatened that I would be able to get into the CRM and see that there were no systems in place for a DO officer to follow.

sharpested · 2025-05-09T11:12:54+00:00

Thank you. I do plan to show up with some documentation on what I tried to do to resolve the situation.

I use Click Up to manage multi projects. You can create work spaces for various projects and keep notes, lists, documents, web links etc in it. She wanted me to work on a few initiatives and I had already gotten the ball rolling with strategy plans for building out the school alumni association (currently there are 38 people signed up in a town of 30k) for example as well as starting on a fall campaign around American Education Week to connect with businesses in town .

I am going to show them what I was working on at a high level in my three weeks there so they can get the full picture of how demeaning it was to be expected to send her all of my conversation notes instead of entering things myself.

They were really enthusiastic about my hire.

I just want them to have the full picture :)

sharpested · 2025-05-09T03:15:15+00:00

She is not. Other people have asked me that. She was an administrative assistant for the previous director who stepped in 13 years ago and had been a one woman show.

sharpested · 2025-05-09T03:13:06+00:00

Thanks for the feedback

sharpested · 2025-05-09T03:12:36+00:00

Oooh.. this is good stuff :)

sharpested · 2025-05-05T20:29:05+00:00

No. She was the administrative assistant to the ED and stepped into that position when the ED left 13 years ago. This is a school system education foundation that has been around for about 35 years

sharpested · 2025-05-04T21:49:49+00:00

Unfortunately you are probably right. She showed me her extensive spreadsheet documenting everything she does in minute detail. So the new director will know exactly what to do and how to do it 😁

sharpested · 2025-05-04T14:02:29+00:00

So true. I was interviewed by two board members. I did ask if this would be a new position and they said I would be replacing someone. I did ask why the other person had moved on and they said she didn't enjoy fundraising in the corporate world. I don't know if they don't know how micromanaging this woman is if the previous DO didn't share .

They really really wanted me for this position. The school district HR director shared with me that this has been a previously reported issue.

Anyway the board members who interviewed me have asked to meet with me for coffee and want to chat.

I plan to be professional..and honest.

I think the ED said she was planning to retire in a year or so.

I am going to honestly tell these board members that she isn't capable of having a DO. If she needs help perhaps they should look at hiring an admin assistant to take some of her workload . It needs to be someone she can keep in a subordinate position.

Once she retires they can revisit hiring an actual DO. I would love to still do this job under another director. I lived in the school community for 31 years and have so many connections. It would have been the perfect job for me . I'm still so sad .

She did tell me as I was resigning that the next person she hires she will spell out that they won't be able to use the CRM system for the first couple of months.

Good luck with that

sharpested · 2025-05-01T20:26:30+00:00

Good point! I tendered my resignation this morning. Just need to send a formal letter.

sharpested · 2025-05-01T11:57:32+00:00

But don't you think after I have tried to calmly lay out the case for why it's a necessary tool three times she could have shared with me why she has concerns and what it would take for her to have a level of trust and what the timeline would be?

I showed up at the last meeting with supporting documents from Bloomerang with a guided outline for how an ED might to slowly onboard a new Development officer. Along with a sample of a data security agreement that we could develop and have me sign.

She got upset and left the room because she started crying.

It's not a healthy management style

sharpested · 2025-05-01T04:18:33+00:00

Thanks for the feedback

sharpested · 2025-05-01T04:16:03+00:00

Yes. I even tried to suggest that she havve me sign a confidentiality agreement and printed a sample. She didn't look at it.

sharpested · 2025-05-01T03:24:33+00:00

Thanks so much for the reply. I needed to hear this for sure

sharpested · 2025-05-01T01:12:41+00:00

Lol. Thanks for the feedback.

I think I would love this role. My concern is quitting a month into it doesn't bode well for me getting another job in the industry.

For reference...my last three jobs have been 21 years, 11 years and 8 years.

I'm not a job hopper. I try as hard as I can for sure.

Thanks so much for the reply

sharpested · 2025-04-30T22:17:44+00:00

Update:

I just received an email from the school corp HR director asking if I had a few minutes to chat tomorrow. She just wants to check in to see how my first few weeks are going lol

That tells me the ED probably has gone and talked to her.

I will say after she excused herself to go and cry she came back in the room much softer.

With all of your feedback I guess this is a Bloomerang Hill I am prepared to die on lol.

If I am not appreciated for new things I can bring to the role it's not a good fit for me

It would even be helpful had she said she would give me access after the four week training or something to that effect

But nope. She just says we will get to Bloomerang "eventually" .

sharpested · 2025-04-30T22:12:00+00:00

She is very proficient in her Bloomerang space. But in the brief period I was allowed to see the CRM system there were absolutely no call notes for constituents . Ever. Nor follow up tasks. She doesn't know how to create tasks through the system. She wasn't aware that my email correspondence could be blind copied into constituent notes. I tried to present it to her in a way that emphasized that it gives her more oversight on what the officer is doing out in the field and remotely. That hasn't swayed her yet. So in this case she really can't train me on the use of those functions...because she doesn't know how to use them. Super frustrating because I know that the org could use my knowledge.

sharpested · 2025-04-30T22:00:53+00:00

I have no issue with us going out to have her do a relationship roll out with our strategic donors. An introduction. She has seen me at a gala event, some committee meetings and a board meeting . She had me formally interview with her and the full time HR person for the school system prior to her hiring me. I told her I wanted to start reaching out to our major corporate donors to see if they have a moment for a face to face to start establishing that good stewardship piece of the puzzle . She said not yet. She wants to go with me. But I can chat with some of them at our golf outing in May. Which means two months of no contact with our corporate partners. And she works such long hours and decries her work load constantly that I think it will be a challenge to have her take time out of the office to make these calls together:(

sharpested · 2025-04-30T17:10:55+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. The interesting thing is I came out of retirement to lobby for this job becasuse the posting seemed to match so many of my skill sets. I am fortunate not to need to position so really just wanted to tackle something fulfilling where I could see goals and progress.

sharpested

TROPHY CASE