We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Robin Lapre. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Robin below.
Robin, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
Finding purpose, at least as how it pertains to the nonprofit Saving Cheatham Animals Mission PAWSible, was all a bit of happenstance and necessity! My “background” is that I am a physician who works part time at an urgent care in Williamson County, and I was looking for something to do with my teenage daughter about six years ago. We started walking dogs at our local animal shelter in 2017. One thing led to another, and I realized that maybe I should be helping more rural county shelters that were in dire need of help. Fast forward three years later, and I found myself at Cheatham County Animal Control, just one county to the west of my own, with a nascent volunteer program and lots of needs! Not only did they need manpower, they needed a better social media presence, and they needed more money! There was not enough in the county budget to provide even basic care for the animals such as spay and neuter and treatment for the sick and injured. After trying different ways to find band-aid solutions, it became evident that someone was going to have to start a nonprofit dedicated to helping CCAC, and I guess that someone was going to have to be me! So I jumped in, with no nonprofit experience, but I understood the mission and I understood the shelter environment. Very much like starting a small business, I immersed myself with the goal of helping the animals of CCAC, and thus it became my purpose – to establish a nonprofit that would support CCAC and to give the animals their best chance of finding good homes.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
My work life is really split into two distinct entities! My “paying job” is that of an urgent care physician. I have really enjoyed my work as a physician. I didn’t exactly plan to do urgent care, but it turns out it’s a lot of fun and you never know what you might encounter. I’ve met a lot of nice people, work with a great team, and have seen some interesting things! My other work is my “non-paying job” is that I am the Founder and President of the nonprofit Saving Cheatham Animals Mission PAWSible (SCAMP). I started SCAMP in 2021 with the mission of helping the animals of Cheatham County Animal Control which is a small rural shelter just west of Nashville. I spend much of my week managing the nonprofit and promoting the shelter animals of CCAC. What I have found is that there are a lot of animal lovers out there! I have also learned is that people are willing to support our mission if we do a good job articulating our needs and if we spend our money wisely and in the spirit intended by donors.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
It certainly helps to know the animals and understand the shelter environment, if you are going to run a nonprofit supporting an animal shelter! Just like many people in the restaurant business will say it helps if you worked in a restaurant before you start your own restaurant, same thing for running SCAMP! I have spent many many hours walking dogs and driving dogs and cats to appointments, so when people ask me questions about Cheatham County Animal Control, I have a pretty good understanding of many aspects of the shelter, at least as it pertains to adoptable animals.
One quality that I possess is a sense of ownership, and that can be intense. It means that I will take on maybe more work than I should, or not allow myself to turn off and tune out for a bit to recharge. This can be good in that I can be very driven to make sure things get done correctly and I will take on the work myself to see that it happens. But I have found that it can also lead to burnout and eventually it’s not sustainable as the responsibilities grow. So while this has it’s advantages when starting a new endeavor, it’s important to learn to delegate and to create some limits or else your work can become all consuming, and in the long run, that’s not good for you or your organization.
A final quality that has helped is a willingness to be accessible to people. There are a lot of people in the community who want to do the right thing for an animal, but don’t know where to start, and sometimes questions arise at odd hours. By being willing to answer questions or make suggestions, I think people in the community know that I genuinely want to be helpful to them, and they feel heard.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Our greatest challenge in helping the animals of Cheatham County Animal Control is raising awareness and driving adoption foot traffic our way. We have great animals!! But few people know of us, and Cheatham County is not a densely populated county. So we really would benefit from folks spready the word. If there are influencers out there that want to come promote our dogs and cats, come on over and let’s talk about them! We are proud of our shelter and want to show it off. If there are restaurants that want to host a SCAMP night, then we will promote your restaurant in return. Are you a celebrity that wants to adopt a dog or a cat, then we have an animal for you! While it’s true that we could always use monetary donations, what is harder to come by are good adopters. In order to get more adopters, we need to raise awareness that we exist. So if you are out there in the community and you want to promote us in your space, we will promote you in return as supporting the shelter animals of Cheatham County!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.savingcheathamanimals.com
- Instagram: @cheatham_scamp
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/savingcheathamanimals
