Troy Van Sickle - Three Reasons to Adopt a Pet

Troy Van Sickle is a successful business professional, who deeply cares about animal rights. He works with several non-profit organizations that provide shelters with resources. He works with animal rehabilitation programs as well. He has adopted several pets from shelters and encourages others to do the same. If you want to add a pet to your family, you should consider visiting an animal shelter rather than a breeder.

One reason to adopt from a shelter is to save a life. Even though there are many no-kill shelters, there are still some that euthanize animals that are not adopted. If you work with a shelter, you will be saving and animal that was abandoned, or orphaned.

Another reason to adopt a pet from an animal shelter is to support that shelter. Adoption fees are often funneled back into the shelter. Those funds are used to purchase food and to treat ill or injured animals. Shelters depend on donations as well as adoption fees.

Most areas are overpopulated with dogs and cats. By adopting from a shelter, you are supplying homeless animals with a loving family and a permanent home. Shelter animals are often unwanted, and some may stay in the shelter for months. If you go to a shelter rather than a breeder, you will be giving a helpless animal a better life. Troy Van Sickle cares about animals and works with several non-profit organizations to help animals. He has three dogs as well as a cat, and each one was adopted from a shelter.

Troy Van Sickle - Quick Fundraising Ideas for Nonprofits

Non-profit organizations often times need to come up with quick fundraising ideas to get the ball rolling on a longer campaign, or get through a mid-campaign hump. They have to be engaging enough to get people like Troy Van Sickle involved with the event quickly. Here is a list of fun and engaging fundraising ideas that will get people involved and having fun.

• Hold a friendly culinary competition where contestants create their best dish and sell tickets for participants to enjoy the fare and cast their votes.

• Have a community-wide garage sale. Collect gently worn items and host a weekend sale or auction. Place pictures of the items on social media beforehand to help generate some buzz.

• Organize a scavenger hunt. Charge a registration fee and provide extra clues and tips for donations.  

• Even the smallest donation helps non-profits, so ask fundraisers to give up a daily habit and donate the money saved to your cause. This can be done for a day or longer if needed. 

• Host a trivia night and charge an entrance fee for participants and attendees. 

• Host a battle of the bands event. Get local bands to help put on a charity concert. Get more people interested in the event by putting local celebrities on the judging panel. 

• Host a dance marathon. Charge an entry fee and allow participants to request a song for a nominal fee. Have a small prize up for grabs for the last one standing.

Raising money for your non-profit doesn’t have to cost you a lot of time or money. Simply use your creativity to come up with a fun event that appeals to large groups of people. Troy Van Sickle is committed to helping his favorite charities raise money and loves to participate in the fundraising events whenever he has the opportunity.
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Troy Van Sickle - Essential Tips for First-Time Homebuyers

Being a first time home buyer can be a thrilling and nerve-wracking experience. As a real estate consultant, Troy Can Sickle knows that the learning curve for first-time home buyers can be steep. Most of these issues can be fixed by doing a little homework before starting the home buying process. Here are five steps to help the process go smoother.

1.One of the most important factors when it comes to qualifying for a home loan is your credit score. The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows everyone to get their credit report from the three credit bureaus for free once a year. Check these reports for mistakes, unpaid accounts, and collection accounts.

2.Keep track of your spending for a couple of months. This will help you understand what kind of income you are bringing in every month and what you are spending. When purchasing a home, it is important to know what you're spending every month compared to what you are making.

3.Get your documents organized. Gather pay stubs, your previous two years of W-2s, tax returns, and the past two months of bank statements.

4.Before you even contact a mortgage lender, find out how much you qualify for. There are a number of mortgage calculators available online to help you with this. 

5.It takes an effort to get a down payment scraped together, so start saving as early as you can. There are programs that can assist certain buyers that meet qualifying incomes. 

Buying your first home is not only exciting, but it can be nerve-wracking as well. By following these steps, Troy Van Sickle is confident that first-time home buyers will be able to realize their dreams of owning a home.