Ben Pifher/MDN Souris Valley Animal Shelter’s large new facility, with outdoor kennels, garage doors along the side, and other convenient features, was completed in 2021, according to an Oct. 9, 2021, article in The Minot Daily News.

The Souris Valley Animal Shelter in Minot has immediately slowed its animal intakes due to financial issues and is asking for community donations, according to shelter executives.

“Intake has slowed or paused, but adoptions will continue as normal,” said Laura Garcia, the shelter’s executive director on Thursday.

Garcia said the shelter would like $50,000 in donations in the short term and $250,000 by the end of the year to keep the doors open. She defined “short term” as “We have a few weeks.”

The animal shelter took to social media to appeal for donations on Wednesday.

“It’s very, very dire,” said Haley Burchett, the shelter’s communications director.

Burchett said the organization appealed to the public a few weeks ago on Aug. 6.

“And no one really listened,” she said. She said if the shelter doesn’t get money soon, it will be forced to close.

“We’re trying to secure enough funding to stay open until at least the end of the year,” she said, “until we can secure some larger donors.”

The shelter plans to continue operations as normal if the money is raised, Garcia said.

“That is the plan. We would love to keep doing it,” she said.

Asked how the shelter got to this point, Garcia said, “Overhead costs are really, really high, and not many donations are coming in due to how things were in the past, and the previous executive director had burned a lot of bridges, so I think it can be attributed to that.”

How much money comes in will dictate how long the doors stay open.

“It just kind of depends how much comes in and how far we can stretch it,” Garcia said.

If the money is raised, according to Garcia, it will go to daily operations.

“All of our operations, everything we do – medical expenses, staff, facilities overhead and other expenses to keep the lights on,” she said.

Operations will move forward in the meantime with slowed intakes and continued adoptions. The shelter plans to conduct fundraisers and continues to seek donations. So far, the shelter has raised almost $1,100 of its $50,000 short-term goal.

“We’re here for the animals and that is the ultimate goal, is to help them,” Garcia said.