After offering my help a few times, the National Silver Fox Rabbit Club (NSFRC) asked me to take over the sweepstakes entries, which were at the time six months behind. So, I became a member of the NSFRC Sweepstakes Committee, which also included the president, secretary, and webmaster of the club. It sounded simple enough to do because of how the webmaster had set up everything online with a database. It is a simple data entry process, but it is also easy to make mistakes.
To explain how the sweepstakes work, the show must be sanctioned by the ARBA, which involves a fee payment, and a number will be assigned to each show. Exhibitors all talk about going to a show, but some shows actually are doubles or triples, which is two or three shows at the same venue on the same day hosted by the same club but two clubs can have shows on the same day at the same venue as well.
Once the show secretary has the ARBA numbers, the requests for specialty sanctions can be made as well. The national club for the breed has to be contacted and a fee paid, if the show secretary is sanctioning breed, but not every show is sanctioned for the breed. There are times that exhibitors can donate the sanctioning fee. Then the national club will assign its own sanction number.
My work begins sometime after the show, when the show report is sent to the NSFRC secretary, who forwards them to the sweeps email address. They are usually sent as attachments to email in PDF format, but some are still mailed in. I download the reports to a online drive and renamed the files so we can fine then easily. For instance, some will have a simple file name like "Open A.pdf" and I get several like that, so imagine the confusion. Some have a lot more information like the ARBA number and/or club name and/or venue and/or sanction number and so on in the file name. I rename every file so that they are uniform with the date, ARBA number, city and state of venue, hosting club, and what show it was, like Open or Youth and A,B, or C.
After I rename the all files, I begin the entry process on an online form. When I have completed and submitted the form, I move the pfd file to another folder for the appropriate month and year of the show. It is well organized and this was something I set up since beginning as a sweepskeeper. The sweepstakes points are automatically calculated by the online program and are updated on the NFSRC website.
Show secretaries are supposed to send in the show reports within 30 days of the show, whether any Silver Fox rabbits were shown or not. Unfortunately, that does not always go as smoothly as we all would like. Sometimes I will get only one show of a triple. Sometimes no reports at all. Sometimes I will get the Open shows but not the Youth shows and sometimes that is because they had different show secretaries for each. Some show secretaries may think if none were shown then they do not need to send a report, which is not exactly the case; I still need some form of confirmation that none were shown to close the report. When I do not receive the reports, I then have the task of contacting the show secretary. Most of the time it is rectified quickly, but sometimes it is more difficult. Because the reports were so far behind when I first started and I had so much to do to get them caught up and because I myself was new, it was a few more months and I was unable to contact some of the show secretaries at all. Thankfully, those were very few.
While I was working on all this (and it is now a ongoing job), my friend Hannah Yost pulled all the Silver Fox breeders together and we formed a regional specialty club: Georgia Silver Fox Rabbit Breeders. We had been working towards this for months, but then it was decided that we wanted to host a Silver Fox specialty show in the fall, so we needed to push to get things finalized.
I was also helping out with the GSFRB website in preparation for the club. Although I had done websites in the past, the WordPress format was completely new to me and we were adding things as we went along, especially with the setting up pages for only club members. I set up an online membership application form that worked well. All this was a learning curve for me, but we finally got it all functional.
As for the club, people volunteered for necessary positions. Hannah wanted me to be the Secretary/Treasurer, which I already knew is one of the positions that would end up doing the most work, especially since the Constitution and By-laws called for keeping track of sweepstakes numbers. I knew I could not do both the NSFRC sweeps and GSFRB secretary jobs and feel comfortable as the Treasurer as well. As Secretary, I sent in the necessary paperwork and fee. On May 8th, our club was officially chartered by the ARBA. Soon afterward we had a shift in personnel as one director decided to take over the Treasurer's position, thankfully, and we added a few more directors.
Not having the extra database on our website presently, I began creating a complex Google sheet system with formulas that would do everything we needed to keep our own sweepstakes records but only for sanctioned shows in our region. It took awhile and every time I thought I had it all done, I would find something not working quite right, but finally I think I have the bugs worked out...at least, I really hope so!
I had always felt odd about being on the NSFRC sweepstakes committee because I also had access to their entire database. I felt that only someone on the board of directors should have that kind of access. As the NSFRC was about to have elections, I asked the GSFRB board of directors if they would feel it was a conflict for their secretary to run for director in the NSFRC board and stated honestly that doing both would likely not be a problem with the jobs I presently had but it might be difficult for me to add much else, as in being on any of the NSFRC committees that we need to form and had not yet. I had their unanimous support, so I ran and won one of the two directors' seats that were up for election along with four others running. My term begins at the end of the ARBA Convention which is going on right now as I am writing this article.
These are just some of the things I have been doing since January, besides just breeding and showing rabbits....and the rabbits could not care less about all this muss and fuss that we do because of them, they are just interested in what we do for them. Aaah...the simple life!
These are just some of the things I have been doing since January, besides just breeding and showing rabbits....and the rabbits could not care less about all this muss and fuss that we do because of them, they are just interested in what we do for them. Aaah...the simple life!
