I’m Jennifer Conte. I’m the development director for the Elmwood Park Zoo located in Norristown, Pennsylvania. The zoo’s mission is to foster an appreciation for wildlife and the environment, and how we really do that is by engaging and doing edutainment, as we say, Read More
I’m Jennifer Conte. I’m the development director for the Elmwood Park Zoo located in Norristown, Pennsylvania. The zoo’s mission is to foster an appreciation for wildlife and the environment, and how we really do that is by engaging and doing edutainment, as we say, education through entertainment. We really want everyone who enters sewer gates to be an environmental ambassador. So when they’re out throughout their lives, if it’s turning off the water when they brush their teeth and maybe picking up some trash in the park, everybody do their part for an appreciation of the animals they see here and then abroad as well. Elmo Park Zoo is really unique because we like to say we’re the region Zoo. We have a lot of families that have been with us for generations. Our collection and our grounds are approachable and they’re accessible. We’re not over stimulating. We’re not overwhelming the way that our staff and our layout and our animals and our signage is displayed is to make you feel like you’re a part of the staff. We also pride ourselves of being a nonprofit that can support a lot of other nonprofits so touching on the accessibility, we have a lot of great animal therapy programs, a lot of touch tours for visual blind and visual support. So we can host banquets we’ve had during COVID When it was first opening up again. We hosted proms here because it was an outside facility. And, you know, we did everything we could say, Yes, use us because we are your neighborhood Zoo. We want you to be here. So we need to reconnect and have people believe in us again and believe that we weren’t going anywhere. So it took, took a lot of work get here, but I think the transparency really, really sat well with with donors. Donor engagement by way, just your classic email and phone calls. But we also do the website, e blast that goes out to just our general membership visitor base, anyone who’s subscribed our emails, and then just segmenting it down to development always memberships, general and annual fuels. I thank every donor of the handwritten note at $5 to $40 million they all are appreciated that goes right back into feeding the animals, goes right back into the vet care. Going into the future, we have 20 acres of land across a creek that bounds us. We’ll go over to all new North America over there, we’re going to do trolley rides around again, doing accessibility. So it might be 20 acres that sounds exhausting, but there is different. We want to make sure that everything is approachable. Everything is accessible. There are pathways, strollers, wheelchairs, whatever it might be. So that will be very exciting. You.
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