We Can't Succeed WithoutYour Help

April 13th, 2008: The workload involved in our rescue and disease surveillance activities has reached such a massive level that we can no longer cope with the volume unless we hire paid professionals immediately. We need donations now to cover the costs of wages and have set a deadline of May 10th to raise $120,000. If we fail, we will be forced into turning cases away starting May 15th. Since there is no-one else in this region to assist these frogs, they will be left to die in backyards as they did before we started up in 1998.

Frogs are a very endearing and popular animal and the community relies on us to help these animals - but this is an expensive activity and the money has to come from somewhere. Generally, it does not come from the government because we are too involved in scientific pursuits. We must raise our costs from concerned people like yourselves.

There are six ways you can help our work:

donating money (we are now tax deductable!) is always the most important one because we have many, many expenses to cover (cash, check/cheque or automatic deposit - see our new page on bank transfers or if you need to use your credit card to make a donation, we have an arrangement with the Amphibian Research Centre to process credit card donations for us - visit their site at www.frogs.org.au/groups)
donate goods or books (see further down this page)
donate services (we often need odd bits done such as carpentry, plumbing, glass work, A/C installation and removal, etc. - we currently need a grant writer who is experienced with govt. grants and we always need people with cars to do pickups; we could also use professional advice on a mix of topics including legal, soil science, marketing, primary school education, toxicology, climate change, genetics, psychology, film production and the functioning of the media industry)
be a member (see our membership page)
be a volunteer (conditions apply! - see our volunteer page)
be an information scout - we don't have time to scour the newspapers and magazines for frog related items and often miss the opportunity to write in a letter to the editor on an issue that needed a reply from the conservation point of view; if you see an item, please tear out the entire page and post it to us at P.O. Box 958, Manunda, FNQ 4870

Maybe you would rather not sign up for yet another non-profit organisation but you still want to do something to help frogs. Please look through our needs list below. Perhaps there is something in this list you can provide or you might know someone who may be in a position to help. Maybe you have some of these things gathering dust in your garage or perhaps a friend of yours happens to be in the business of manufacturing or selling some of these supplies and would be willing to offer us a nice discount. Every little bit helps!

(Please note: while you can ship just about anything to anywhere, many of the items listed below are for readers in Far North Queensland only. For example, our power supply and plugs are different to anywhere else so electronic items from overseas won't work here, and other items are cheap enough or recycled but the postage to ship them here is far more expensive than the items themselves. If you are overseas and want to send us something from the list below, please contact us first so you don't waste your money and effort.)

Some goods we need are:

disposable gloves They should be latex and most of our volunteers use medium size but the occasional box of small or large would be useful. If you work for a retailer, drug company or glove manufacturer, would you consider selling these to us at cost or perhaps donating one case of gloves to us each year?
Tall bookshelves are needed to help house our growing library of reference materials and to store supplies and tanks
We have a five foot tank that has been donated but we need a cabinet made to put under it and some flyscreen doors made for the open end - if you are a handyman, would you be able to either source the supplies or put the materials together?
Do you have expertise in aquarium design and supplies? We need to setup a specialist tank enclosure using a 3 or 4 foot aquarium. This tank needs to have a flowing stream in it and removable vegetation as well as a secure fitting lid. The purpose of the tank is to house specialist stream-dwelling frogs that need care.
Other items that we purchase are plastic pet tanks, ceramic ramekins, sponges, buckets, lemon scented bleach, disinfectant, AA, D, and 6V batteries, specimen containers with screw tops (not the jars that have the rubber sealants inside the lids), and fresh fruit and vege for the bugs we feed to the frogs.
Are you in the USA? We need to acquire books on various subjects but the costs of purchasing them from here and shipping is far beyond our ability. Perhaps you would like to purchase and mail a book to us using Amazon.com or another source. Some titles we are interested in are listed here.

You can reduce what goes into landfills by sending us some of these recycleable items:

eye droppers
cardboard egg cartons and trays
four and five litre plastic bottles from purchased distilled and rain water
pet tanks and small aquariums (no cracks please - we need them for tadpoles)
the rectangular Peter's ice cream containers
the little half size ice cream containers (about 10cm square)
foam boxes (broccoli boxes) that have not had any chemicals in them and no holes

Is there anything else you are getting rid of that's not on this list? Please contact us - we are used to being creative when it comes to making do (such as taking cracked fish tanks, standing them on their sides, throwing a pretty fabric over the top and using that as a brochure stand) - so we might have a good use for whatever you don't want anymore!

Last edited: April 13th, 2008