On Sept. 17, Paychex founder and billionaire philanthropist Tom Golisano surprised dozens of upstate nonprofit leaders by announcing that he was giving their organizations, in some cases, millions of dollars of his own personal money to help fund their efforts.
The unrestricted grants are benefiting hospitals, colleges and universities, and community service organizations. About two dozen animal welfare groups are also on the list of recipients. Golisano says he knows what it's like to love a pet. He's had dogs of his own.
"These animals become a very important part of your family," he said, after announcing the donations at the Golisano Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship in Brighton.
The gifts seemed to come as a surprise to everyone.
"(I was) more than shocked. I started crying and shaking," said Joane Traber, founder and executive director of Mr. Grey's Strays. The nonprofit traps, spays and neuters stray cats and takes care of their sometimes complicated medical needs before trying to find them permanent homes. Almost 190 cats were adopted so far this year.
The group is named in honor of Mr. Grey, the once bedraggled, feral cat that got her into the rescue business. Traber found him scared and sick with severely infected eyes on a cold winter day 11 years ago in Brockport.
Traber operates the nonprofit out of her home in the village of Brockport. She says the $250,000 grant from Golisano is transformative for a small operation like hers, which relies mostly on small donations from members of the community.
"I've spent over $40,000 so far this year on just a vet, not for medication, not for food and litter," she added. "We're always scrambling here trying to figure out how we're doing this."
Mr. Grey’s Strays got a much more modest grant from the Golisano Foundation’s pro-pet initiative in the past. So when Traber saw that this latest gift totaled a quarter of a million dollars, she thought someone had accidentally added a couple of zeros.”
“I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. I don’t even know what that kind of money is," she said.
For her, having this much more funding means not having to make as many heart rending decisions. Like whether to spend $2,100 to cover the veterinary bills for a single cat, which she did recently.
"Somebody else might say, 'Put that cat down.' But I couldn't, I couldn't just kill them," Traber said. "You have to kind of weigh how much you could have done with that $2,000 for another cat. So that kind of puts a nice padding on that. I don't have to overthink. Do I have to put something down because I don't have the funds for it."
One purchase Traber is thinking about making now is a power generator to fuel an incubator for newborn kittens during a power outage. That actually happened a time or two.
" I was petrified I was going to lose the babies," said Traber, "so things like that, I mean, it's going to make a huge difference. A huge, huge difference."
