November 10, 2026
Ep 690: Pay It Forward: The Simple Move That Turns Hesitant Vets Into TNR Partners, with Denise Bynum, Director or Homeless Animals Relief Project (HARP)
“We pay ahead. That gives them some confidence that they’re not gonna lose out with a group they don’t really know.”
Many TNR groups can’t get a vet to say yes. Denise Bynum has nine vets working with her. Her approach is to pay ahead. When HARP starts with a new clinic, she puts $500 on account and tops it up as it runs low, so the vet never has to worry about an unfamiliar rescue group skipping out on the bill. With those partners, plus large spay days and a vet school clinic where the only cost was lunch, HARP fixed 1,443 cats last year with no clinic and no paid staff.
Denise spent 28 years training nurses before she ever trapped a cat, and her first try was a disaster. She started out driving cats to spay days for HARP, and by the time she retired from nursing, she was ready to run the whole program.
She also shares what the Community Cat Program Management course confirmed for her and what it changed. It confirmed putting owned cats first and writing handwritten notes to donors. It also led her to free donor software, a $10,000 Google Ad Grant, trail cams, and a smarter way to book new clients. Her advice to anyone on the fence about the course is “don’t be afraid.”
- How a retired nursing program director went from volunteer transporter to running HARP
- Running an all-volunteer program that fixes 1,500 cats a year without its own clinic
- Why paying vets up front builds trust with new clinic partners
- Using a vet school’s student spay/neuter clinic for the cost of lunch
- Flat-rate pricing, sliding-scale gifts, and donors who pay extra to cover someone else
- Prioritizing owned cats, and why we can’t adopt our way out of overpopulation
- Adding FVRCP and a parasite package for every cat with grant support
- Explaining the vacuum effect to a casino that wanted its TNR’d cats removed
- Filling no-show slots by testing new clients with two or three cats first
- Getting 100% of a colony fixed, even when you can’t trap alone anymore
- Free donor tools, Google Ad Grants, and why older donors still love snail mail
- What a typical week in the eight-week course looks like
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