Some of the money that comes into the ACA’s Donor Advised Fund (DAF) on deposit with the Canine Health Foundation comes from private donations. If you want to donate, we that you make out your check to the Canine Health Foundation but send it to the ACA Treasurer. It will then be forwarded to the CHF. This helps us keep accurate track of the funds on deposit with the CHF. Whether you chose to send it in care of the ACA or directly, all donations to the ACA DAF are tax deductible.
Funds earmarked for health research are also raised at the ACA National Specialty. A large part of this comes through the Auction. Donors can specify that their items be primarily for health research. The committee might also hold special fund-raising events at the national to raise extra money, as well as having on-line auctions during the course of the year.
Those of you who feed Purina products and are members of their Breeder’s Program need only inform Purina that you wish to participate in their Parent Club program as members of the ACA. They will donate a set amount to the ACA for the weight circles you submit. The money is divided between the DAF and the club itself for discretionary use to further health causes in the breed.
We often summarize research work and solicit non-confidential articles from researchers that can be published on this website or reprinted with their permission. What we can relay about ongoing projects is restricted by confidentiality agreements (legal documents preventing us from sharing proprietary information), so until results of specific studies are published, we cannot usually reveal more than generalities about them.
Individual committee members are liaisons to specific researchers or to areas of research. This means they work with an individual researcher throughout the duration of their term in office or as long as the researcher is active. If the researcher prefers speaking directly to individuals, the liaison then refers that person directly to the researcher, but this is not often the case. Most don’t have time or inclination to answer the same question repeatedly from different people, so these liaisons act as intermediaries between ACA members with questions regarding the project and the researchers.