Congratulations to one of own… Maggie Lowe!
Maggie is one of our dearest and esteemed volunteers and Board Member at GTHS – and has been named as a Grassroots Hero of 2016 by On The Bay Magazine! You deserve all the kudos in the world! Thank you for sharing your love, warm energy, and never-ending drive to improve the lives of the cats and dogs in our community who need help.
Below is the full article as found in On the Bay Magazine…
Maggie Lowe
Advocating for Animals
by Janet Lees
photography by Kristie & Brenden Woods
There are times when a good cause meets a great fundraising concept, and thanks to Maggie Lowe, the Georgian Triangle Humane Society (GTHS) can boast our region’s most successful ongoing source of funds to help thousands of animals every year find “forever homes.”
Lowe is the driving force behind Treasure Tails, a shop in downtown Collingwood that sells donated goods, from furniture, housewares and décor items to china, glass, books and gently used clothing. The store was Lowe’s brainchild, born out of a yard sale for the GTHS that had leftover items. “The quantity of items that came in was amazing, and I said to the board that we needed a consistent form of money coming in instead of waiting for the next big event,” she recalls. She started Treasure Tails in an unheated warehouse, and when winter arrived she moved the operation to the current storefront location on Hurontario Street. That was six years ago, and today Treasure Tails is responsible for one-third of the funds that keep the GTHS’s state-of-the-art animal shelter going.
“I used to be ecstatic if we hit $2,000 a week gross, and we have been hitting up to $4,000 some weeks,” enthuses Lowe, who manages the store and its 30 other volunteers, as well as sitting on the GTHS board as director of retail operations. “All of the proceeds go to the shelter, so it’s very satisfying.”
Treasure Tails is not a consignment shop – it’s a registered charity selling donated goods – but the calibre of merchandise is on par with many consignment stores. “We demand high quality,” notes Lowe. “We only have 1,800 square feet, so we don’t have room to put junk in the store.” And word has gotten around that there are indeed treasures to be found at Treasure Tails: the store has a loyal following of regulars, from designers and real estate agents to weekenders and full-time residents.
Lowe credits service and friendliness for the venture’s success. “My staff are all trained to be pleasant, to greet people and explain what the store is all about,” she notes, adding she has also developed a rapport with area businesses, many of which donate new items to the store.
As a registered charity, Treasure Tails can give tax receipts for donations, and there is a perk for purchasers, too: customers pay no tax.
A lifelong animal lover, Lowe first got involved with the GTHS 14 years ago when she moved to Southern Georgian Bay full-time and adopted a border collie cross named Toby from the GTHS, which at that time did not yet have an actual animal shelter but was fostering pets in the community until permanent homes could be found.
“I am honoured to have played a role in getting an animal shelter built in our community, and I’m committed to ensuring that it helps as many animals as possible, well into the future,” she says. “The whole society is like family to me. We all love what we do, and helping animals is our passion.”
For more information about Treasure Tails or the GTHS, go to gths.ca or gths.ca/treasure-tails-store.
To read more about other noteworthy Grassroots Heros of 2016, visit On the Bay “10th Annual Salute to Grassroots Heroes”.
