Last week, Florida Gulf Coast University students decided to use the last few dollars in their pockets to purchase a tennis ball.
Pause for Paws, a student-run organization on campus that volunteers with dogs and cats at the Gulf Coast Humane Society, tabled all week to raise money for GCHS. The club raised $200 in total.
The mission of the club is “to pause for a moment and help paws find a home.”
Jennifer Levin founded Pause for Paws two years ago out of her love for volunteering. The organization started out with just her and five friends and has now grown to more than 50 members.
“The club really sells itself,” Levin said. “You have to get those 80 hours anyway, so you can do it doing random things or playing with cats and walking dogs.”
Pause for Paws has contributed more than 1,500 volunteer hours to the Gulf Coast Humane Society.
But the animals at the shelter aren’t the only ones to benefit from the volunteering. On Oct. 10, members of Pause for Paws gathered at the GCHS for the first annual Tennis Ball Tumble.
By purchasing a tennis ball for a dollar, students were put in a raffle for a $10 Starbucks gift cards. The more tennis balls a student purchased, the more likely he or she is to win.
Like a raffle, each ball that was purchased was labeled with a number. Levin organized the event by setting around 10 Frisbees upside down inside a gated play area for the dogs. Without the dogs present, members put all the tennis balls into buckets and threw them over the gate. Ten balls landed inside the Frisbees, resulting in 10 gift card winners.
Pause for Paws believes that a majority of their funds were thanks to club member Carly Randazzo, who dressed in a Dalmatian suit while fund raising. The club members  call her the Donation Dalmatian.
“I’m a very bubbly person, so I thought it would be fun to dress up and be crazy,” Randazzo said. Despite her success, Randazzo said she is not going to be a Dalmatian for Halloween.
Even after the Tennis Ball Tumble, Levin and several members of Pause for Paws stuck around the humane society to do some volunteer work.
FGCU student Mario Carbonell says he likes to volunteer because of his love for animals and his desire to make a difference.
“Everyone has a part,” Carbonell said. “All you need is to show a little patience and a little commitment to something, and that’s what we do here.”
To get involved with Pause for Paws contact Jennifer Levin at [email protected] For more information about the Gulf Coast Humane Society, visit: www.gulfcoasthumanesociety.org