In part one of #Pawty Behind the Scenes I introduced you to a few of the anipals who host some of the best #pawties on Twitter.  In this article you’ll meet the #pawty “royalty,” and so it is my pleasure to introduce you to @Frugaldougal and his #PawPawty events!

The Beginning

I met Frugaldougal in a quaint little pub in Rutland, UK to discuss how he come up with the #pawpawty idea.  As he munched his lunch, Frugaldougal explained, “It started in 2009,  anipals dressed up their avatars for charity, and mai pal @EmmytheCat was having some paw wall competitions, everyone seemed to love dressing up and playing in the competitions. At around the same time I noticed that some other anipals were having #catpawties where the dogs had to stay on the porch, this did not seem fair to me being a doggie! I wanted to join in. So I decided to have a #pawpawty where all anipals would be welcome, and wanted to see if we could raise some money for anipal charities at the same time. It was for 24 hours so everyone all over the world could join in.”

The Charities/Shelters

Frugaldougal explained that any anipal or anipal lover can nominate a charity or shelter for a #PawPawty event.  “Anipals can nominate their organization through the #PawPawty or @RomeotheCat’s website. On alternate months we support whatever charity Romeo selects, on the other months it will be a charity nominated from the #PawPawty site. There is no easy way to pick a recipient because all of the shelters selected are deserving so we give every nomination a number and use a random number generator to select the recipient. Sometimes the staff get me to pick the winner and show me selecting it on YouTube.”  I discovered that Frugaldougal’s #PawPawties, at the time of of printing this article, had raised nearly $30,00 for 24 charities/shelters all over the world!

Memories

When asked if there was any particular #PawPawty moment that stood out, Frugaldougal had to ponder this a while.  He nommed on his chips, and after a few minutes and with a gleam in his eye said, “We had one once that went on for almost 36 hours, it was a weekend road-trip.  We had a major problem with Twitter failing completely during the #PawPawty.  It was fun trying to use things like FriendFeed to keep the #pawty going.  It became known as the #PawPawty that broke Twitter!  Also in the early days we did get on to the top 10 trending topics on Twitter… we even hit the top spot on a number of occasions!”

Growth & Future Plans

I asked Frugaldougal to explain how #PawPawty has changed and grown since its inception.  “Initially we had about 20 anipals attending with about ten prizes, now we have up to 300 anipals joining in and we give away around 50 prizes each month! We did not have to have schedules for barktenders and DJ’s and we did not even have a sekurity team. Now so many people want to join in we have to be much more organized.”

Frugaldougal explained that he wants to continue to grow #PawPawty so that more anipals get to attend and participate in order to help as many charities and shelters as possible.  Since only one charity/shelter per month is officially selected as the #PawPawty recipient, Frugaldougal is exploring new initiatives designed to help more of the shelters that are nominated through the #PawPawty site.  Check out Frugaldougal’s blogsite for some of his great ideas.

The Shorty Awards

All of the hard work that Frugaldougal has put in to #Pawpawties has not gone unnoticed.  Frugaldougal created #PawPawty to help make the world a better place for anipals and humans alike, and his nonprofit contributions were acknowledged by the Shorty Awards.  The Shorty Awards are the Oscars of the online community and honor the best of Twitter.  Frugaldougal was acknowledged by the Twitter community as one of the best online nonprofit activists making a real live difference in the world.  When I asked Frugaldougal what his 2nd place finish in the nonprofit category for the Shorties meant to him, he quietly sat back in his chair, and humbly said, “It was amazing to think that a little doggie could get to send his staff to New York to go to an awards ceremony . I did not believe that we would get into the top 10, and then all mai pals kept voting, voting and voting again. It really was fantastic to see the power that the anipal community has, and it was an honour to go to the Shorties representing our community.”

As we finished up our lunch and were putting on our coats, I asked Frugaldougal if there was anything else he’d like The Anipal Times readers to know, he smiled brightly and said, “Just to say a huge thank you to everyone who has made the #PawPawty story possible; with your help I really do believe that we can change the world for animals one paw at a time!“

Tagged as: @EmmytheCat, @frugaldougal, @romeothecat, anipal charities, friendfeed, pawpawty, Rutland UK, Shorty Awards