Fundraising #3

[Guest guest]

Turn the flood of animals into cash flow

 

Your organization is in desperate trouble. Inspired by the

success elsewhere of a free or low-cost pet sterilization program,

sterilization-and-return to habitat of feral cats and street dogs, or

a no-kill high-volume adoption center, you started such a

program--but now, just a year to three years later, instead of

seeing the dramatic drop in your workload you anticipated, after a

certain number of animals were sterilized, you are asked to handle

more cats or dogs than you ever imagined could exist. Your

volunteers are exhausted and demoralized. And you have no more money.

It is time for a serious pep talk. Your problems

are--ironically --a predictable indication of your success and bright

prospects. You are well embarked on a journey that enough others

have made that the mileposts are marked. Believe it or not, you are

at the breaking edge of perhaps the most rapidly successful

grassroots transformation of public policy in global history, and it

is not surprising that you may feel as if you have stepped Through

The Looking Glass into chaos from which a fundraising tea party with

the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit cannot save you.

The late sociologist Bill Moyer of the Social Movement

Empowerment Project identified ten stages of movements for social

change, discernible in the history of every movement--both

successful and unsuccessful--beginning with recognition of a problem

by a handful of critics. Activists then begin to draw attention to

the problem. The public and power-holders begin to recognize the

problem but resist the solution. Activism increases. The cause

takes off like a rocket, then either succeeds or fails, depending

upon how well the longtime critics and activists handle the

transition from obscurity to popularity, when change-oriented

momentum must be converted into creating a self-sustaining

institution to secure the gains in public opinion.

Sterilizing and rehoming dogs and cats follows the typical

movement pattern, from the slow rise of each concept right to where

you are today, up to your ears in cages and caterwauling from your

most unappreciative wards.

After millennia of controlling street dog and feral cat

populations by endlessly killing animals, year after year after

year, communities all over the world are exploring more humane

responses, and often succeeding.

Within only 40 years the numbers of dogs and cats killed by

U.S. shelters and pounds has fallen from more than 115 per 1,000 U.S.

human residents to about 14 per 1,000.

No other nation ever impounded and killed dogs and cats as

aggressively as the U.S, but the percentage changes are comparable

in Costa Rica, Japan, parts of India, most of western Europe,

Singapore, and Hong Kong. Almost everywhere that we have animal

impoundment and killing statistics on file from 10 or 20 years ago

and today, the numbers of dogs and cats impounded and killed are

markedly less, even though the numbers kept as pets have more than

doubled.

Most of the thousands of small community-based projects that

are most responsible for this extraordinary progress are just

reaching the point Moyers described as Stage Six, the critical

transition point, for which Moyers cited several " symptoms " :

* Increasing recognition of the movement results in

increasing public demands upon the people presenting the alternative

approach to the problem.

* Public institutions still have not put resources--or

adequate resources--behind the alternative approach.

* The people offering the alternative approach are mostly

volunteers. Their resources are exhausted by the long struggle,

they are tired, and between growing public expectations and lack of

institutional support, many feel an overwhelming sense of failure.

Signs of burnout appear, including blame-throwing, dropping out,

and declining volunteer participation.

Ironically, at this very point the alternative organizations

are in the best possible position to enormously increase their

fundraising success. Increasing public awareness of your

organization, bringing ever more demands for help, are indicators

that the support base exists: you need only to tap it, by shifting

your emphasis from soliciting funds from a limited pool of very

committed backers to soliciting funds from the larger community.

Fundraising does much more for you than simply increasing

what your organization has the resources to do. Fundraising also has

substantial potential for increasing your political clout. In

effect, fundraising amounts to persuading much of the public to pay

a voluntary tax to support your service. Your success will show the

power-holders that you have a genuine constituency. Thus the

likelihood that you will receive direct government support as well as

donated support increases.

With enough cash flow, you can hire the staff you need to

take enough strain off your volunteers to keep them. You can all do

the job you must without risking exhausted collapse.

 

Real examples

 

Richard Avanzino, president of the San Francisco SPCA from

1976 through 1998, and now executive director of Maddie's Fund, was

the first head of a major U.S. humane society to pull his

organization out of doing animal control work, giving up the

guaranteed income it provided, in order to cease doing population

control killing, and instead emphasize low-cost dog and cat

sterilization and adopting out pets.

Avanzino did this after doing math that convinced him that

the SF/SPCA could end population control killing in San Francisco if

it achieved a rate of pet sterilization equal to 70% of all the dogs

and cats in the community. This could be done only if the SF/SPCA

quit killing homeless animals first, so as to use the funds spent on

killing animals to prevent surplus pet births instead. Avanzino

expected animal shelter intakes and killing to fall like a rock once

the SF/SPCA was doing the number of sterilization surgeries that he

had estimated was necessary. Instead, each year for the first few

years, the newly formed San Francisco Animal Care & Control agency

took in about the same number of animals that the SF/SPCA had been

receiving--while SF/SPCA intake of owner-surrendered animals

skyrocketed.

Local animal activists and media lambasted Avanzino for what

many wrongly presumed was a catastrophic misjudgment.

Avanzino, however, recognized that the influx of

owner-surrenders reflected rising public confidence in the ability of

the SF/SPCA to help animals--not just provide a quick death. People

who formerly gave away litters " free to good home, " unsterilized,

or abandoned them to " give them a chance " now brought them to the

SF/SPCA.

In effect, the SF/SPCA was paying off the interest on a big

debt. It would take years to sterilize enough animals to halt the

growth of the San Francisco dog and cat population.

Meanwhile, Avanzino understood the need and the opportunity

to fundraise. He kept his job and kept the SF/SPCA on course, under

intensive attack, by increasing the SF/SPCA donor base from 1,700

people to 64,000. This gave the SF/SPCA the ability to deal with the

increased demand for services until the interest was paid off and the

principal of the pet overpopulation debt could be addressed.

In April 1994, the SF/SPCA and SF/ACC signed the Adoption

Pact, by which San Francisco became the first city in the world to

end all pet population control killing, because there was no longer

a need for it. A year later, San Francisco also quit killing

" recoverable " animals, those who were sick or injured when brought

in but could be returned to good health with veterinary care.

There are now many other models producing positive results

with similar start-up curves. What Avanzino did, beginning more

than 20 years ago, has now been accomplished in many other cities.

For example, following almost exactly the same blueprint,

Richmond SPCA president Robin Starr, of Richmond, Virginia, during

a three-year series of weekly luncheons raised $14.2 million to build

a new shelter and bankroll an effort to make Richmond the first

no-kill city in the U.S. South. Her fundraising achievement is

especially noteworthy because Richmond is a third the size of San

Francisco and much less affluent. Unlike the SF/SPCA, the Richmond

SPCA is not nationally prominent, and does not have a support base

extending beyond just a few miles outside of town.

What Robin Starr did, week after week, is invite various

different groups of Richmond residents to lunch, serve good

food--mostly vegetarian food, I might add--and give a brief talk

promoting the Richmond SPCA to her guests.

Instead of asking anyone to make a donation on the spot,

Starr gave her guests donation envelopes to take home. The SF/SPCA

is noted for raising 25% more money per city resident than the U.S.

norm--but the donation envelopes returned to the Richmond SPCA 33%

more per city resident than even the SF/SPCA brings in.

Some stressed local groups may be thinking about shutting

down, giving up, or at least restricting their services. That is

the wrong approach. You may not be Richard Avanzino, or Robin

Starr, but no one knew who they were and what they could do,

either, until they found within themselves the ability to do it.

You do not, under any circumstance, want to discourage the

public from bringing animals to you. That is what you have been

working to achieve: to gain public cooperation in getting homeless

dogs and cats out of alleys, forests, fields and dumps, and

getting every animal sterilized and vaccinated. Tell people now that

you cannot help them, and you will squander the years of momentum

and good will you have built up.

Instead, fundraise: hold public events; hold dinners;

give speeches; go door-to-door; lead dogs with banners saying " Help

me! " draped over their backs; set out donor cans on counters; and

hand out donation envelopes to each person you contact during your

work.

Donation envelopes should have your organization's mailing

address printed on the front, with a mini-appeal printed inside or

attached to the the flap. Pass out the envelopes the way a

salesperson hands out business cards.

The holiday season of gift-giving, generosity, and goodwill

is the very best time to appeal for money, but fundraising is an

essential part of your work for animals, all year long.

Go for the gold! And think of yourselves as winners, the

homeless animal champions of wherever you are, because that is who

you are, and you deserve the help you are seeking.

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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