Things To Know Before Starting An Animal Charity

Build on your compassion to help animals

Posted on by cosmodoggyland in Business, Working Like A Dog

So you want to help animals. If you plan to start a shelter, you probably started by researching well-established organizations. Before you go any further however, keep in mind that even if your venture is a charity, it is still a business. Thus, much of what applies to starting a business is applicable to your organization.

If you read our article Looking To Start An Animal Organization?, you understand the power of compassionate empathy. You also know how valuable you and your vision are, and you are ready to take the helm of your own ship to navigate your way into making your dreams a reality.

Running a successful animal organization takes more than good intentions. It will demand that you perform extensive research, lots of planning, and “learning by doing”.

Embracing the idea of wearing many hats

Let’s say that you are planning to start a non-for-profit, volunteer-run dog rescue facility. You are a visionary, so you need to wear the entrepreneur hat. Click To TweetYou are the brain behind the idea and you will need to be in the right mindset to make all the decisions required at the beginning, such as determining what you want to accomplish and defining why you want to undertake this project.

Unless you have a team ready to embark on this adventure with you, like most entrepreneurs, you will take on different roles within your organization. As your venture grows, it is expected that you will hire volunteers, employees, and managers who will join the team. Until then, you will be performing numerous and varied tasks, meaning that you will wear may hats to ensure your shelter’s operations run smoothly.

When you start your own organization, you are the founder of a startup. So, you will need to combine passion, hard work, creativity, and perseverance to turn your vision into a successful dog shelter. Click To Tweet As a startup founder you must be prepared to work in different positions and change your hat depending on how you can be the most helpful to your organization in each situation.

You will find yourself playing a broad variety of roles, discovering your hidden talents, and going outside of your comfort zone, just because your animals’ welfare depends on it.

Dog Lovers Wanted

Every challenge will be an opportunity to learn new skills and apply them to make your organization more efficient, so you can better allocate resources and shelter more animals. By leveraging business principles, you will turn compassion into solutions.

But…what if I don’t sell any products?

Even if you don’t sell physical goods, you can consider the solution that you provide to your community as your product, the individuals who help you keep your operations running as employees, and those who contribute with donations as your clients.

Once you see your non-profit organization as a business, you need to start planning from an entrepreneurial perspective. Click To Tweet You need to create, develop, and introduce your solution to your community with a name, a relevant image, and a clear message that compels potential supporters to collaborate with your mission. All these features that identify your project are called a “brand”.

As you can see, besides advocating for animals rights, you will need to make strategic decisions in advance, similar to when you start a pet business.

Why Working With Animals Always Pays Off

When researching how to start a pet shelter, you need to decide if it will be an animal rescue for wild animals or a cat or dog rescue. Click To TweetYou also need to choose whether you will offer cats, rabbits, and puppies for adoption, or focus on dogs of any age and train them to become therapy dogs.

You are going to need to tell the world about your organization and get donors, as well as brands to sponsor your mission. To do this, you will probably research for opportunities in a pet business magazine and add your information to animal-related directories like LinkingPaws.

You will also need an online presence to post pictures of your dogs and kittens for adoption, and collect donations from all over the world. So, you will find yourself researching how to start an online fundraising website.

You can start promoting your organization from the very beginning, but first, you have to make some decisions and for that, you will need to do lots of research. Find out more useful tips and resources in our other articles from the “Helping Animals – Starting Your Own Animal Organization” series.

Let’s walk together the path to a more animal-friendly world!

Business, Working Like A Dog

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