Why Regular Donations Are Essential for Keeping Rescue Shelters Running

What do you think is the most expensive part of running a dog shelter? Some people might think it’s the dramatic animal rescue missions. Others might say it’s the complicated medical procedures needed to put the poor animals back together or even the latest recovery and rehabilitation therapies.

Both groups are wrong.

The most expensive part of running a rescue shelter comes from its day-to-day necessities. It’s the food needed for 700 dogs, the running water needed for drinking and hygiene, lighting, heating, cooling, gas, staff salaries, general administrative expenses – in short, what people consider to be the small stuff.

It’s not that the expenses mentioned earlier are not important, but they are occasional. The running costs, on the other hand, are fixed and monthly. You can organize a major fundraiser and cover the complex care of a severely injured dog, but it’s harder to do that for the electricity bill.

Lucky for us, we are surrounded by people who understood exactly what this means, and they became the regular donors who literally keep the lights on.

Breakdown of Running Costs of a 700-Dog Shelter

Like any new rescue organization, we also focused on the case-by-case needs of our dogs at first. Rescue and medical expenses were the biggest concerns.

As the number of dogs in the shelter kept growing, their daily needs started adding up.

• Food every day
• Special food for dogs with dietary restrictions – including dogs recovering from surgery, puppies, and senior dogs.
• Fresh water for consumption, hygiene, and keeping the shelter clean and disease-free
• Cleaning supplies
• Maintenance and repair expenses
• Veterinary expenses – occasional surgeries and other necessary interventions
• Medication and the treatment of animals with long-term illnesses
• Vaccinations and parasite prevention
• Veterinary health screenings to help prevent disease from spreading among shelter residents
• Electricity and gas costs
• Operational and staff costs
  – Safe animal transportation to and from rescue missions, to and from veterinary checkups
  – Rehabilitation and recovery therapy
  – Socialization programs done by dog behavior specialists
  – Adoption-related work and promotional ads to find the right adopters.

What any shelter administrator already knows is that these expenses must be factored in regardless of whether you have seven or 700 dogs

Emergency Funding Is Not Enough

While deeply appreciated for occasional expenses and for moments when we would like to invest and improve something at the shelter, emergency funding is not enough.

Even a large sum would only cover monthly expenses for a period of time, after which we would be back to square one – in need of more money just to keep running. And it would have nothing to do with the way in which the money is being used. Just that, if you stack up all recurring expenses, you would notice that the sum needed to cover the running of the shelter for even one whole year surpasses by far the sums raised through short-term fundraising appeals, such as emergency appeals. And we’ve been around for 20 years!

If we had to launch an emergency fundraising appeal whenever food provisions, medication, or cleaning supplies were running low, we would do literally nothing else. We know this from the other rescue organizations ROLDA works closely with.

Before we decided to share the wealth and extend some of our funds to help other rescue organizations, they would struggle every month just to take care of the few animals they managed to save off the streets. This meant all their time and energy were devoted to fundraising, and little or no time at all to saving more animals, improving shelter conditions, and investing more in adoption campaigns.

Regular Income Lets You Plan

This was the first thing we noticed when we started getting regular donations – we could plan and make better use of the resources. The collaborators we started extending financial aid to noticed it, too, in their own activity.

When you know the money you can count on is coming in, you can negotiate better prices for food and supplies, negotiate medical services for the preventive care of a larger number of animals, and do the same thing for all necessary administrative supplies. Recurrent donations give you the freedom to stretch our resources as far as possible.

By comparison, while waiting for emergency funding, some of your recurring bills, if left unpaid, can incur late fees or other penalties. A lot of the money you get will have to go into fixing that before you can cover any other need.

The certainty of incoming funds gives you stability. That stability allows you to plan and make better choices for the residents.

Regular Donations Are Vital for Permanent Residents

Generally, the goal of a dog shelter is to rescue dogs, treat them, help them recover, and find them homes. Unfortunately, some of our residents never get this chance. Some may be too old, some too injured, and their medical expenses are too high, while others simply get overlooked, or the right human never comes along. These dogs will remain in our care until their last days.

These are expenses we must factor in, especially because the oldest and the sickest might need more medical care in the end, only to make things more comfortable. And we are more than happy to do that for them. But we wouldn’t be able to do it without the help of regular donors.

Sterilization Campaigns and Social Programs

Getting out of survival mode meant finally being able to address the large issue of animal homelessness. These are systemic problems that the authorities are meant to address but have failed to solve.

Moving away from the imperative to fix every problem with all our resources, we can now look at what is still causing the problem. Why are dogs still in the streets? Who is not being responsible? Abandonment remains high, while sterilization rates remain too low, and both can undermine years of rescue work.

Over the years, ROLDA has come across a number of cases in which people did not want to abandon their animals but had no means of taking care of them. So, we helped them with food and medical assistance when needed, and those dogs were never alone in the street and never saw the inside of a shelter kennel.

Other people complained that they could not afford to sterilize their pets, not to mention the aftercare required after such a medical procedure. So, we offered free sterilizations and medical checkups. And owners did the responsible thing.

Older people who were struggling financially or were physically unable to care for their pets reached out, and we started special programs meant to keep them together with their best friends, especially in such a vulnerable time in their lives. Once again, people were able to get the help they needed, and animals got to stay in their homes.

Therefore, regular donations do more than just help fix one problem: they give us what we need to fix the problems we have today, while preparing for the needs of tomorrow. More than just keeping the shelter running, this gives us the chance to affect the lives of dogs that might never need to be in our care.