Foundational Care Part 3: The Argument for the $10K

Why You need $10K when you already have a sustaining income for the horse.

No one can tell when a horse might have a catastrophic illness or injury. If you have a 20 horse or a 200 horse operation and 10% of your horses come down with the same problem you can’t expect the local vet or vet college to fund your catastrophe for you or they will soon be out of business.

Vets are amazing people who are always looking out for ways to help out on non-profits, especially where animal rescue and sanctuary is concerned. But you as the non-profit organizer and founder need also to be responsible for the horses in your care. And unless you are independently wealthy or are in a profession that makes a lot of money for you, you need to fund every aspect of your operation to the best of your ability and manage it well.

So with this in mind, there is a 4 in 1 chance that any horse you bring new on to your property is going to have some sort of devastating illness or injury with in the first 3 months of arriving. 1 in 10 is going to have some catastrophic injury or illness on its way to your location.

So, If you don’t have that $10,000 to fall back on how will you fund the treatment and recovery? Are you willing to take a chance at $2,500? How about at $5,000? What about an insurance policy? Is insurance an option until you can raise the money? Over a 20 year period would it be less expensive to pay for insurance on the animal or to raise the $10,000. What about co-pays and deductibles? What can you afford with what you have available?

These are things you need to investigate yourself and see what applies. Just remember it doesn’t matter if you paid $25 for the horse or $35,000 for the horse, If that animal becomes ill or is injured its cost to your organization will be the same.

Some people are going to tell you that they have been running rescues or sanctuaries for years and have never had any problems like I am suggesting here. But the truth is in this economy and in this environment, we don’t have the luxury of not having a management plan to make sure the animals in our care and people in our employ are cared for if needed.

Personally, I suggest you start small and work your way to larger. Raise what you can of the $10,000; say up to $2,500, before you bring the horse to the farm. Then allow the interest you don’t use in the up keep of the horse be reinvested until your reach that figure. All the other money over the amount you need to keep the horse can go into an escrow account for the next horse and upkeep for the designated horse. The goal is to have every horse funded completely for its entire lifetime.

Ok now we know the formula for keeping a horse so how do we raise the money?
Next Blog post: How to fund an individual Sanctuary/or Rescue horse.