How Equine Nonprofits Have Gotten Creative

In December 2023, the Heart of Phoenix Equine Rescue of West Virginia came up with a creative plan to appeal to existing donors and attract new ones without breaking the contributor bank.

The campaign asked donors to send the organization a Christmas card containing between $1 and $5. In response, photos of all the cards and the collective amount of the donations they contained were to be posted on the organization’s website.

As of press time, the rescue had received dozens of cards in the days leading up to Christmas, with more pouring in.

“They have been coming in every day, and they all contained between $1 and $5,” says Suzanna Johnson, Heart of Phoenix education officer. “This was a way to appeal to people who don’t have a lot of money, but everybody likes to send Christmas cards.”

Covid and Inflation

According to the website of the RKD Group, Dallas-based consultants who use data-driven strategies to help animal welfare nonprofits find connections with donors, 2023 donation revenue is down over the past 12 to 18 months largely because givers have been hard hit by inflation.

Meanwhile, the organization predicts that continued inflation and rising interest rates will stifle efforts to attract new donors this spring.

That’s not news to Grace Purdom, president of the California-based Hope 4 Horses.

“We have been in the horse business a long time, both the nonprofit and for-profit parts,” says Purdom, whose husband Scott is a trainer and clinician. “We’ve traveled all over the country and seen horse rescue after horse rescue close—not just in the east, but in the west, too.”

According to Purdom, some of those organizations folded after Covid-connected business grants dried up.

“Some never came back,” she says.

More recently, as financial support has deteriorated, the cost of keeping horses has escalated.

“The same night we had a board meeting and were told that private funding was down between $30,000 and $40,000, we had just gotten a $25,000 hay bill,” Purdom recalls.

She adds that farrier and veterinarian fees have gone up this year as well.

The rise in operational costs all threaten horses’ chances of getting the rehabilitation and aftercare they need.

“We see horses in need from owner surrenders, and there still is indiscriminate breeding out there,” Purdom says. “There were 140 horses from one animal control [agency] out there—where do you put 140 horses?”

Failure Is Not An Option

As a result, rescues have been forced to re-evaluate their own criteria for helping horses in need.

“It has made us focus more on ‘desperate need’ cases, where in years before we could help before things [got] bad,” explains Heart of Phoenix Founder and Executive director Tinia Creamer. “As it is now, if a horse isn’t in dire shape, donors do not step forward, so we have had to get more creative.”

Altogether, the circumstances have created a perfect storm for equine welfare organizations who have adopted whatever tactic they could to meet the challenges.

Most are taking to social media to share the journeys of individual horses as they transition from rescue through rehabilitation to readiness for adoption. They are also engaging the local and online communities to assume a stake in the organization’s success, and they’re cultivating a pool of volunteers to do everything from handling horses to office work.

Whether the current economic circumstances challenging equine welfare nonprofits will subside any time soon is anybody’s guess. But even if the economic picture changes, Creamer says equine welfare organizations will always be challenged to make the most of existing or potential resources at their disposal because failure is not an option.

“I don’t see the economy improving in the short term, and a rescue has to adapt to the world we have,” says Creamer. “Having said that, we’ve made changes and continue to make them to try to be here next year and the year after. Horses depend on us here, and we owe it to them to be here.”

Successes in the Face of Challenges

We reached out to the ASPCA Right Horse program to ask how their equine adoption partner network has fared despite recent economic conditions, and asked for some suggested action items you can do to help.

◆ Multiple factors are converging simultaneously, impacting shelter and rescues’ ability to provide care. Despite challenges, partner organizations of the ASPCA Right Horse program saw more than a 5 percent increase in adoptions in 2023 compared to 2022.

◆ Data from ASPCA’s adoption site shows there is a demand for adoptable horses, including older horses, as evidenced by more than 2 million page views for adoptable horses in 2023 and over 4,000 adoption inquiries.

◆ Additionally, the ASPCA, alongside a rising number of other animal welfare organizations, are focused on services, including subsidized veterinary care and resources, to help keep equines safely in their homes and out of shelters and rescues.

◆ The ASPCA encourages anyone interested to support their local animal welfare organizations by adopting, volunteering their time, donating supplies, or becoming foster caregivers. To find an organization in your area to support, visit myrighthorse.org.

Equine Nonprofits That Help People

For equine assisted services (EAS) nonprofits, humans depend on the horses, too.

The Connected Horse launched in 2015 as pilot projects at Stanford University and the University of California at Davis. It pairs senior horses, some rescued or surrendered, with people living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias and their caregivers to help them manage stress and navigate the flood of physical and emotional ramifications connected with the conditions.

Through the program, human participants connect with the horses as they brush, walk, and visit with them under the watchful eyes of program personnel.

“The horse is really the teacher,” says Paula Hertel, Connected Horse co-founder.

More than 60 pairs of patients and caregivers connected with equines during the first three years of the university pilot programs. Another 186 people took part in Connect Horse programs at private partner barns, including those that rescue, receive surrenders and place adoptable horses.

According to co-founder Nancy Schier Anzelmo, Connected Horse programs are supported by grants, donations from program participants and their families, and private supporters. And while she admits that the recent economy has affected the fundraising outlook for almost all nonprofits, the mission of equine-focused organizations is critical for the horses and for the humans involved.

“Horses, especially older horses, need purpose just as people do,” she says. “Our country needs to support programs to serve [people] in need right now as well as older horses, or horses who cannot be used for sport anymore. It’s very personal, and making connections in nature and with others is a key to building a community that serves each other.”

Make the Most of Your Donation to Equine Nonprofits

This year a simple trip to the supermarket was an economic shock for many across the country. At the same time, the nonprofit organizations that help horses are experiencing the same trauma every time they order hay, purchase grain, or call for the services of farriers and veterinarians.

But many of those who are challenged by the economy themselves still want to support horses in need however they can.

Grace Purdom, executive director of Hope 4 Horses, shares her best advice for doing that.

“First, we always recommend that people donate locally,” she says. “Visit a local rescue organization and learn about what that organization does and how it does it.”

For that, Purdom recommends that prospective donors sit in on an orientation session that many organizations host for new volunteers, new donors, and members of the public.

“Operators use orientation sessions to talk about the organization’s mission, its facility, how many horses they have, who they have on staff, and how many volunteers it has,” she says.

Then take a tour of the facility. Horses onsite at effective rescues should appear to be in various stages of rehabilitation and look happy and healthy under the staff’s care.

During the tour, ask the staff guide lots of questions, especially if a horse appears to be thin.

“The staff could say that the horse just arrived 30 days ago and is in rehab,” says Purdom. “The point is to ask open questions and expect honest answers; a legitimate rescue is an open book.”

Finally, do a bit more research before making that donation. First, make sure that the organization is a legitimate 501(c)(3) under federal tax rules. That designation recognizes the organization as a nonprofit, which means it is exempt from federal income tax. As a result, contributions to 501(c)(3) organizations are tax-deductible for donors.

Finally, just before writing that donation check, visit charity evaluation websites, such as GuideStar, which allows nonprofits to share information such as address, mission, key leadership, employee identification numbers, tax status and Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax (IRS form 990) forms for three fiscal years.

“No matter how large or small they are, donations are very important to all of us,” says Purdom.

Further Reading: Dealing with Inflation as an Equestrian

This article about the state of equine traffics appeared in the March 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post The State of Equine Nonprofits appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Instead of cruising along on autopilot, take a minute to walk through your barn chores and see them with fresh eyes. You’ll find ways to save money—as well as time!—with a few simple one-time tweaks to your current system.

Below are our top gizmos that will save you big over the long run.

15 Equestrian Hacks Amid Inflation

1. Cushion From the Cold

Make winter watering easier with insulated buckets and tanks. While tank and bucket heaters are nice, a single tank heater can increase your electricity bill by $30 a month!

For those of us living in northern states, insulated bucket holders, either purchased or homemade, make barn life easier. A little bit of insulation means no more swinging a rubber mallet at the side of the bucket to break up the ice every day.

Large, outdoor tanks can be set inside a heavily insulated box with a piece of floating hard insulation on the water surface. My 100-gallon tank in Maine stays amazingly ice-free most days in the winter. There are no extra electricity expenses (perfect for dealing with inflation!) and no extension cords crisscrossing the farm.

2. Magnetic Tool Strip

A hammer, leather punch, screwdriver, or knife: How many times do you find yourself needing to quickly grab a tool but end up digging around for long stretches to find one? You may have even given up and thrown money away on a replacement simply because you couldn’t find it when you needed it.

For less than $25, you can purchase a three-pack of heavy-duty magnetic strips. Designed to hold heavy metal objects, they can be mounted on the walls in the tack room or feed room to keep the tools you use most at hand.

3. Invest and Save

My best tool investment was a portable air compressor; small ones start at $100. Air compressors are worth their weight in gold, especially if you add up all the tires at your farm. Tallying up my truck, horse trailer, hay trailer, lawn mower, tractor, utility trailer and wheelbarrows, I have 26 tires on the farm, and at least one of them always needs air.

4. Cord Control

Keep your barn aisle neat with a wall-mounted extension cord reel. These cord reels keep power at the ready, yet neatly put away when not in use. This way, you don’t need to go looking through the tack room for the last place you saw an extension cord or deal with tangled, twisted cords, and you won’t have dangerous tripping hazards in the barn aisle.

5. Collect Rainwater

Here in the U.S., we have some regions that are desperate for rain, while others are wishing it would stop. Whatever the situation, we rarely take advantage of harnessing this natural resource.

Rainwater can easily fill your troughs, and you don’t need a fancy system. If you have buildings with metal roofs, just add a gutter and downspout directed to the water tank.

Numerous websites can help you calculate how much water can be collected based on the size of your roof and the amount of rainfall you receive. For example, my small run-in shed has a 24-square-foot by 16-square-foot roof. That’s 55,296 square inches. Multiply this by a 1-inch rainfall, and I can collect 55,296 cubic inches of water. Divide that by 231 (the number of cubic inches in a gallon), and the result is 239 gallons of water—not bad for a small run-in shed! This is actually more water than my trough can hold.

If you have horses in remote pastures with run-in sheds, you can add a storage tank to collect the water and a float valve to let it automatically fill the tank when the level drops.

Think about the time you save not having to lug water or drag out hoses as often, not to mention savings on your water bill. You can find plans online for building a simple rain barrel or a more complicated rainwater-catchment system.

6. In Hot Water

For less than $250, you can have hot water on demand in a system that is so portable, you can even take it to shows or to trail rides.

These portable systems can easily save you money over a permanent fixture (which runs at least $600-$1,000) if you’re not using it every day.

7. Clean Up Your Act

Washers and dryers at the barn are luxury items, but it sure is nice to not have to drag hairy blankets and sopping-wet towels into the house or off to the laundromat.

Thankfully, you don’t have to buy new, expensive machines to wash smelly blankets. My appliance repairman advised me to shop for used washers circa early 2000s; he said they last forever and repairs are inexpensive. Perfect for dealing with saddle pads and blankets! Check online classifieds like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for used washers and dryers near you.

8. Take Note

For less than $10, you can turn any wall in your barn into a chalkboard. With some chalkboard paint and a few strokes of a paintbrush, you can create a fun board for writing notes, phone numbers and feeding schedules.

Compared to the cost and hassle of buying and mounting a dry-erase white board with markers that can dry up or permanently stick to the board, this old-school system won’t let you down.

9. Simplify Cross-tying

Get your cross-ties out of the aisles and put them in your stalls. Many barns now have cross-tie hardware in the stalls, or they designate the wash stall as a grooming area.

By eliminating cross-ties in the main barn aisle, there is less debris that needs to be continually swept up, and you’ll have more room for others to navigate around the barn when bringing horses in or out. You also don’t have horses in the way when doing routine barn chores like mucking or feeding.

10. Reinventing the Wheelbarrow

When it comes to wheelbarrows, the design hasn’t changed in the past 100 years. You have your basic choices of a single- or dual-wheeled (I prefer the single because it turns corners easier), and plastic versus metal tray.

Until recently, you could only find basic wood stump handles that seem to be designed for ridiculously large hands. Finally, someone realized actual handles would go a long way toward making the wheelbarrow better. Even when fully loaded, this type doesn’t feel like a runaway train when going downhill because I can keep a firm grip on the handles.

11. Bright Ideas

If you’re guilty of leaving on lights after you’ve left the bathroom, tack room or feed room, install motion sensors and watch your electricity bill go down. This, combined with energy-efficient LED lights, is a money and aggravation saver. Exterior lighting on motion sensors also saves money. You may hear that motion sensors are unreliable, but if they are set up correctly, they work great. I’ve used them on my farm for more than 25 years.

No power in an outbuilding? A battery- or solar-operated motion-sensor LED light is the answer. The one in my hay barn has been operating on the same set of batteries for seven years.

12. Shelve It

Roll those grain bins out of the way. Shop for used kitchen cabinets with slide-out bases, or just add a countertop and mount your grain bins on barrel dollies, then roll them under the counter. You’ll wonder what you did without this additional work and storage space until now.

Metal trash cans are 100 percent rodent-proof, and being able to move them around allows you to keep the floors swept clean.

13. Open-Door Policy

Another old-school idea is to put solid board rails in doorways when barn doors are open. Fit the boards into slots so they can be dropped down easily for people, yet keep a loose horse from leaving the barn.

Good ventilation is key to your horses’ health, and these board rails will allow you to leave the doors open, even if you own an escape artist.

14. Save on Salt

Instead of buying small salt bricks or spools, buy a 50-pound block and place it in a corner of the stall. It will keep your horse happy and provide a source of salt for more than a year.

On a pound-per-pound basis, you will save $40 or more a year. As a side benefit, many horses that chew up the smaller bricks will just lick the larger block.

15. Nothing But Net

For years, I fed hay outside on the ground, but when horses had their fill, they wasted the remaining hay and trampled it into the dirt. (With today’s inflation-induced hay prices, this could easily add up to hundreds of dollars wasted per year.) Hanging hay nets reduces hay waste, but wrestling the hay into the nets each day is time consuming.

At a dressage farm that I visited, I noticed they had hay-net hoops. This was the best of both worlds—no more hay waste and no hassle putting the hay in the net.

Become an idea shopper! Hundreds of ideas like this abound at stables that you visit. Keep your eyes peeled and look for them. By sharing ideas and looking at the ways that other equestrians are doing things, we can all benefit—especially amid inflation.

Also Read: Beat Inflation at Horse Shows

This article about hacks for equestrians amid inflation appeared in the January/February 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Dealing with Inflation as an Equestrian appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Everything has raised in price over the last couple years, but we have especially felt it this last year. Gas prices soared, horse feed became harder to find and more expensive. Trucks prices are astronomical. I just paid double for my horse’s salt licks! And that’s just the horse side. We all have families that need to eat, be clothed, get places and do things, which all cost more now. All of these costs mean that everyone is having to cut back on non-essentials. And that can include horse showing, which for many of us is a personal luxury. But it’s a luxury we love, making it hard to give up! Here are some tips to beat inflation so you can continue to show your horse.

Trailerpooling

Gas prices can really put a damper on hauling to shows. One way to combat that is to trailerpool! Ask those near you what shows they are going to and coordinate going together, so you can split gas. It helps everyone and it’s fun to have a road trip with your horse friends!

Online Shows

Online shows became popular during COVID and, thanks partly to inflation, it doesn’t look like they are going anywhere. Online shows usually have cheaper show fees than live shows, wonderful prizes and you don’t have to pay for gas, a place to stay or food out, which saves you a lot of money.

Convert Tack Room to Sleeping Quarters

Hotels have always been an expensive part of showing, and their prices have risen just like everything else. Converting your tack room in your trailer to sleeping quarters so you can sleep on the fairgrounds can save a lot of money. Kelly Jette did hers during COVID for that reason. “It’s a money saver for sure,” she says. The initial cost will depend on materials used, which can be as simple or extravagant as you want, but most people find it pays for itself after the first use or two.

Bring Your Food

It’s fun to grab a coffee on the way to the show, eat out for lunch and then meet your show friends at your favorite restaurant for dinner while you discuss the day’s classes, but eating out has also gotten a lot more expensive and really adds to that show bill. Instead, bring your food! If you’re showing with a group, arrange a potluck. That way, you can all still eat together while saving money.

Finding Shows Closer to Home

Sure, we all love to go to the great big shows states away, but maybe you always miss the fun local shows because of it. Right now might be the time to hit up shows closer to home, which saves on gas. And, if it’s a one-day show, you won’t need a hotel or maybe even a stall, cutting costs even further.

Clean Out the Show Closet

One way to get some extra money for horse show entry fee is to clean out that show closet and sell the items you no longer want. I did this year and made enough money to cover two breed shows! It’s easy to sell things online, or take them to a tack sale or a consignment shop.

Becoming a Judge

Did you know judge’s get paid? If you’ve been at your discipline long enough, you might think about becoming a judge and working at shows you can’t compete at, to make money for others! Horse shows are always looking for good judges. It’s not a lot of pay, but it’s something! If you’re an amateur, just check to make sure the organizations you ride for allow amateurs to be judges, many do, but always good to check first.

Volunteering at Shows

Another way to pay for horse shows during inflation is to volunteer at shows. Some organizations give credits that can be used toward class fees if you volunteer at their shows. This is a fun way to be able to show more.

Side Jobs

Taking on a side job can help beat inflation and give you more discretionary income for horse shows. There are a lot of virtual jobs you can do on the side now, so you don’t even have to commute. Just make sure you get your weekends off, or you’ll be making money but won’t be able to show!

Take On Boarders

If you have your own property and some spare room, you might decide to board a horse or two. Just make sure you do the math correctly and include all your costs, including extra insurance; hay, shavings, and feed you provide; your time; wear and tear on your property; and make sure you’ll actually be making something extra before jumping into the boarding ring.

Have a spare room? Another thought is taking on a human boarder! A lot of people are looking for affordable housing and if you have the space, this can also help you have some extra money to go to horse shows.

Half-Lease Your Horse

If you have big show plans that inflation is just getting in the way of, you may consider half-leasing your horse to a carefully chosen individual. This can give you more money to show, but also has risks. If it’s something you’re considering, speak to others who have done it and definitely have a well-written contract.

Showing is expensive, but where there’s a will, there’s a way and horse people are some of the most willful people on the planet! The extra effort it takes to keep showing right now will be worth it when you are getting to hang out with your horse and your friends for a day of showing. And remember, these shows need you to survive. If people stop attending, they will stop putting them on. So, get creative, save those dollars and keep showing!

See you in the ring!

The post Beat Inflation at Horse Shows appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.