Let’s Adopt! Global: 9 questions about community, funds and catnip smuggling

Please grab a cup of tea and read this post carefully, I can assure you you will get something out of it somehow.

This post is meant to serve a double purpose. On one side I would like to give everyone, our fans and our detractors an overview of how Let’s Adopt! fonctions from a financial point of view. Read carefully, if you are one of our fans and supporters you are going to feel very proud because I’m going to give some details about the way Let’s Adopt! works that you may not know. And if you are one of our moronic detractors, then please grab the dictionary because you are probably going to need it to understand some of the things I will try to explain here.

On the other hand I would like this post to be as helpful as possible for other animal organizations or non-profits, animal oriented or not, that may benefit from the way we do things at Let’s Adopt Global. In a way, this post is a gift that will hopefully help them generate some new ideas.

But before I go into numbers and details I need to tell you a quick story. Last week, the same day we offered Tidus family our support and promised them to do whatever it took to save his life, a man walked into our clinic with his dog, a sweet old female he called Cuca. Cuca is 12 years old, she is the loveliest dog you could even imagine. The way she looks at you is the way we are only looked at by those that love us unconditionally. The man asked our vet Juan, to euthanize Cuca.  She was old now he said.

A quick inspection showed Cuca had two problems:

1. Cuca has vestibular syndrome, a problem that is usually associated with a inner ear infection
2. Cuca has a mamary tumor the size of a fist. We don’t know if it’s benign or malign, and how to classify it yet.
Cuca is not in pain, but she can’t stand up properly and she falls when she walks.
The owner was surrendering to a private clinic to have her euthanized. An old, sick dog, that cannot walk properly and with what is probably an incurable cancer…

I’ll get back to Cuca at the end of the post.. please continue reading, we are going to talk about money now … 🙂

 

Let’s Adopt! is a different kind of organization, one based on a set of principles that at times, seem to be forgotten by many of the other animal rescue groups. There are wonderful rescues out there, great organizations run by extraordinary people, but there is nothing out there quite like us. From our inception I realized that if we were going to succeed and create something remarkable we would need to do things differently. Now, here are some of those differences:

1. We are a community.
Fulya and I created Let’s Adopt! with the intention of seeking the support of a broad community of people that we suspected were there but we didn’t personally know. Years of daily work have proven us right, and the success of our group, remains linked to the community spirit we always tried to foster.

2. How is money used

Contrary to the majority of international organizations we are not moved by financial concerns and the hoarding of funds has never been and never will be a priority. Whatever funds we receive are usually immediately spent on one or another of our five main expenses

– Medical bills
– Transport bills
– Boarding bills
– Foster support
– Material purchases

That’s it… each and everyone of our expenses must fit in one of those categories. Right up until now we don’t have salaries, we don’t have employees, we are all volunteers working together to achieve a single purpose. Save the lives of those that have noone else. That’s it. Our charter is really very simple.

 

Now, it doesn’t require a be a genius to see that as time grows our financial requirements have grown exponentially. How do we find the money necessary to cover all of this?

We use two ways

– Our Chipins: Funds collected through our Chipins are typically used not only to cover medical expenses but any expense related to that particular rescue as well as any of the other rescues of the group. So, when a certain fund raise is very successful, like in the case of Tidus, anything over the final amount needed to pay for all expenses will be used to pay for the expenses of animals that, for a reason or another, are not preeminently featured on our page. Animals like Cuca. I have mentioned this many times before but what you see on the Facebook Wall of Let’s Adopt Global is nothing but a fraction of the rescues or actions we conduct. There are thousands of animals out there living happy lives, many happy families out there right now because of this.

– Personal contributions from our friends: Sometimes, our outcome exceeds our income and we go into the red. But we do that, knowing that we have the trust of many close friends, always ready to assist when a situation like this arises. This doesn’t happen often, I believe it has only happened twice in the last two years. The situations were solved without complications.

Our Chipins usually meet the targets very quickly because of the tremendous loyalty from our donors. As much as 80% of those that contribute to our Chipins do so regularly, so in the end, everything is financed by an extremely committed small number of people and we tend to know each other quite well. No need to mention any names, they know who they are.

4. Trust is built day after day, over a period of years, not through one off campaigns or events.
This is why, unlike many organizations we are not that keen on seasonal fund raising, this is why we don’t have events, balls, gatherings… the whole organization is funded through the income stream trickling down on a daily basis by our friends and fans, they are the ones that make everything happen.

5. We connect with our donors.
We do so in a meaningful way. We don’t have an automated system thanking people automatically. Our communications are sincere, and personal, and our donors KNOW, at any time, that the animal the contributed to is in the best possible hands.

6. We don’t apply an adoption fee.
When we started rehoming everyone around us was applying an adoption fee. Whilst we understood why they did that, we realized that asking for a fee turned adoption into a transaction, and we wanted to develop with our adoptants a relationship based on trust and friendship. We wanted them to remember that that dog or cat in their home was saved by us, and that they didn’t bought it or paid anything for it. It was ENTRUSTED by us to them and they would’nt even have to pay for any transport bills…
That helped us create a very strong relationship with our adoptants.

7. We don’t take decisions based on financial issues.
Today someone asked me to send them an estimate sign by our vet about the projected expenses of Tidus. It was the first time anyone asked me such question. I couldn’t but smile.. why? Because I have no idea. I’ve never asked an estimate to anyone. We only work with vets that we know and trust, I don’t need to ask estimates because of the decision of saving an animal or not, for us, has nothing to do with money. I believe saving Tidus will end up costing us over 30.000 USD, which will turn poor Tidus into the most expensive dog in the world 🙂.. but hey… it will all be worthy, specially for him, because his life is the only life he has, and for him, that’s priceless… So that’s our approach to estimates.

8. How does Let’s Adopt Global takes decisions?

I am personally involved in every major decision concerning the group BUT I don’t have the authority to execute ANY payments. A couple of years ago when we started to formalize things as a group we put in place a system of checks and balances to prevent any possible abuse of power, either in the present or the future, and money was one of my concerns. I didn’t want anyone to ever be able to accuse me of financial mismanagement and hurt the reputation of the group, so we structured things so that none of us could have access to funds without the approval of two other members of the board. All our payments are done electronically and directly to vets, transport companies, etc… Let’s Adopt doesn’t handle cash.

8. And what about those rumors of Viktor being a scammer ?

About a year ago we conducted a campaign against a group of brokers of teacup puppies. They were selling ill puppies to the public through the internet. The puppies, coming from South Korea were touted to people all over the world with more money than brains. My posts exposed them and their activities. It was only natural that they would come back with something really crazy, like saying that I’m scammer. Poor me, of all my friends I’m one of the few that even pays it’s parking tickets. Sadly, the world is full of idiots and there is always someone that falls for it. Nothing I can do about that, other than suing that person, a certain Ashley Anderson and I may do that one day, but right now, honestly, I have much more important to do that chasing yet another redneck.

9. And finally.. is it true that Viktor’s cat, Monkey, was caught smuggling a large amount of catnip?

Yes.. that’s unfortunately true 🙂… they caught him red handed. He’s unrepentant and he wants to do it again..

And what about Cuca? Well… Cuca was operated two days ago. There was no time or chance for a Chipin, we went ahead, operated her and extracted the tumor.

We are waiting for the lab results to understand what kind of tumor we are going to have to deal with… And like Cuca there are others… next week you will get to meet some.

Now that this is clear, allow me to ask you for a favour. Here is Tidus Chipin.. His rescue is going to be the most expensive we have ever undertaken, so far the response has been absolutely amazing, I will leave it here in case you feel like contributing to his rescue and the rescue of the many other animals we have under our care right now…

Many thanks.. All the best… I’m very glad to have you with us.