Developing A Sustainable Business Model For Your Wildlife Rehab: AKA Love Doesn't Pay The Bills

As wildlife rehabilitators, we are filled with love and compassion for the animals in our care. But love doesn't pay the bills! We must have a sustainable business plan and goals to raise money for our work.

We need to see ourselves as a viable business that provides a necessary service. In addition, we need to learn marketing strategies, use social media, and develop an email list.

This blog is from a presentation I did for Hero’s in Wildlife. They are a fabulous organization that organizes a virtual conference each year.

You can also go to my Store & Resources Page and download the slides from the presentation for free.

The Frustration Level

Ironically, I had grown up on a horse farm in Kentucky and had already had a "career" in organic agriculture. So I understood business from a self-employment and agriculture standpoint.

However, wildlife rehabilitation is a very different business model. Instead of taking produce to a farmers market and making a nice display, I was meeting people at my front gate who handed me a very sad baby animal.

Frustration! YUP! This is what happens.

The Why And The How

Having a business plan will help you to sync the why of what you are doing with the how of what was needed. Having a business plan helps alleviate some of the stress and allows you to focus on what is critical for your business to thrive.

So the WHY is pretty apparent. You care about wildlife.

But it’s the HOW that is so tricky.

Part of the reason we have a hard time with the HOW is that we don't see ourselves as business people. We see ourselves as empaths. We see ourselves as teachers and environmental educators.

We may have negative connotations about business and the people who work in business fields.

You provide a valuable service to your community. Period. So part of being a professional in your field you also need to be a smart business person.

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Example: Rascal Raccoon Rehab

Ok so just to get our brains going we are going to do a lean business plan just to gather our thoughts. In the future, you would make this much more meaty.

So the first thing I need is a purpose or in the non-profit world - a mission. A simple yet specific statement. Remember your business plan can never be too specific.

Problem and Solution

We will state the problem - raccoon kits are often in need of rescue. Our solution is to provide for them until they can be released.

Articulating the problem and the solution is very important. We want people to have a clear vision of what that looks like. They need to envision that happening.

Community And training

Who in the community will you be working with? Most likely domestic animal shelters, the police, and other wildlife rehabilitators.

These agencies may not understand what you do. In the winter, I would do training with law enforcement and domestic animal rescues.

This served two purposes. First, it allowed me to teach them proper responses to common issues. Things like OMG there’s a newborn fawn in my yard. In addition, some symptoms of common diseases such as distemper.

Training also gave me an opportunity to explain how my center worked. For example, raising our own funds (no one pays us) and transportation. As a one-women band, I didn’t provide any transportation services.

Assessing Costs. This one you need to dig deep because it's tempting to just list the obvious. And the obvious is what our potential donors see. The basics are food and housing. Medical care floats in the middle.

But many of our expenses go unaccounted for. Incubators use electricity, and the website that holds the blog and the donation page has fees...

So as a business, we need to account for that and let people know. Hey, this all goes into raising babies. We don't want to be in the reactive position where we get the vet bill and go OMG I need money!

And we must have a specific plan of what animals we can take as far as expenses. This is Daisy Mae. She was caught in a fence and had to have a partial amputation. Thankfully I had some funds for emergency medical - or maybe more emergency than usual.

TIP: Have it arranged where people can donate money right to your account at your local vet’s office. Some people are more secure with that arrangement.

I had that because the winter before had established a fund with my vet where people could give money to the vet's office to go into my account.

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Communicating Your Financial Needs

So we do have to plan ahead and raise money pre-season. We can't predict what problems come to us. This is not to say that you don't have choices in deciding what animals to accept. But your off-season should include some time spent focusing on community awareness and education.

So now we have a plan going let's talk about how we are going to actually use that to make money. Get your message out there. Now we need to combine our business skills with a story. Please share what I do with your coony lovin friends.

The first thing you must have is an email list. Making a newsletter is a top priority. Trust me on this.

An email list is hands down better than any algorithm because it's a direct link. You decide who gets a newsletter, not the algorithm. Statistically Email newsletters outperform other types of marketing for small businesses.

It’s important to use an email provider because there are a lot of privacy and spam laws and when you use a provider they make sure to adhere to all that.

There are several email platforms with free plans for when you are just starting out. I used Mailchimp for mine when I started out. And I still use it for clients.

It's free to 1000 subscribers and then it goes up to $20 a month. Mailchimp is fine for getting started but then you will want something a bit more robust.

In addition, I found Mailchimp’s customer service to be quite poor.

As my email list grew I switched to Square Space which is where I have my websites. The price was more reasonable and it was already integrated with my website.

ASK for people to join your newsletter list. The photo on the left is the opt in on my website. The image on the right is a Facebook post.

ASK for people to join the newsletter list. Put a pop-up on the website and post on social media.

What to put in your newsletter? What's going on, share a blog or video post, what do you need... Short and sweet. One page is good.

So education not only fulfills your mission but can also be good marketing. I actually turned a story about a fawn on the couch watching TV into a series of education posts.

So a good rule of thumb in marketing is the 3-for-1 rule. Say you make 3 social media posts a week. One is general awareness - hey this is what we do. Two is education such as my Fun Fact Friday posts above. And three is an ASK.

Directly ask your audience. Tell people to share posts.

You should focus on one problem at a time. So in rural Kentucky, it's quite common for people to kidnap baby wildlife and either make them pets or sell them. So I made that a focus on my social media.

How To Get It All Done

So you are probably rolling your eyes and thinking I must have a million elves that help me. Use your resources.

There is often a limited pool of people who can come to your home or center and help clean enclosures or feed babies. Expand your volunteer needs to include things that people can do from home.

• Write a blog article

• Write the newsletter

• Make and send thank you cards

• Make social media posts

• Make some educational materials

A teenager may not be able to work with animals because of age restrictions. But I guarantee they know how to use social media.

Author, Ame Vanorio, is the director of Fox Run EEC, a teacher, and an author.