Farm-animal sanctuaries across the country are turning the idea of the charity endurance event on its head by recruiting supporters to raise money by completing goofy activities. Over four days in August, participants in the Goat Games raised more than $173,610 for 14 sanctuaries.
There’s no strenuous training required to participate in this fundraising event. One supporter put on a rabbit costume and jumped on a pogo stick. Another ran a race against his dog. (The dog won.) Another napped for the cause.
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Farm-animal sanctuaries across the country are turning the idea of the charity endurance event on its head by recruiting supporters to raise money by completing goofy activities. Over four days in August, participants in the Goat Games raised more than $173,610 for 14 sanctuaries.
There’s no strenuous training required to participate in this fundraising event. One supporter put on a rabbit costume and jumped on a pogo stick. Another ran a race against his dog. (The dog won.) Another napped for the cause.
“You don’t have to be an athlete. You can literally nap,” says Kathy Stevens, founder of Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties, N.Y., which launched the games three years ago.
It’s a silly solution to a serious problem.
In 2020, the coronavirus outbreak forced the Catskill Animal Sanctuary to pause three of its main income sources: farm tours, stays at its bed and breakfast, and its annual soirée for donors in New York City. “The bottom dropped out of fundraising,” Stevens recalls.
If you know all the various species, goats are definitely the most fun. They are perpetually in trouble.
Each of these revenue streams brought in roughly $100,000 a year. Not only did the sanctuary lose that money, she says, it also lost dollars from individual donors who instead donated to social services and health groups supporting people.
With as many as 350 farm animals to care for across 150 acres, Stevens was desperate to make up the difference. Any fundraising event would have to be virtual, but Stevens wanted it to be lighthearted — that’s why she named it the Goat Games.
“If you know all the various species, goats are definitely the most fun,” Stevens says. “They are perpetually in trouble. They never grow out of their terrible twos.”
The sanctuary picked five goats to captain five teams. It set a $25,000 fundraising goal and gave participants the option to run, swim, bike, hike, walk, or choose another activity to complete for the cause. By the end of the games, they’d raised $46,000.
It was a drop in the bucket compared with the $300,000 lost to Covid closures. Still, every little bit helped.
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Higher Cost of Doing Business
The Goat Games closed out its third year in August and — for the second year running — included a nationwide group of animal sanctuaries. “We always had the vision of a partnership,” Stevens says. “We thought that first year, let’s pilot it and work out the kinks.”
Catskill Animal Sanctuary packaged the lessons it had learned into a toolkit — including a timeline of when to send appeals on email and social media, draft news releases, and tips to attract more digital supporters — and shared it with the sanctuaries that have since joined the games. Preparing those materials is lot of work, Stevens concedes, but it’s worth the effort to help smaller, younger sanctuaries run effective fundraising campaigns during the games.
Each sanctuary sets a fundraising goal — ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 — and sends emails and social-media posts to recruit participants to raise money from their families, friends, and colleagues. Competitors pick an activity to complete and keep their supporters updated on their progress. Stevens was the most successful fundraiser, bringing in nearly $4,500 in support of the 50 miles she biked with her partner.
Together, the sanctuaries participating in this year’s games set an ambitious fundraising goal of $260,000 combined — the highest yet. They fell short of their overall goal, but many of the organizations said the money they raised will help them meet the new, higher costs of doing business.
While the bulk of Covid closures are over, inflation and high fuel costs are making it more expensive to run an animal sanctuary. What’s more, animal disease outbreaks like the avian flu — which affects chickens, turkeys, and other birds — and another disease that’s fatal to rabbits are straining finances.
At the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, Stevens gritted her teeth and paid what she said were very high costs for lumber to build what she called “screened-in porches” for the sanctuary’s chickens. The structures allow the fowl to be in fresh air and protected from any infected droppings from wild birds flying overhead.
Karen Augustynowicz, director of Safe Haven Rabbit Rescue in Clinton, N.J., is both paying more in veterinary fees to vaccinate the bunnies she rescues from the fatal virus and shelling out more for hay she knows has been quarantined long enough to be free of the deadly disease. Worse still, inflation sent the cost of the fresh greens the rabbits eat through the roof.
“We were really in a pickle without something like the Goat Games,” Augustynowicz says. Participating for the first time, Safe Haven Rabbit Rescue fell shy of its $10,000 goal, raising almost $8,600 and placing fifth overall.
‘Advocating for the Same Cause’
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While the fundraising event is billed as a friendly competition between animal sanctuaries — complete with a leader board and rankings — participants emphasize the value of working together to shine a light on their cause.
“It’s not only about our own little rescue,” Augustynowicz says. “It’s about helping everybody else in the consortium and working together to a common goal of really making people aware of how much work goes into running a sanctuary — whether it’s a small, little sanctuary or it’s a big group.”
Plus, it helps that the sanctuaries are based all over the country, so they’re generally not overlapping in their appeals to supporters.
“We’re not competing for donors, but we’re all advocating for the same cause,” says Michelle Blake, vice president of Wildwood Farm Sanctuary & Preserve in Newberg, Ore. “It really is an excellent way to expand your reach and meet new people, maybe grow your mailing list and meet some new donors.”
Blake’s sanctuary hosted a field-day event as part of the Goat Games, inviting participants to compete in events like sack races, watermelon-spitting contests, and cow-pie throwing contests. Goat Games participants and event attendees raised more than $13,300 for the sanctuary, missing its $20,000 goal but putting it in third place. The money will help the sanctuary secure a new piece of land. Thanks to climate change, water shortages and wildfire risks have become too acute at their current site, and the sanctuary has decided to relocate for the well-being of the animals.
It really is an excellent way to expand your reach and meet new people.
Running an animal sanctuary is a significant challenge even in the best of circumstances, says Stevens of Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Her charity won the games, raising more than $80,000 but missing its $100,000 fundraising goal.
“What we are doing is uncomfortable for people because some people feel that by rescuing food animals and by offering vegan programs, we are judging them,” Stevens says. “We are not judging them. We are showing them a different vision of the world — a vision that we all need to usher in if the planet’s going to have a shot at being here.”
Stevens and other sanctuary leaders say they relish the opportunity to work with peers at similar organizations across the country — and to have fun doing it. Christopher Vane, executive director of Little Bear Sanctuary in Punta Gorda, Fla., says the zaniness of the Goat Games sets it apart from the day-to-day of running an animal sanctuary.
His group came in second place, raising more than $18,000 but falling well short of its $30,000 goal. Still, Vane is an energetic booster for the games. “I look forward to it every year,” he says. “It’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had raising money — ever.”
Correction (Sep. 12, 2022, 5:42 p.m.): An earlier version of this article included incorrect references to the Catskills Animal Sanctuary. The organization's name is the Catskill Animal Sanctuary.