HOPE ACRES RESCUE

Our organization has several goals connected to our problem:

1. We need to educate the public about the potential that exists in every rescue horse. Many people hear the word "rescue" and immediately assume that the horse is broken, either physically or mentally. They may assume that the horse has problems that are too big to fix; that it is wild, untamed, untrained, scary, old and infirm, or permanently lame. While we do have horses that have minor issues (such as older, suitable for light riding, better with adults, etc.), we believe that there is a home for every horse in our care. Education and public awareness are key to unlocking the potential that all horses have within them.

2. Most people want horses that are trained to ride. That has not been a priority at our rescue; our priority has been getting the horses healthy and making sure that they have good ground manners: leading; standing for grooming, farrier, bathing, worming; etc... We do not have experienced trainers in our cadre of volunteers and have had trouble finding reliable professional trainers to hire. One goal is to streamline our volunteer recruitment to attract those volunteers who are capable of helping us train, rather than just accepting those who are inexperienced but like horses.

3. People can only adopt horses if they know about them. We must increase our name recognition in the community, as both a resource for neglected horses, AND as a source of well-behaved, valuable family pets.

1. We need to focus on our past successes. Some of our "alumni" have become lesson horses at local stables, show horses, therapy horses at two different types of therapeutic facilities, equine athletes (polo!), best friends for other horses, best friends for their human partners, search and rescue partners, and beloved pets. If the public sees rescue horses in successful, positive situations, they will be more likely to envision themselves in the same situation. By using social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), our website, and print media, we can change the perception that people have of rescue horses. Instead of showing pictures of skinny, sad, malnourished horses, we can show pictures of healthy horses being successful AFTER rescue. We may not raise as much money in donations, but we might adopt out more horses.

2. In the past, we have had "open calls" for volunteers. We have been inundated with caring, loving adults, and children, who want to help our horses. They come to our volunteer orientations (sometimes close to 100 people at each event!), volunteer a few times, and then never return. Their intentions are good, but when they find out the realities of caring for a herd of rescue horses, sometimes they realize that the grunt work is not what they imagined. We end up spending a lot of time orienting people, teaching them how to function safely around our horses, and then they leave. We need to attract the people that will be able to help us with the tasks that we need--training being the top priority. We will now begin targeted solicitation of volunteers with specific skills--training, grant-writing, fundraising, etc.

3. Our rescue was founded in 2010, yet there are still people in our town that have never heard of us. That is not acceptable. We need name recognition. Our social media presence has doubled in the last 2 years, but we need more local exposure. We are going to sponsor a 5K race in February in Charleston--the H.O.P.E. Lope--and will also invest in 2 billboards to be placed on Interstate 26 during that time. We will participate in the Flowertown Festival again next April, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. We attended this year for the first time. Now that we know what to expect, we can capitalize on our experience and increase our exposure next year.

Our organizational structure is conducive to accomplishing our goals. We have a small voting board of 3: President, Secretary-Treasurer, and Intake/Adoption Coordinator. We also have an auxiliary board consisting of key volunteers who have taken on important roles within the rescue, but do not vote. They manage/assist with our social media presence, web site, grounds and maintenance, fundraising, medical care, adoption follow-ups, etc. We also have a larger cadre of regular volunteers that are committed to taking on the daily (feeding) and weekly chores that come with running a rescue. We have close to 10,000 followers on social media, many of whom support us financially. These volunteers will support us at the farm as well as out in the community. They are instrumental in helping to spread our message to the general public; these volunteers will be able to help us as we put on our first 5K, improve our presence at the Flowertown Festival, and continue to increase our name recognition in the greater Charleston metro area.

Our volunteer coordinator, website manager, and social media director will all work together to streamline the solicitation of our volunteers. Together, they will coordinate our needs with the applicants. In this way, we will hopefully be able to match each potential volunteer's strengths up with a particular organizational need. Also, our website manager is slated to change our volunteer application from a PDF form that must be filled out and sent in to an online submission form, thus further streamlining our process.

Our social media director has begun a weekly "Throwback Thursday" or "Follow-up Friday" to spotlight some of our past rescues. Through this process, we can emphasize the positive features that rescue horses possess, and show the public what the horse is doing NOW rather than what it looked like before. We can also change some of our print media (rack cards, business publications, newsletters, etc) to feature more, larger "after" pictures and fewer, smaller "before" pictures.

The primary goal of H.O.P.E. Acres Rescue is to work with the public to save neglected and abused horses from horrendous situations. We also work with other rescues and with county animal control agencies to help facilitate seizures and to offer educational services to struggling owners. Once horses are taken into our rescue, our goals are to assess their medical, nutritional, behavioral, and emotional needs and do whatever is needed to make them whole. Once the horse or donkey is well, our goal is to adopt it out to a home with a loving family. However, if the horse is elderly, or has medical needs that preclude its adoption, we are prepared to allow it to live out its life on our farm. We will seek sponsorship of the horse from the public to offset the cost of its upkeep.
We have been in existence since 2010 and have rescued 79 horses in that time. Of those, 54 have been adopted into loving homes, while 10 have had to be euthanized due to old age or disease (melanoma, cancer, etc.) Most of those euthanized were sanctuary horses. Our rescue began with just a few volunteers and has grown to one with a volunteer feed team that totally manages the daily feeding and medication of our herd; an auxiliary board with members in charge of fundraising, web design, social media, adoption follow-up, and farm maintenance; and a board of directors composed of our president, in charge of everything, our secretary/treasurer, and our adoption/intake coordinator. This does not include the other volunteers that come weekly to help with general farm chores, grooming, bathing, mowing, etc.
We are proud to be financed entirely through donations and grants, and we have no paid staff; we are run entirely by volunteers. To continue to grow and maintain this designation, we must continue to seek out more, and larger, grant opportunities. We would like to be able to purchase our own land so that we can expand our capacity, especially for sanctuary horses, as right now we are leasing property and our space is limited. We are currently on our 3rd farm, and are constantly worried that we may have to move at the land owner's whim. In order to increase donations and grants, we must increase our name recognition within the greater Charleston community. To do this, we will be sponsoring more activities outside of the "horse world." We have worked with rescue groups throughout the state of South Carolina and into North Carolina; our goal is to be a premier equine rescue organization well-known throughout the southeast for its ability to not only rescue and rehabilitate equines in need, but to find life-long adoptive homes so that the horses can flourish and live out their lives in peace.