operations management final research paper

Running head: OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: NON-PROFIT 1

Operations Management: Non-Profit Animal Sanctuary

Laura Ankerson

Globe University

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: NON-PROFIT 2

Operations Management: Non-Profit Animal Sanctuary

Introduction

A non-profit organization (NPO) is a business like any other and as such requires the

same forethought as a for-profit business. There is a difference when it comes to animal rescue

or animal sanctuary because the customer is the animal and not so much the public. This paper

will attempt to look at the operations management aspects of an animal sanctuary because that is

ultimately what I would like to do as a career.

Corporate Objectives

This is an area that differs from the normal business because the objectives are to provide

safe havens for animals that are otherwise unadoptable. The difference between animal rescue

and animal sanctuary is that rescue implies there is an exit plan toward adoption into a forever

home; with sanctuary the animal is likely unadoptable due to abuse, mistrust of humans, or lack

of socialization making them unattractive as pets.

Beyond providing the needs for the animal there is the expectation in both rescue and

sanctuary that the public needs to be educated in animal characteristics and behavior. There will

be political agendas to maintain awareness of such as breed specific laws that can create more

homeless pets if something happens to a pet that falls under one of the breed restrictions.

And of course there will be a need for sustainability because most legitimate rescues and

sanctuaries are 501c charitable organizations and rely on grants, government funding, and most

heavily on private donations. It will be vital to the objectives of any animal sanctuary to be an

upstanding and welcomed member of the community where one will do business. Business

relationships with for-profit businesses can be the backbone of support for a non-profit that

works with animals.


Marketing Strategy

You wouldn’t think there is such a thing as competitive strategy in the animal rescue and

sanctuary world, but there is! Everyone in this chosen career path wants to help and sometimes

that desire to help becomes competitive. That is not a good thing for the animals. I have friends

and contacts that are in this business and they say the smallest thing can erode relationships and

foster anger and distrust.

A marketing strategy in this industry should encompass only the animal’s needs and not

that of the business owner or its staff members. Maintaining good relationships with other

rescues, sanctuaries, transport groups, and veterinarians can go a long way toward the positive

marketing that is needed to be a successful sanctuary.

Any marketing strategy also needs to incorporate educational aspects and fundraising

methods. Building those business relationships for sponsorships, working with schools for

educational programs, developing unique events to attract donors, volunteers, and material goods

supporters; and last but not least, making sure that your board of directors are people that are also

held in high esteem within the community.

Marketing for an animal sanctuary isn’t about advertising for people to bring you their

animals, it’s all about making the focus about the well-being and safety of the animals, before or

after they need rescue.

How do Services Qualify and Win Orders in the Marketplace?

This part of an operational strategy goes hand-in-hand with the objectives and the

marketing. If your objectives and marketing are cohesive then your ability to provide the service

of sanctuary, rescue, education, and building relationships should be on target to qualify your

status in the community.


Are you providing a value added resource? The answer to this question should always be

yes when it comes to operating an animal sanctuary or rescue. Having the proper facilities, intake

rules, care guidelines, veterinary paperwork, maintaining the health and proper nutrition of all

animals in your care; these are things that qualify your service and win orders in the marketplace.

Winning orders in the marketplace for an animal rescue is not the same as it is for

McDonald’s to put a toy in their Happy Meal or for Land’s End to provide free shipping on all

orders. Winning orders in the marketplace for an animal rescue is measured by the donations of

money, necessities, volunteerism, and potential funding from outside organizations or

government affiliations. The rescue and sanctuary business is over-saturated with requests for

help and donations, if you’re winning orders in the marketplace then you’ve been doing the right

things to keep that advantage over other non-profits for the limited dollars and time donations

that people make.

Operations Strategy – Design Choices

“Operations design choices are the decisions management must make as to what type of

process structure is best suited to produce goods or create services,” (Collier, 2013, p. 82). There

are basically six aspects to the design choice and those are: types of processes/alternative

designs, supply chain integration and outsourcing, technology, capacity and facilities, inventory,

and trade-off analysis.

It isn’t always apparent at first glance how these six things are part of an animal

sanctuary, but each of them plays an important role in the survival of the operation and of the

animals. Processes, this can be anything from intake procedures, pen or kennel placement,

temperament assessments, vet checks, feeding schedules, clean up responsibilities, and the list


goes on. When working with animals AND people everything needs a process to ensure quality

and timeliness to get the best results.

Nancy LaPorta Brown, owner and founder of Full Moon Farm Wolfdog Sanctuary

utilizes everything at her disposal to make sure that processes are followed, and even then

sometimes things go completely awry. Just this month she had an intake of two low wolf content

animals and with proper vetting upon arrival it was determined that the female was pregnant. It

was unclear how far along, but delivery was expected within the month. Nancy made sure that all

guidelines were kept, the new arrivals were separated from the rest of the kennels, vet checks

were done, parasitic test samples were taken, and a baseline temperament assessment was

performed. Last week the new wolfdog delivered five pups and all appeared healthy. Overnight

four of them died for no known reason, per protocol they were sent for necropsies to see if there

was any specific reason for their deaths. Then two days later the last pup also died, again, per

protocol it was sent for necropsy because of the lapse in events between this death and the other

four. Nancy was devastated, but beyond the emotional rollercoaster of this industry her processes

prove the importance of having a standard operational strategy. Nancy says, “I don’t have to

provide an argument to the board of directors for an expense such as this because it is part of the

standard operating procedure. I am thankful for that,” (N. LaPorta Brown, personal

communication, December 9, 2014).

Looking at things like supply chain integration and outsourcing, it is quite obvious that

large rescue organizations like United States Humane Society (HSUS) or The American Society

for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) have a well-planned and highly strategized

system of supply chain integration and outsourcing because they are able to put together long

distance rescues like the ones that occurred with Hurricane Katrina. According to NATURE on


PBS television and their website www.pbs.org there were over 250,000 animals left stranded and

abandoned because of Hurricane Katrina. Other sources estimate that only about 6,000 to 8,000

animals were rescued and Wikipedia has an entry that puts only about 400 of those rescues as

being reunited with their owners. Whatever the case may be, it is during those most devastating

events that we get to see that the large animal rescue organizations are truly a well-oiled machine

with a plan from start to finish. Yet it may also appear to be severely lacking, but mostly that’s

because one sees the enormous tragedy and the amount of strategic planning on such short notice

goes unrecognized.

Smaller rescues and sanctuaries may not be in the spotlight, but they also require a plan

for both their supply chain and outsourcing necessities. Not many of them have a veterinarian on

staff, but the quality organizations have outsourced that need as a standard to providing quality

care for the animals. Even unassuming things like websites, social media pages, and fundraising

events are often planned through outsourcing in order to get high quality results without going

overboard on a very tight budget. Again, this is why it is important to have clear objectives and

marketing strategies that build business relationships in the community.

I am going to skip capacity, facilities, and inventory for the moment and discuss the

trade-off analysis because it is important to understand this concept before one looks at the best

place to open a facility, what kind of buildings to have, how much capacity to plan for, etc. The

definition of trade-off analysis is, “determining the effect of decreasing one or more key factors

and simultaneously increasing one or more other key factors in a decision, design, or project,”

(www.businessdictionary.com). When we talk about a trade-off analysis for an animal sanctuary

it is more about determining which key factors are most important to providing proper care for

animals and at what limits those key factors begin to suffer. Do you build a lot of kennels and

http://www.pbs.org/

http://www.businessdictionary.com/


take in every animal that needs placement? Probably not the wisest way to run a business,

especially a business like this where a few erroneous decisions can turn a sanctuary situation into

a hoarding situation.

Deciding what kind of facilities are needed, a barn, a run of kennels, pastures,

indoor/outdoor cat rooms, quarantine areas, or living quarters for caretakers or staff; all are

decisions that need to be made with the trade-off analysis in mind. A perfect example of this is

Happily Ever After Animal Sanctuary located in Marion, WI. The founder started out with an

idea and a dream, and while her parents didn’t tell her it couldn’t happen they did insist that she

get her college degree and make a plan that everything would start three years from sprouting of

that idea. Things didn’t going according to plan, and what started with rescuing animals at her

parent’s house morphed into the facility it is today. Forty acres of family land, an old decrepit

barn, and support from friends and family who had the knowledge, skills, and technology to

renovate the old, build the new, and expand to a second location. The trade-off was time and

space in the beginning, and now the trade-off is still time and space. This time around it isn’t

because she was a college kid living with her parents, now there’s a one year waiting list to

surrender an animal to the sanctuary. They have a set limit on the number of animals they can

house and in order to maintain proper health and nutrition for the animals they have to stick to

their capacity limit, (HappilyEverAfterInfo.org).

Infrastructure

Probably the hardest part of operations management in any non-profit is the

infrastructure, including the workforce, quality control, organizational structure, compensation

systems, learning and motivational systems, and support services. Having an operating plan and

control systems means having a plan for the other things listed in this paragraph, and unlike a


for-profit business there is even less stability in funding and cash flow. Can you afford to hire

people to care of the animals or will you be doing the majority of the work with the help of

volunteers? What motivational incentives can you find to keep volunteers coming back and if

you have paid employees are they happy with the emotional rewards if the financial ones are

pretty small?

There must be structure from within, houses have support beams, people have support

systems, business must have a strong and supportive infrastructure or the whole thing collapses.

Large organizations like HSUS and the ASPCA are well established and have approved

operating budgets, but small organizations like Full Moon Farm and Happily Ever After must

work doubly hard to keep overhead low. That is a trade-off for the benefit of the animals, keep

overhead low to allow for more to be spent on supplies and necessities. But at what point does it

become important to put some of the budget toward a paid employee so there is someone full

time to assist with all the other daily procedures?

In a non-profit situation one must also remember that a vital part of the infrastructure are

the members of the board of directors. They need to bring something of value to the organization

if they are going to have a say in its operation. And because much of the support comes in the

form of volunteers and donations of supplies, it helps to have an excellent training plan in place

for volunteers and skilled workers or outside resources that can help with building, remodeling,

repairing, or renovating. Then there is the accounting and tax responsibilities, which are much

more in-depth than one would first believe; but because a non-profit status was granted by the

government there are additional rules and guidelines that must be adhered to. Transparency is the

golden rule in a charitable organization, having an accountant on the payroll or on the board is

always a good idea. Full Moon Farm utilizes their board member’s skills and experience for


fundraising, grant research, event planning, social media and web related things; as well as care,

feeding, and maintenance of the animals and the property. (FullMoonFarm.org)

Conclusion

In total this paper shows the importance of operations management in an industry that is

not often associated with structured business concepts; however, it is even more important

because emotions and feelings can cloud judgment. I want to work with animals, especially in

rescue and sanctuary, and because of this desire I always need to keep my business sense in order

to the best for myself and the animals. There isn’t a lot of hardcore data about how to start up a

sanctuary, but through personal contacts and research of local facilities the one thing that they

cannot express enough is the need to have a structured plan. Without that strategy it is all too

easy to go from rescuer to hoarder and from doing good to causing harm very quickly.


References

Collier, E. (2013, June). ACP OM4 w/CourseMate-Globe, 4th Edition. Cengage Learning,

VitalBook file.

LaPorta Brown, N. (Founder). (2014) Who We Are. www.FullMoonFarm.org

Reitz, A. (Founder). (2014). About Us…, Retrieved from:

http://www.happilyeverafterinfo.org/about_us/

Woodward, K. (Writer and Producer). (2005, November 20). Katrina’s Animal Rescue

[Television series episode]. In K. Woodward (Producer), NATURE. New York, NY:

Thirteen/WNET New York. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/katrinas-

animal-rescue- introduction/2561/.

http://www.fullmoonfarm.org/

http://www.happilyeverafterinfo.org/about_us/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/katrinas-animal-rescue-introduction/2561/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/katrinas-animal-rescue-introduction/2561/

operations management final research paper

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