Reuse, recycle, rescue: Adoption fees: Rescue dogs are a bargain, not a
gift
By Vicki DeGruy
No doubt about it, rescue has always been an expensive project. Vet bills,
dog food, advertising, gas, supplies, telephone bills, equipment – I don’t
know of a single rescue service that doesn’t have trouble making ends meet.
For many of us, the ends aren’t even close together!
Raising enough money to provide basic pre-adoption care is an active, time-consuming
job. Even a healthy incoming foster dog requires an investment of several hundred
dollars to provide it with a vet exam, vaccinations, heartworm testing and spay
or neuter. Costs associated with dogs that are sick, injured or have serious
conditions can run into thousands.
Although nearly every rescue struggles financially, I think the newest and
smallest groups have it hardest. It takes time for a new group to establish
itself and gain the credibility necessary to develop a donor base and acquire
discounted services. Many small rescues are one and two person operations, working
on their own without the support of a larger group or breed club. Squeezing
their rescue work in between their jobs and families, they don’t have time
to put in the huge amount of work fundraising requires.
Oddly enough, these same groups often sell themselves short on their single
most reliable source of income: adoption fees. Many of them don’t charge
enough and some charge nothing at all. When asked why, I’m usually told
“I’m not -selling- dogs, I’m just trying to find them loving
homes.” They worry that it’s not right to charge for a labor of love.
Some think that a fee will scare adopters away. Others feel uncomfortable asking
anyone for anything, including help and donations.
Well, get over it! An adoption fee is an established, accepted, responsible
procedure in today’s world and is actually expected by most adopters. You
can and should charge a reasonable fee to help offset the costs of your rescue
program.
What is a reasonable fee? That appears to vary among groups and breeds. While
I don’t think that there’s a flat amount across the board that will
apply appropriately to everyone, I have a basic formula that can be used to
determine what’s reasonable for your breed and your area.
To apply the formula effectively, I think you must first understand why people
adopt rescued dogs. Some want to do a good deed and save a life, but a great
many are looking to save money. They can’t afford (or don’t want to
pay) the going rate for a well-bred puppy from a reputable breeder. They’re
looking for a good value. The adoption fee must appeal to their sense of good
value as well as their other motivations.
A rescued dog is absolutely a good value. The dog is temperament tested, healthy
and fully vetted, spayed or neutered, usually housebroken, sometimes even microchipped
or tattooed, so the investment made by the rescuer can save an adopter hundreds
of dollars and precious hours of time. That investment is worth something to
an adopter, but not as much as you might think. It’s an unfortunate fact
of human nature that “new” appears better to people than “used.”
Setting fees based on what you’ve spent to save the dog rarely works because
people just aren’t going to give you everything you’ve put into a
“used” dog if they can get a shiny new puppy for the same price elsewhere.
To see how your rescued dogs might fit into an adopter’s perception of
“good value,” you need to compare them with inexpensive dogs available
from other sources: animal shelters, free-to-a-good-home ads, backyard breeders,
puppymills, and petstores. And I think we need to be realistic about it –
whether we consider ourselves to be “selling” dogs or not, we are
competing with them for homes. No matter how much educating we do, people are
still drawn to the more dubious sources on that list and probably always will
be. The temptation to get a cheap puppy in a hurry is tough to overcome.
Frankly, I don’t think rescue can compete with free or dirt cheap puppies
so I don’t even try. Neither can we compete with reputable breeders; their
buyers are looking for something specific, they’re willing to wait for
it, and they will pay what it takes to get it. What I’m after are the people
in the middle – those willing to spend a moderate price on a puppy but
who can be persuaded to consider a rescue when they’re shown that it’s
a much better deal. Essentially then, I believe rescue competes most with backyard
breeders and puppymills and that’s what we should be considering when setting
our fees.
Here’s how my formula works: take the average price in your area for
backyard-bred puppies of your breed – the average price of a Chow Chow
puppy (my breed) in my midwestern region is $250, no health guarantees or much
in the way of pre-purchase vet care included – and cut it in half. That’s
my adoption fee, $125, an exceptionally good value when compared to a questionably-bred
puppy that will cost that much in its first year of shots alone.
You have some flexibility with this, of course. If your breed is hard to come
by or is traditionally expensive, a higher adoption fee will not seem unreasonable
to people. In a few breeds, demand for rescued dogs actually exceeds the supply
(lucky them!) and higher fees won’t discourage adopters.
Most rescues also charge higher rates for puppies since there are never enough
to go around, helping to offset lower ones for seniors or special needs dogs.
However you set your fees, the key is to find a reasonable middle ground between
recovering some of your expenses and helping the public see your rescued dogs
as a bargain they shouldn’t pass up. Don’t sell yourself short.
For More Information
|
