07/26/2026
QUESTION #7: Can I earn a living if I create an animal sanctuary? (Plus the downside of a huge donation.)
Photo caption: In our early years, we would regularly table at public events to raise awareness of CockadoodleMoo and seek donations. We often took a people-friendly rooster named Fritz with us. We had vegan pamphlets, cookbooks, T-shirts, a newsletter signup sheet and a donation jar. Sometimes we even served vegan food.
ANSWER: Whether running an animal sanctuary can become a full-time job is a common question we get. People want to help animals, and they see social media posts from various sanctuaries and rescue groups showing amazing and inspiring interactions with animals. People naturally want to know if they can get paid to do it if they start their own animal nonprofit.
The answer is probably not. And keep reading for a cautionary tale of a small sanctuary that got a million-dollar donation.
To get to the point where you might be paid, a nonprofit needs to grow big as an organization, enough that you will have to hire a development director (fundraiser) just to bring in enough to pay to care for all the animals and to pay staff.
You will need to become a public speaker and go to events and meet with wealthy people to ask them for money and/or put your organization in their will. You will also need to hustle for lots and lots of smaller donations. The income must be consistent, too, if salaries depend upon it.
It’s hard work, and this aspect takes you away from caring for the animals yourself. You’ll generally need to pay others to do a lot of that work because you'll have other responsibilities.
In general, if you stay relatively small, your animal organization will likely remain a labor of love where you’re the one who puts in the vast majority of work and money.
For us, we both have day jobs. We contribute most of the money needed by CockadoodleMoo and we do all of the work for free.
We do have recurring and one-time donors who are wonderful — they are so helpful to what we do. Our own contributions to CockadoodleMoo pay for food, veterinary care and other ongoing expenses. The funds donated by others tends to be used for helping build and repair fences, pens and shelters, plus there are sometimes requests for a new animal who needs special care, such as the goat Jolene and her shattered leg.
We’re not saying it’s impossible to get paid. You could grow to the point where it becomes your full-time job, such as if you are really good at doing online content showing your work. You’ve got to generate constant, near-daily content. That’s not easy and you’ll need mad skills.
Also, it’s important to center the animals in your work. You don’t want to find yourself so busy doing promotion that the animals themselves get neglected because you don’t have the time to clean their pens, do health checks to pre-empt medical issues, and to make sure they’ve got enriching lives that make them happy.
Cautionary tale: I was once brought in by consultants to visit a failing sanctuary back East. My job was to spend a week assessing the farm animals in its care and to create a plan for what they needed.
The sanctuary had an awesome social media presence with amazing photos and short videos. It was on about 35 acres and had some impressive buildings as well as 10 or more staff. The founder lived in a house on the property, and it was her full-time paid job.
Sounds like a dream come true. The sanctuary had been doing well and had a small staff with a manageable amount of animals. But then it received a $1 million from the will of a supporter who died.
The sanctuary stopped doing the hard work of fundraising because the need wasn't as urgent yet it expanded to take in more and more animals, saying yes to nearly every request they received from someone wanting to surrender an animal. Pretty soon, they were overwhelmed.
They took in a herd of goats, even though goats were outside their mission. They didn't know goats should be tested for a wasting disease. The new goats had it, causing all kinds of issues.
They got so many pigs, they couldn't keep up with needed hoof-trimming until dozens of pigs became too lame to walk.
They had feral cats that weren’t being spayed and neutered so they began to multiply. Mission creep set in where they were caring for more and more species outside their alleged focus.
They needed to create a building for cats and create an adoption program for them. But they didn’t know what they were doing so many of the cats got sick and, with no isolation protocol, illness spread through the cat population.
Then bad online comments started cropping up, understandably. Its smaller donations began to dry up.
The sanctuary ran out of money to pay staff to feed the animals and clean up after them. It was out of money for veterinary care. It wasted lots of food because its feeding instructions for volunteers was never adjusted as populations in some pens decreased.
I could go on and on. But, in short, it failed. The founder was kicked out by its board of directors. Other sanctuaries and rescue groups had to come in and take many of the animals. Enough money was raised to care for the animals who couldn’t leave. The organization limped along until all the animals were rehomed or died, and then it shut down.
The lesson is be careful with growth. If you want to get paid, your nonprofit will become a job. A serious one. It will require strategic plans, accounting, an HR department, etc. Is that really what you want? If so, more power to you. If you want to stay small, you almost certainly won't be paid.
My advice for if you want to get paid to help animals in need is to get a job at an existing animal nonprofit and work your way up.
Got questions? Comment below or email [email protected].
