They have a pretty active Facebook page. Worth checking out if folks are curious https://m.facebook.com/castletonranchhorserescue/
Castleton’s involvement in the recent situation involving TB broodmares and weanlings dumped at auction by EF1 farms (they had partnered with Adena Springs and bred an insane amount of mares, then ran out of cash and were suctioning them online… pretty awful) led me to this COTH thread. Interesting reading… some of the past back and forth is kind of nasty on both sides though. Seems like the mods deleted chunks, and earlier posters were banned.
The fact that they have consistently filed 990’s year after year, and have a well maintained facility (pictures on Facebook look nice) with healthy animals is a positive, in my opinion. I am curious as to how many employees are involved with the organization, and what the annual salaries for each of them are. Essentially, are salaries over or under $100,000 a year… including the president. And yes… how many horses do they have, on average, at both their farms, for the last 5 years. Simple questions.
I think it’s fair for folks to be upset with direct mail marketing that is dishonest/extremely dramatic. Especially if it gets sent to people’s elderly parents… But slick marketing campaigns seem to be the “norm” these days. Bake sales and other little local fundraisers are labor intensive, and not nearly as effective. My kids school replaced an annual PTA bake sale/carnival event last year and used a professional fundraising company to help with PTA stuff. The company orgainized a community wide 5k, and did a crazy obnoxious marketing campaign. The contract involved the company collecting $0.50 of every dollar donated… apparently this is the industry norm. Well… They blew away all prior fundraising efforts, and raised almost $100,000. And walked away with $50k. Myself, and a lot of other parents were horrified. And the fundraising campaign itself was pushy and obnoxious, with these people going into the kid’s classrooms and asking them to talk to parents, grandparents, family friends… uggh. Parents were all angry at the tactics and the $ the company walked off with, but no one really wants to volunteer for the bake sale or sell wrapping paper door to door anymore. So I think the PTA may simply vote to continue using an outside company in future years. Just hopefully they oversee the whole thing a bit more closely. It’s a brave new world, I guess.
I just followed recent news about a “rescue” failing horribly here in Virginia. Eagle Hill Equine Rescue. It’s got its own crazy old COTH thread. 43 horses were turned over to multiple other legit organizations in this area a week or two ago. Some were starving, many were pretty feral, some had serious health and untreated lameness issues… pictures coming out are terrible. This place has a long history, with earlier crisis situations, starving animals, mandated herd reductions, and only sporadic filing of necessary IRS forms. Apparently, the recent decline and horrible circumstances with the horses were also partly caused by staff at the farm (it’s unclear if they were employees or volunteers, or some combination). It seems like the older farm owner was sinking into dementia on top of other issues, and the “staff” managing the farm and caring for the rescue horses were incredibly underqualified, and local teenagers in some cases. The end result is pretty horrific.
I’m just bringing it up to compare and contrast these two “rescues.” I don’t like scams… but if Castleton has filed 990s for years, worked with other rescue organizations in the area, and the animals they take in are all well cared for… well… that’s positive. They just got 8 or 9 horses from that TB farm auction, and are actually foaling out some of the older broodmares involved, retiring them, and working with other groups to get the foals adopted out after weaning. That’s pretty admirable work. Definitely labor intensive, and won’t be cheap in terms of veterinary or feed expenses. And those pregnant mares were in a bad position.
Personally, I am fed up with non profit soliciting of ALL kinds. I guess it all somehow creates jobs for people in the print industry and call centers somewhere though, and some money goes to charities because of it. I’m not a fan of any of it though. But I’m also not a fan of virtuous people who collect horses, are underfunded, then give them inadequate care. No one wants to create a charity that exists solely for the purpose of humanely and quickly euthanizing and disposing of animals people don’t want, and can’t afford. In some ways… that might be best though.
