Just another two cents worth
You cannot use donations to a non profit to benefit a private party or business as in the feedlot and owners. . Its against the IRS rules. If she has no outside income and is claiming no income from the broker sales she is not paying income tax. There are a lot of rescues that are doing this . I dont understand why the IRS has not shut all of them down. Inurement and self dealing are against IRS rules for non profits.
Rescues have to compete with each other for donations They bad mouth each other , try to out do each other with the worst poster child horse, biggest save, skinniest horse , saddest story it’s a competiton to get your attention and donations. People who probably started out as decent do gooders know they gotta play the game or quit. Who’s fault is it?
Do I blame the rescues?. Sorta but considering that the real rescues who rehab and retrain horses and actually take the time to meet the adopters and make sure it is a good match for horse and owner can’t get your attention unless they play along . So all the people caught up in the dramatic rescue stories are to blame too .
Everybody runs to the rescue page or facebook with the big story , sad picture, outrageous bad owner story etc etc. We all do it , it’s human nature but if you are going to throw money at the ones with the biggest show and story than it’s expected that some of them are goign to cross the line. So now we have tons of people in bed with killbuyers instead of outbidding them at auction. Dishing out horses to whoever has money instead of thoroughly checking horse and owner out for compatability.
All of these sideshow rescues have made things soooo much worse for horses and real horsepeople in rescue . Those horses go right back to the auction when they don’t work out . The owners think all rescue horses must be crazy or lame and don’t want to ever adopt again. These horses just keep reapeating the trips from auction to rescue to bad home and eventually to slaughter anyway Obviously not all ,some luck out but most are bought by some emotional person who doesnt realize the purdy dreamhorse in the picture might have an actual personality or illness that they didnt plan on.
We can go through 20 applications and meetings before we find one person that is a pretty good match for a horse. What are the odds that is happening weekly over the internet for thousands of horses >? Oh and they live for 20 30 40 years . Dont tell me they saved horses they sold them
So no I dont think you should count their saves as real saves or any kind of a save at all. They delayed it a bit and made some tax free money for themselves and the very killbuyer that is supposed to be the horse lover’s enemy They made you feel good about your donation . You paid for a story the pat on the back you gave yourself for helping horses. You dont want to think hard about where that horse ended up or if they ever made it off the truck. That would take commitment You wanted a quick fix to make your feel like you saved horses . The irony of giving money to a killbuyer and thinking youre helping horses floors me . You helped the killbuyer and a rescue that was too lazy , unethical or greedy to do what any real rescue should do . period end of sentence
Go to the freaking auction yourself , seriously they are every week help some desperate horse person that might tell you about the horse instead of fake rescues and kill buyers. Its amazign this has to be pointed out to people
