The Questions to Ask a Rescue Group Before You Give (We Ask Them Too)
Most people pick a rescue organization the same way they pick a restaurant: a photo of an animal that gets them, a name they like, a friend who said so.
That is how a small donation ends up somewhere nobody can account for.
We support rescue organizations, which means we ask questions of them before we commit money. It seemed only fair to write the questions down, because anyone giving to a rescue group should be able to ask the same things — and to know what a good answer sounds like before they ask.
Why this post exists
We would rather write down how we evaluate a rescue organization than ask you to trust that we do it.
Every order supports our rescue partners, and we publish what we can verify on our impact page. But we also think that the general question — how do I know if this organization is real and run well — is worth answering for anyone, not just people shopping at a coffee shop.
Here are six questions. They take about ten minutes to ask, and in our experience the answers tell you nearly everything.
The six questions
One: are you a registered nonprofit, and what is your registration number?
In the United States, a nonprofit determination letter is a public document. If an organization is a 501(c)(3), that number can be looked up and confirmed in a couple of minutes. If they will not tell you what they are registered as, that is not a defensive answer, it is an answer.
This is the single most useful question, because it is verifiable rather than a matter of trust.
Two: what share of a donation actually reaches the animals?
A good answer includes a number and a limit. Something like "about eighty cents of every dollar goes to medical care and food, and the rest covers rent on the intake facility" is a real answer. So is "we do not track it precisely yet, and here is what we do know" — as long as they know.
What is not an answer is a rounding. Be careful with organizations whose only published figure is a fraction that was chosen to look good.
Three: who is on the board, and what does the board actually do?
A board that has not met in a year is a fiction. A founder who is simultaneously the president, the treasurer, the intake coordinator, and the person answering your email is a common and workable setup for a small group — but it should be a stated choice, not a hidden one. Ask who signs off on the money.
Four: can I see something recent that shows what happened?
It does not have to be a glossy annual report. A one-page letter. A photo of the van with the mileage on it. A list of how many animals came in and how many went out. A real organization has something, and if what they show you is older than a year, ask why.
Five: do you take a cut of what I raise?
Fundraising platforms take a fee, and some organizations take a percentage of money raised for other groups. Both are normal and both are legitimate, but you should be told. A group that takes a cut of your fundraiser and does not mention it until after the money arrives is telling you something about how they communicate.
Six: what happens to the animals in your care if the organization stops operating?
This one catches people. It is also the question that tells you whether someone has thought past the next month. A group with a plan — animals transferred to other rescues, records handed over, funds directed somewhere specific — has thought past the next month.
What a good answer sounds like
You are not looking for polish. You are looking for specifics.
Good: "We have about forty animals right now, our vet is one clinic, and here is what a typical month's medical bills look like."
Good: "Our board meets quarterly. I will send you the last two minutes from the last meeting if you want them."
Good: "We cannot give you a percentage yet because we did not have good records before this year. Here is what we have started tracking."
Less good: "Almost all of it goes to the animals."
Less good: "We are a small grassroots organization, we do the best we can, every dollar matters."
Those two answers are not lies. They are just answers that ask you to fill in the gap yourself, which is a lot to ask of someone who has never met them.
Three red flags
Pressure. Urgency used to get past your guard. "The shelter is closing tonight." "Every dollar matters right now." A genuine organization will still be there tomorrow. If the emotional pressure is doing the work that evidence should be doing, slow down.
Numbers that only exist for a graphic. One clean percentage in a banner, and nothing behind it. Real accounting is messier than a banner.
A cause with no animals. If the organization cannot tell you how many animals it has, where they are, or who is looking after them, you are not supporting a rescue operation.
The honest caveat: small does not mean bad
A lot of rescue work in this country is done by volunteers. A person with a garage, a van, a phone, and thirty animals in a spare room is doing real work, and it is work that registered nonprofits often cannot cover quickly enough.
Those groups may not have a board. They may not have an annual report. They may not have a percentage. And some of them are the best-run organizations you will ever see.
For a small volunteer group, ask different questions:
- Where does the money physically go? Vet bills, food, transport, medical supplies. Ask which of those is most urgent.
- Can I see the animals? Photos, a visit, a video walkthrough. Not a slogan.
- Who answers the phone? If it is one person and they are busy, that tells you the scale. It does not tell you the quality.
- Who is paying for the land lord, the fuel, and the bags of kibble? If a group cannot say, that is worth understanding before you give.
Being small is not a red flag. Being vague is.
The one rule, if you want a shortcut
If they will not tell you what share of your money reaches the animals, give somewhere that will.
That is the whole post, honestly. Everything else above is detail. This one line is the filter.
Why we ask these of the organizations we support
We keep the list short and we rotate it. We publish what we can verify on our impact page, and when we cannot verify something, we say so instead of rounding it up — why we will not publish an impact number we cannot verify explains why that rule is worth more than a bigger number on a banner.
The partner spotlights we have written are the best short examples of what a real organization tells you: the ASPCA partner spotlight and the Best Friends partner spotlight. And how we pick rescue partners is the operational version of this same list.
If you want to see what our support actually looks like in practice, what our rescue partners do and what partnering with rescue organizations looks like day to day are the two we would send you to.
Try it this month
Pick one organization you are thinking of supporting. Find something they have published in the last year — a report, a letter, a post with real numbers in it.
Then write down one number from it, in a note, on your phone. Where it came from, what it covers, and what it does not cover.
That number is the whole exercise. It takes about ten minutes and it changes how the money feels.
P.S. We rotate our own partner list each quarter and we publish what happened in each one. What our monthly rescue partner support looks like and why we rotate our rescue partners quarterly cover how that works, and what we learned from visiting our rescue partner last month is the part you cannot get from a report.
Brew slow.
Sip slow.
— Seraphina