The Purrfect Social Business

Strategy for Non-Profits

An Interview with Carole Baskin

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Meet Carole Baskin

Carole is the founder of Big Cat Rescue, a non-profit sanctuary in Tampa, FL housing more than 100 big cats – lions, tigers, leopards, bob cats and all kinds of exotic cats.

Big Cat Rescue is in its 22nd year of operation. It’s not a zoo. It’s an operating sanctuary. Visitors who tour the facility see how the cats are cared for on their 70 acreage property.

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Business Requirements

All non-profits need revenue to run their operation. Big Cat Rescue’s annual revenue nut is $2.7 million. Carole points out that one tiger alone costs $10,000 per year just for food and veterinary care. And, that doesn’t include sanctuary overhead.

Big cats live well into their teens at Big Cat Rescue. So, rescuing and adopting a big cat is at least a $100K commitment over the life of the cat.

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While some cats are rescued from a circus, most rescues are tigers because of the unfortunate thriving business of cub petting. People are willing to pay money to have their picture taken with a cute tiger cub. The problem is that once the cub reaches about 12 weeks of age, they are too big to be held. So the business operator needs to dispose of the cat.

Big Cat Rescue’s goal is to pass Federal legislation that will outlaw private ownership of big cats to prevent cruelty to these beautiful animals whose only existence should be in the wild.

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Big Cat Rescue Is a Social Business

Carole Baskin has experimented with just about every social channel, and settled on those that drive awareness and help to raise the funds they need to operate the sanctuary.

Carole admits that their goal is to put themselves out of business by advocating through legislation for no more big cats in cages.

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Running the Business

Carole has been an enthusiastic student of all things digital since the beginning. Their assets include:

• Website -3 million visitors per year.

• YouTube - 76 million views across 350 videos.

Videos are intentionally entertaining to appeal to people’s funny bone and to attract other media outlets to cover their story and give them exposure.

The goal with all digital assets is to make an emotional connection with the cats to inspire action. Desired actions include making a financial donation and lending support to the Federal legislation Big Cat Rescue and others like them are advocating.

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The Business of Social

Big Cat Rescue only has 12 paid staff, plus about 100 volunteers. All the cat caregivers are volunteers. There is a very structured program for volunteers. They receive a lot of training. The paid staff manages volunteers, communication relations, digital media and donor relations.

In case you’re wondering, most organizations of comparable size have 30 paid staff.

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A $108,000 Day

On May 6, 2014 there was a one day (first time) event named Give Day Tampa Bay. Local charities in the Tampa Bay area competed for donations through social media interaction.

Big Cat Rescue won the day with 802 donations. Carol’s strategy was to build social cred with funny cat pictures and asking people to donate $25 each.

Amazingly, they raised $85.8K plus $22.5K in prize money for a total of $108K in just 24 hours, 100% through their social networking engagement.

Big Cat Rescue won the most donations of all the charities in the competition. That’s $108K in one day, fueled entirely by social media engagement! Wow.

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Visual Social Marketing

It’s horrible to witness big cats living in people’s backyards or in basements. What makes people happy is seeing where their donations go. In the age of social media, people can see how the animals are living in a natural sanctuary just by visiting the website and the Big Cat Rescue YouTube channel. They have a secondary YouTube channel called Daily Big Cats that follows around the staff to show how the sanctuary is run by the people that make it happen everyday.

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Most Effective Social Channels

for Big Cat Rescue

All of Big Cat Rescue’s online channels are an opportunity to reach people around the world. While you can find Big Cat Rescue on just about any social media platform, their main ones are Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Instagram.

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Wait, there’s more!….You can take Big Cat Rescue with you on your mobile device through their podcast The Cat Chat show. It’s a video podcast where they interview people who are experts in the cat world, including small cat experts. It’s available weekly in iTunes and Libsyn for Android.

Cat Chat Podcast

Mobile App

I was surprised when I launched their mobile app, appropriately named Big Cat Rescue. This app serves to visually narrate the bio of each cat in the sanctuary including the origin and age of each cat, along with each cat’s picture and story.

iPhone app

Android app

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Using Social To Educate

In 2003 Big Cat Rescue was only able to rescue about 2% of the known cats that needed rescuing. Each year the number was doubling.

Some progress was made when the Captive Wildlife Safety Act passed in 2007. Last year only 37 cats needed rescuing and Big Cat Rescue accommodated 11 of them, which is 30% of the problem.

Big Cat Rescue uses social to keep people aware of advocacy, the issues and legislation. The current Federal bill pending in Congress will make it illegal to even own a big cat and will close all the loopholes.

Transparency Builds Trust

Carole’s answer to my “one thing” question is transparency….As a non-profit, Big Cat Rescue publishes all their financial records online. Carole believes that if all businesses were more transparent, consumers would have more trust in them and more businesses would prosper from their transparency.

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