ANIMAL PEOPLE is the
leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage
of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has
no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.
LIVERMORE, Calif.––Nancy Janes fell into founding Romania Animal
Rescue by accident, she often testifies.
Just
five years ago she knew little about Romania, and less about the dogs
there.
Now Dana Costin, cofounder with Rolando Cepraga of the ROLDA shelter in
Galati, Romania, says Janes “represents, from my point of view, a
model for everyone who wants to help animal charities abroad.”
Costin asked ANIMAL PEOPLE to profile Janes because she believes many
other U.S. animal advocates could adopt overseas animal charities, much
as Romania Animal Rescue has adopted ROLDA.
ROLDA is the chief beneficiary of Romania Animal Rescue, and Romania Animal
Rescue is in effect a support group for ROLDA. But Romania Animal Rescue
was not formed specifically to help ROLDA. Instead, it developed that
mission as the most efficient way Janes could find to fulfill her charitable
goals.
Romania Animal Rescue is now the largest single source of support for
the rapidly expanding ROLDA program, which includes advocacy, humane education,
street dog and cat sterilization, feeding and medicating the dogs at two
overcrowded and underfunded municipal shelters, and operating the ROLDA
shelter as a model of how sheltering ought to be done. Among 22 shelters
that ANIMAL PEOPLE has visited in Romania and five neighboring nations,
the ROLDA shelter is the only one that would currently exceed a score
of 80 by the strictest application of ANIMAL PEOPLE’s own 100-point
evaluation scale. (The Oregon Humane Society recently scored a rare 100––see
page 20.)
Romania Animal Rescue raised nearly $44,000 for ROLDA in 2004, with overhead
expenses of about $12,000 (21%, about as efficient as charities ever are
while still growing and not subsidized by interest from endowments).
ROLDA has had other major funders. Greyhound Action International, of
Britain, made the grant in 2001 that enabled ROLDA to expand from animal
rights advocacy to sheltering. A DELTA Rescue grant to help ROLDA feed
and medicate the Galati pound dogs was the biggest that ROLDA has ever
received. At least six individual readers of ANIMAL PEOPLE also substantially
aid ROLDA, many of them since reading a June 2004 profile of the organization.
The difference between Romania Animal Rescue and the other ROLDA funders
is that Romania Animal Rescue extends a range of other support services.
Nancy Janes has become both an efficient self-taught fundraiser and a
capable publicist, who in only three years has helped ROLDA to become
probably the Romanian animal charity best-known to U.S. donors.
Janes also brings Romanian dogs to the U.S. and finds homes for them,
with recent help from Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation executive
director Brenda Barnette.
In addition, Janes helps to recruit and screen volunteers who visit ROLDA
on working vacations. While helping ROLDA, the volunteers may stay at
a cottage on the ROLDA grounds, offering a spectacular vista of the surrounding
hills, including traditional gypsy camps across a deep valley.
By
the separate testimony of both women, Janes has become almost an elder
sister to Costin, as gentle and patient as Costin is sometimes impatient
and temperamental. They often dream and brainstorm together via the Internet.
“Dana and I are always looking for new and innovative solutions.
Our donors regularly give suggestions, which we encourage,” says
Janes. “In my opinion, animal welfare is still a learning experience.
If we knew all the answers, we would not have the problem!”
Janes was not looking for any such relationship, or a new avocation, when
five years ago she ran a Google web search for information about “Romania
Dogs.”
Born in Milwaukee, Janes spent much of her childhood in Lake Bluff, Illinois;
spent her teen years in Santa Fe, New Mexico; worked for two years as
a bank teller and five years as an American Airlines flight attendant;
then for 20 years kept the books for her husband Rory Janes’ two
horse equipment shops in the east San Francisco Bay area.
Janes’ experience in nonprofit work was limited to leading hikes
for the Sierra Club for about six years and staffing information booths
on behalf of the Greenbelt Alliance.
Animal advocacy was among her concerns in both activities––“I
have always viewed helping the environment as the best way to help wild
animals,” she says––but she did not work with any animal
groups.
In 2001 Janes and two friends joined a Sierra Club hiking tour of the
Carpathian mountains in Transylvania. They discovered the most abundant
street dog population in Europe, and some of the most backward and brutal
animal control methods.
“I tried to work with established groups, but with no luck,”
Janes recalls. “No one wanted to take on Romania, especially after
what happened to Brigitte Bardot,” who made a huge investment in
street dog sterilization in Bucharest only to see mayor Traian Basescu
(now president of Romania) unleash one of the most ruthlessly vicious
dog pogroms of recent times.
“My thought was, ‘Well, the dogs are still suffering, and something
needs to be done. If no one helps me, I’ll try to do it myself,’”
Janes remembers.
Janes began using the Internet to intervew potential project partners.
“I was ready to set up a place in Romania on my own,” Janes
admits. “What a mistake that would have been! Dana enlightened me
on how to deal with the Romanian authorities. Dana,” a law student,
“works diligently and cautiously with the authorities, and has taught
me the rules to follow and how to be patient.
“I think it is important to understand how the country you are trying
to help works,” Janes emphasizes, “whether you agree or not.
You are definitely not going to change their ways overnight!”
Janes also emphasizes the importance of personally meeting potential partners.
“You must meet the people you are going to work with and check out
what they do in person,” Janes states. “Do not believe everything
you read on the Internet!”
E-mail persuaded Nancy and Rory Janes to help ROLDA buy a truck, urgently
needed to haul materials, supplies, and dogs from central Galati to the
shelter site. They then flew to Romania in 2003 to see what had been done
with the investment. Two weeks of volunteer work at ROLDA convinced them
to make it the focal project of Romania Animal Rescue Inc., which received
U.S. charitable status in August 2003.
“I found Dana to be determined and bold,” Janes recalls. “She’s
tough, and has made perfectly clear that she can handle herself without
my help. I like that in her!”
Nancy
and Rory Janes also spent working vacations at ROLDA in 2004 and 2005,
and brought Costin to the 2004 Conference on Homeless Animal Management
and Policy, in Orlando, partly as a training opportunity, partly to help
her expand the ROLDA support network.
While in the U.S., Costin visited and personally thanked as many high
donors as she could. She will return to the U.S. for the 2005 CHAMP conference,
in Anaheim, co-sponsored by Romanian Animal Rescue and ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Site
visits are a Must
“Regular
site visits are a must,” Nancy Janes says. “Donors must feel
confident about you, and you need to feel confident about the work being
done. Each donation is important to each donor, and therefore needs to
be supervised. Supervision is the job of the sponsor.”
Janes does not confuse supervision with direct management.
Traditionally, charities in donor nations support projects in less affluent
parts of the world either by starting foreign outposts, or by making grants
on a project-by-project basis. Either traditional approach permits the
trustees of donor charities to keep close control of the money. Unfortunately,
both traditional approaches also inhibit program success.
Missionary projects often become permanent expatriate enclaves, making
little progress toward penetrating and changing the cultures surrounding
them. All ideas and initiative come from the parent organization. Locals
are just hired help, seldom acquiring deep understanding of the work.
Giving grants on a project-by-project basis frequently achieves even less.
Recipient organizations often lurch from new activity to new activity,
unable to sustain even their most successful initiatives, and are limited
to pursuing goals on a part-time basis because grant-givers rarely fund
operating costs or salaries.
Few grant-givers want to help existing programs. Frequently a grant-giver
will fund the acquisition of a building or a vehicle, but not the ongoing
expense of using or maintaining it. The result is that in the name of
avoiding waste, grant-giving foundations in all branches of charity have
littered the world with half-finished construction and lightly used junk
prominently bearing their nameplates.
“Romania Animal Rescue has not only changed my life, it has become
my life,” Janes admits. “It is all I think of, not because I
have to, but because I want to.
“It has been a real challenge for us financially,” Janes acknowledges.
“Rory and I never argued about money. Now we do.”
Among Rory Janes’ contributions, beyond cash, business savvy, and
patience, is organizing an annual fundraising golf tournament at the Clayton
Valley Country Club. The second tournament was promoted by KOIT radio
and <www.Sfgate.com>, the news web site jointly sponsored by the
San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. Prizes were donated by many prominent
San Francisco Bay area businesses. It netted $7,000, quite a decent take
for a still young charity.
Old friends “have been openly critical of my choice to help Romania,”
Nancy Janes says. “Needless to say, the hardest part is raising funds.
I hate asking good people for money––they should not have to
sacrifice for the abuses of others. Unfortunately this is not the way
the world works,” Janes laments.
“The people I would like to make pay huge amounts to animal welfare
are the abusers. The SIDEX steel factory in Galati,
for instance, should have to pay for poisoning as many as 3,000 dogs
this winter,” Janes opines. “They are evil, and must be punished.
This is black-and-white as far as I am concerned. But I guess if
the good people were the most powerful, animals would not be in a crisis
in the first place.
“People are suspicious as to what they are funding,” Janes continues,
“and they just don’t have an idea of what it is really like
for the dogs in Romania. They ask, ‘Why help dogs in Romania? Dogs
need help in the USA!’ and ‘What about the children?’
“I knew this would be hard to do, as a U.S. person helping in Romania,
and it is a constant challenge. How do I convince another person
that there is a crisis requiring help, especially if the potential donor
does not even know me?” Janes asks. “Others are helping with
other very worthy charities. All I can hope for is to see in Romania the
progress that western countries have made for dogs.
“I wish I had known how much time and money this would take,”
Janes concedes. “I wish I had known that who you know is probably
the most important thing in fundraising. No matter how good we are, how
honest, and how hard we work, recognition seems to come only when we become
connected with the right person or people. Not being comfortable around
people has made this difficult for me. I am always nervous at conferences
and meetings, but I am working on that!
“Animals and I seem to naturally bond together,” Janes confesses,
“and before starting Romania Animal Rescue I would avoid human contact.
I did not know there were so many good people out there,” as now
assist her in helping Romanian dogs.
“This experience has not only enriched the lives of the dogs, but
mine as well,” Janes concludes.
