"The horse knows how to be a horse if we will leave him alone... but the riders don't know how to ride. What we should be doing is creating riders and that takes care of the horse immediately." - Charles de Kunffy
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On This Page
Equine Business Resources
Scheduling Tools, Communication, and Software
Lesson Scheduling
Barn Management Tools
Horse Record Keeping Tools
Meeting Coordination Tools
Safety, Emergency, and Disaster Planning
Security as Safety
Fire Prevention
Community Needs and Your Impact
Major Private Capital Assistance
Grant Writing
Close the Sale - Make Payment Easy
Cost-Savings Environmental Stewardship and Community Relevance
Product or Service Providers
Other Resources
On Other Pages Getting Started
Getting Started
Legal Business Entity Mission Statement
Business Plan
Internal Revenue Service State Corporation Commission
Agreements Contracts and Forms Equine Lawyers
Agriculture Lawyers Other Special Times for Lawyers If Business Goes Badly
Taxes
Banking, Financing
Accounting and Business Management Tools
Reservation Management Software
Membership Rosters and Billing
Horse Record Keeping Tools
Service Statistics Recordkeeping and Reports
State and National Statistics and Reports
Close the Sale - Make
Payment Easy Safety, Emergency, and Disaster Planning
Board of
Directors Other Resources
Equine Business Insurance
Liability Insurance Property & Casualty Insurance Care Custody and
Control Insurance Summer Camp Insurance
Workers Compensation, Critical Illness, Disability, or Key Man Insurance and Pet Trusts
Staffing and Human Resources Page
Board of
Directors
Employee Recruiting
Equine Job Placement Services
Applicant Background Checks
Legal Immigration
Contractors
Recognition
Volunteers, Paid Contractors
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Horse Selection Consulting, Horse Sales
Horsemanship, Stable Management, Riding Instruction
Balimo Program Certified Instructor, Clinician, or Rider
If Certification Must Wait
Therapeutic Riding Center or Instructor or Therapist, Visiting Pet, Animal Rescue or Sanctuary
Associations for Professional Standards
Advertising and Marketing Page
Advertising and Marketing
Budget Some Cash
Develop a Marketing Plan
Corporate Identity
Your Logo
Your Web Presence
Online Fillable Forms
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Affiliate Links
Online Surveys and Polls
Marketing Your
Website
Print
Signage
Press Releases
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E-mail Surveys, E-Newsletters, E-invitations
Television
Public Relations and Publicity
Free Publicity
Crisis Management
Corporate and Other Partnerships
Direct Online Payment
Community Business Organizations
Branded Items for Clients, Campers, Special Events and Staff via e-Stores
Other Resources
Special Event, Horse Show, Camp, Clinic, Workshop Retreat, Trail Trial Marketing and Management Page
Event Planning Comprehensive Tools
Horse Shows
Online Management Software
On Site Programs
Awards and Trophies
Develop a Marketing Plan
Online Fillable Forms
Online Payments
Online Surveys and Polls
Affiliate Links
Branded Items for Clients, Campers, Special Events and Staff via e-Stores
Signage
Public Speaking
Photography
Farm Calendar
Public Relations and Publicity
Free Publicity
Print
Television and Radio
Press Releases
Crisis Management
Media Kit
E-mail Surveys, E-Newsletters, E-invitations
Corporate and Other Partnerships
Promoting a Special Day, Week or Month and Using Themes
National Day of ...
Holiday
Month Long National Awareness Theme
Camp or Retreat
Resources for Do-It-Yourselfers
For Children
Mounted Activities
Dismounted Activities Supplies
For Adults
(Top of Page)The focus of the site is to be rich in content, and easy to read onscreen. A majority of small horse businesses are on slow dial-up connections
(cannot afford cable or DSL, or it is not available in their rural area) and using older versions of operating systems and browsers on older computer platforms (usually acquired from people who upgraded to newer technology.) Therefore, you won't see tons of frames, flash, page transitions, and multimedia effects here. We avoid colored text on dark backgrounds,
which can be nearly impossible to read on a monitor. We even keep the pictures small and to a minimum to facilitate page loading. So if the visual effects are bland, you now know why! We don't want our visitors to give up due to long page-loads and hard to read color combinations and time-consuming bells and whistles - they just don't have that kind of time.
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Large sections acquire their own page, to keep the resources easy to read. |
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As we find a broken link, we remove it if we cannot easily repair it. Please notify the webmaster if you find one. |
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If you are a horse business using a tool, resource, or website we haven't listed, we encourage you to tell us about it (please provide URL) on our
feedback page, so we can share it with others. Likewise, if you think a listing is useless, let us know! |
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If you are a service provider or vendor with something to offer horse businesses, please tell us about your product, service, or marketing opportunity so we can share it, via our
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Nominations for Special Recognition to horse businesses or horse product or service companies are welcomed. Any entity (individual, business, or agency) that has done or is doing something remarkable for the benefit of the senior horse is eligible.
Presently, the method to nominate someone for Senior Horse Special Recognition is on our feedback page. |
Del Camino does not endorse, approve, guarantee, warranty, or otherwise recommend any product, service, vendor, book, article, website, webzine, magazine linked on this page.
 The last decade
from 1998 to 2008 has witnessed a phenomenal change in the business environment for horse operations. Beginning with high schools, community colleges and now four year state agricultural colleges joining boarding and vocational schools to offer Equine Studies
programs, to veterinary breakthroughs in breeding, injury treatment, and senior care, to major shifts in public policies, environmentalism, and the population from which new horse owners are drawn, America has changed. The large horse population of which 60% are not involved in breeding, racing, showing, or farm/ranch
work have garnered the attention of manufacturers and retailers of
equine products and services. These vendors follow closely
the economic and industry trends and best practices of other North
American businesses. Providers of everything from liability
insurance to feed supplements and farriery services and online
classified ad sites now count individual horse owners and recreational trainers and stable owners among their customers.
Small equine businesses have yet to receive much attention from traditional horse industry groups; breeding associations and racing, show, rodeo, and auction services, equine industry and farm and ranch political action groups, and their service providers, remain focused on the horse production industry's needs and goals. That horse
industry works within a ten-year lifespan of the horse that harks back to a pre-internal combustion engine business model, and is unable to grasp the reality of the modern horse's 25-35 year lifespan, the totally transformed roles and needs of both the over age 10 horse, and the horse owning population that maintains one or many.
Consequently, the two disparate horse industries are often competing for the same customer base, and this is unlikely to evolve into cooperation and mutual success any time soon. The "old" horse community intractably follows formulas that are several generations out-of-date, while the "new" horse community, unfettered by how great-grandfather did
it, embraces modernity. Without understanding how to communicate effectively with the old industry that continues to depend on a New Deal Depression Era economic model of government subsidies and short horse life spans, modern stables are left with few mentors and resources.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of horses have found a purpose with small innovative, customer service-oriented horse facilities. Here, we intend to serve those horses, donkeys, mules, and people.
Further, the horse industry and the horse owning community, are far behind other business sectors and social or sports communities in embracing environmental concerns - the other fastest growing business sector and now one of the criteria many people consider when evaluating businesses to patronize.
Additionally, both groups, producers and owners, remain well behind their non-equine counterparts in using business tools of any kind; accounting software, marketing tools, sales and client management tools, to manage their commercial horse businesses. This is not surprising, but it means many equine businesses founded by non-horse professionals lack
horse expertise, and those founded by horse professionals tend to lack business expertise, even if they had a commercial equine-related business.
Most would-be farmers and ranchers in other agricultural enterprises take more college business courses than do most would-be horse professionals, and the courses offered to them or required of them tend to be more substantial than the industry "surveys" typical of the Equine Science programs. The vast majority of horse professionals have little or no
formal business or technology training.
If you are not depressed or dissuaded yet, take heart! There is a great deal of help available, and many tools for small businesses, small farms, and equine enterprises. If you have solid for-profit business management experience, as well as the specific skills for equine-related activities, and a driving passion for your business, you can succeed.
Del Camino helps
horse facilities and services find timely information that
benefits their program and success. We want to see riding academies, driving schools, dude ranches, carriage services, vaulting clubs, search and rescue teams, equine-assisted activities centers, and retirement stables grow and prosper. We would like
horse operations to be well-operated and fully supported by their local
communities. The benefits of horseback riding to humans is a
well-established fact, and the therapeutic benefits to individuals,
and cultural benefits to the wider society, mean every effort should be
expended to develop viable humane businesses that use well-trained,
good tempered, well-seasoned horses. It can be done.
For equine entrepreneurs and small businesses there is virtually no professional organization or safety net to guide or support them. Sure, there are breed associations, and benevolent societies for injured jockeys and trainers, and competitive associations, but these do no focus on the business end of operations. Then too,
there are general business associations and farm or ranch associations, but, again, their focus is on production and distribution of products or services too different to relate to, even on the livestock end. Few horse breeders, after all, in the entire world, produce horses for consumption This lack of focused tools and resources just should not happen in a country where 70%
of a 330 million person population has a love affair with the horse, and the brightest, most innovative, most successful business minds on the planet are available! We realized that providing a central clearinghouse of helpful information could benefit all.
Our for-profit horse businesses -
whether they are training and competition stables, recreational boarding barns, horse retirement ranches, riding academies, or carriage operators, are competing in a modern world where they fall between the cracks of the USDA and the SBA. At
Del Camino, we believe our equine-related businesses need all the
help they can get to succeed and thrive. In this way we hope to
help thousands of horses, not just one or two.
If
you think we are on the right or wrong track, please give us your
feedback.
Need to Set and Achieve some Goals to make your horse business a successful reality? Look into this software that guides you through the process Click Here!
Are there danger signs that I am heading for debt troubles?
Aside from the percentage of payments to take-home pay or gross income, there are some very reliable danger signs:
You are making only minimum monthly payments on your credit card accounts.
You have to use credit for expenditures that you once paid cash for.
You have used a series of consolidation loans, home equity loans, or other types of loans to pay overdue bills.
You are borrowing from one lender to pay another. For example, you take a cash advance on your bank card to pay amounts owed to other banks or retailers.
You begin to run a few days late on critical payments, such as your rent or mortgage payment, or you are consistently late with all your bill payments so that late fees are piling up.
You dip into savings for normal living expenses. American Bar Association Family Legal Guide
Copyright © 2004 American Bar Association
If you put on horse shows for an association, you may also need to recruit and assign volunteers.
 Here's How You Can Quickly and Easily Have Your Own Horse Show!
It will be The Source of Fun and Excitement for Your Riders, and Riders from Your Local Area, plus More….
Without Struggling to Figure Out What to do Next! Have Your Own Horse Show.
Complete Do-It-Yourself Have Your Own Horse Show Guide.
Organization is a powerful tool. Meeting with creative people and service providers can be time consuming, and difficult for horse trainers who are on the road to shows and clinics. Google Apps is a Suite of Web-based applications that include Gmail (email & chat including mobile devices), Google Talk (text
and voice), Google Calendar (including meetings and shared calendars), Google Docs (create, share, collaborate on documents real-time), Google Sites (team sharing of internal information, employee handbooks, marketing materials an artist or writer is designing for you, a report for the bookkeeper, etc.), Start Page to collect all of the applications together.
Microsoft Small Business on MSN has many tools for small businesses for free or nearly free.
A lesson scheduling
program goes beyond the whiteboard in the tack room or barn office. It is Faster: Spend less time scheduling appointments and more time focusing on customers. Quickly add or locate customers, find available appointment times, manage waiting lists, and schedule appointments in seconds.
It is Flexible: Customer Appointment Manager is designed to accommodate your unique needs. Use definable fields to store information important to you and your business. Export or print your appointment calendar and reports in various formats.
It is Easy to Use: An intuitive design makes Customer Appointment Manager easy to learn and use. Getting started is effortless and you'll be scheduling customers in no time.
View appointments by day, week, or month. Find open times quickly. Fill cancellations and avoid no-shows. Email customer appointment reminders. Create personalized letters and mailing labels. CAM works with PDAs and synchronizes with QuickBooks.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has established guidelines for the selection, care, client interaction with, appropriate activities of and well-being of
animals that work in animal assisted activities and therapies. If your horses work in the field of equine-assisted therapy or equine-assisted learning, you should review their recommendations and evaluate your program procedures and staff training to confirm that your valuable horses are managed in a way that optimizes their lives and contributions.
Most of the equine record software packages or print forms on the market are designed for single horse owners, breeding farms, or show training stables. While most do a decent job of tracking vaccinations, worming, and shoeing, they usually include pedigree, breeding, showing, or billing features you don't need at a
boarding stable, retirement or lay-up facility, carriage business, event management business, lesson academy, riding camp, equine studies program, or for-profit equine-assisted activities center. If you purchase one, you are likely to be disappointed that you cannot track information you need about a school, therapy, or working horse, or a client's horse you are
rehabilitating or a project horse you intend to rehome.  If
you purchase the software simply to track horse care and maintenance, most will do the job. The majority are too rudimentary on the billing and collection side for accounting purposes. Either they are not robust accounts receivable packages, or they do not interface smoothly with complete accounting packages like QuickBooks, or they do not offer PayPal or
credit card or e-mail interfaces so that you must print paper invoices. Some are deficient in all three areas. These are actually better for pure animal care tracking, because they do not include extra incomplete features you will handle in good accounting software instead.
 Here's an easy online calendar from Intervet for
tracking health records. It can be an excellent tool to collaborate with absentee owners, a good link to include in a packet for new horse owners, and is certainly a cost-free way to get started with good records on your horses from the beginning. Foal Care
Either way, if you intend to care for even a few horses, or have several clients, or plan to be in business more than a year, you need records. Further, those records need to be accessible and easy to maintain. For help setting up a simple but useful system that tracks your horses, and ensures you get paid for
services rendered, contact us.
Scheduling a meeting of a planning committee, a board, part-time staff that work different shifts, or clients preparing for an out-of-barn show can soak up precious time. Today, travel around town to attend a meeting is expensive in fuel as well as time. People who would like to help you part-time or on an
as-needed basis and have great skills to offer may live an impractical distance away or, due to a full time job, can only meet in the evening but can't drive to your farm at night. Gain flexibility and participation by skilled advisors and part-time staff by holding meetings online, or a combination of online
and at the farm. Here are some tools to investigate, besides the traditional telephone conference call. Can you do the part of your extra seasonal staff orientation and training that does not have to be hands on as an online seminar? Can your board or officers meet this way some of the time? How about standing committees of associations that you
belong to? Being on these committees can be valuable to your business, but can't take you away from the stable and revenue-producing activities. That is probably true for the other members as well, so they may be quite receptive to learning to use online meeting tools. Can you offer online
courses to supplement income?
TIP: When training or riding or handling horses, experienced horsepeople make it easy for the horse to do the right thing, and a little bit difficult, awkward, or too much trouble, to do the wrong thing. When training, recruiting, organizing or communicating with
important human assets to your business, the same principle applies: make it easy to do, and stop making it difficult, awkward, or too much trouble or too much time to do. Use that computer that is taking up space on your desk to connect you to your most valuable resources - people!
Typically, the software offers access to both PC and Mac users, enables you to share your entire desktop, and transfer control to another user, as well as record the meeting. Some offer video conferencing and/or audio conferencing, and current versions of most plans do not
require downloading software to the attendees' computers. Virtually all offer a free trial period and an unlimited number of sessions per month. Big variables among the industry leaders are:
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the number of users per session ranging from 10 to 150,
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the monthly fees ranging from $29 to $100,
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whether or not they include onscreen live chat or integrated voice-over-internet (VOIP).
Here are five major vendors for you to check out.
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Go To Meeting
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Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro |
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Microsoft Office Live Meeting |
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Cisco's Webex |
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MegaMeeting |
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Webtrain An advantage of most web conferencing services have over in-person meetings is the ability to record entire meetings as a video or audio file. If some
staff or volunteers cannot attend, or meeting attendees forget important points or need to reference presentations at a later date, they can simply view the recording rather than contact other participants with questions. Find out how the service provider you are considering stores the recording. Some allow you to download it to your local machine, while others host
the files on their own site. Some make both options available. A video or audio file can be large, so this is a point to consider if your nonprofit's computers have limited hard-drive space.
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September is National Emergency Preparedness Month each year. The prestige and credibility of your equine business can be enhanced by providing community service as a partner with the Department of Homeland Security. Using materials conveniently available through
Ready.gov, you can distribute information and tools for large animal emergency planning, or coordinate local large stables, fairgrounds, racetracks, horse show venues, rodeo or roping arenas as temporary shelters in the event of an emergency.
SUCCESS AND CREDIBILITY TIP FOR HORSE BUSINESSES: Distributing Safety, Emergency, and Disaster Planning information year-round via your website or barn office provides an opportunity for related free publicity about your business and its core mission. As the
location where local law enforcement and fire department first responders train for large animal rescue and extraction, you would have an opportunity to nurture goodwill and awareness among people who constantly come into contact with potential customers. Make sure you have your
press release and media kit ready to take advantage of it.
TIP: If your business works with the special needs population, consider a link on your website to: Disabilities/911, the disaster preparedness website for persons with disabilities.
As you develop your equine business' own safety, emergency, and disaster plans, don't forget to maintain good regular backups of your computer software and data, from email address books to online accounts to actual accounting data, contact databases, and horse records. The first thing you may need to
access following an evacuation may be your lists of clients and vendors. No backups should be more than a week old, and if you need to subscribe to an automatic online service to get this peace of mind, you only need to use it once when a computer's hard disk crashes to realize it is worth every penny.
Please visit the Emergencies Page of our Senior Horse Care section for more tips and resources for emergency and disaster planning for horses and stables. For affordable assistance developing a practical Disaster Plan for your horse business, please
Contact Us.
You may become the subject of media attention in the event of an emergency or disaster. Now is a good time to review our tips for handling the media in a potentially negative situation. Visit our section in
Public Relations and Publicity called Crisis Management on the Advertising and Marketing tips page.
 If you intend to serve women and children clients at your farm, or if you intend to provide equine-assisted activities to vulnerable populations, such as children at a summer camp, persons with mental, emotional or physical conditions, you must attend to their safety and security needs.
You must also provide a safe and secure work environment for any employees. You must provide adequate
visitor identification and control, proper lighting for those walking to their cars at night, safe restrooms, and clear training and operational procedures.
TIP: Quality signage is an important statement of your professionalism, and can contribute significantly to safety. Designate parking areas and no-parking areas clearly. Specify which entrance to use if there is more than one. Post the proper Equine Warning signs for your state. If a gate must be
closed and latched, put a sign on it. If an area is off limits because of a hazard, there should be a sign. If you have rules like "Don't feed fingers to horses" put signs where fingers are tempted. Visit the
Horse Business Resources - Advertising & Marketing page for tips on how to plan your overall signage needs and design.
Special Olympics offers excellent free online training on best practices for working with vulnerable populations. All equine facilities that serve women and children, can learn a great deal by
taking this course.
If you have female employees, and/or vulnerable clients, also consider checking your city, county, or state list of Registered Offenders periodically. Here in Phoenix, it displays a map of the locations of their residences. I was surprised how many lived in our neighborhood, within a couple of blocks of the schools. A beautiful
little horse farm that attracts kids or women is as attractive to these bad apples as a public park, carnival, gym or playground. Sorry, but that is the modern world in which we live. Just because you are on a back country road is no longer a reason to feel a false sense of security.
Budget for small security improvements like gate alarms, lighting, cameras and so on each year. Few of us have a Sugar Daddy providing the ideal secured perimeter and monitoring from day one. But you can plan to handle the most urgent needs first, and keep improving. Plus, you can get your local sheriff or police
department to pay a courtesy visit at a time convenient to them to meet you and discuss what you are doing to protect your assets, your animals, and your visitors.
Barn fires are one of a stable operator's worst nightmares. Can you believe they still happen every year? The number of occurrences country wide might surprise you. Learn how to prevent them. We all think it will never happen to us. Don't hope so, make sure. Visit our
Emergencies page for many helpful tips, tools, and links.
Laurie Loveman is an professional horsewoman, veterinary assistant, breeder, firefighter and stable owner. She is also the author of a series of novels and a contributor to Appaloosa World. Laurie has a website dedicated to preventing barn fires that kill horses,
other animals, and people.
From the very beginning, collect and keep verifiable statistics on the equine community, and larger local community that you serve. As your equine business grows, and you become eligible to apply for grants and participation on government and civic committees and boards that impact your mission, you need to
clearly and briefly articulate the impact of your organization on the equine, and larger community. For example, let us say you have a therapeutic riding center that wants to assist wounded warriors who are amputees from Afghanistan and Iraq. How many are there in your geographic area?
Nationally, as of mid-2007 there were 803. What if you open your vision to include Vietnam veterans? Nationally, there are 75,000 Vietnam veterans with disabilities. Perhaps a reasonable client base live within a half hour drive of your center, and have conditions you are well equipped to serve. This knowledge directs your grant requests
toward a slightly different audience.  If you are writing a grant request for a horsemanship camp for at-risk youth, you must make the case that youth in your community are at risk, and that similar programs have had positive results for other communities. What information can you cite from state,
county, and local schools, churches, and government and non-profit youth programs concerning at-risk youth in your area? What have been the historical experience trends? Are there more or fewer documented cases over the last five years? Are the cases specific to a time of year, or concentrated in particular zip codes? What are the gender,
age, literacy proficiency, and English skills of the at-risk youth? You may find that no such statistics are available, once you make contact with and develop positive working relationships with local agencies. Perhaps your first grant will actually be to set up a system for collecting and analyzing this data. Perhaps you simply need to make
telephone calls once monthly to complete a questionnaire you design to collect the data. But make no mistake. This data is valuable.
According to The Equestrian Land Conservation Resource, land is being lost to development at the astonishing rate of 250 acres per hour, so it's important to stem
the tide. ELCR offers a publication, "Horses Make Good Neighbors," that educates people who are not familiar with horses about the important ways in which horses contribute
to their local communities.
 Pfizer Animal Health & Stable Management magazine present the 2009 Giving Back Contest. Top Prize of $10,000! Equine professionals running a profit-generating business in the equine field are eligible, not non-profit organizations. The
contest is about using your equine business to give back to the community, either locally or globally. Visit Stable Management to view Giving Back's 2008 winners and get complete 2009 contest details. Entries must be received by June 15, 2009.
TIP: Become a travel destination for
vacationing singles, couples, and families. Today, many people
combine volunteering with vacationing. Two animal
sanctuaries have successfully tapped into this emerging market in Del
Camino's neighborhood. Keepers of the Wild in Valentine, AZ, and
Best Friends in Kanab, UT. Read about their creative volunteer
opportunities at the end of this article about Volunteer Vacationing
from a website and magazine that serves this "Voluntourism".
Few venture capitalists look to invest in horse businesses. However, there are well-heeled investors who simply love horses, and might invest in a horse business with a special appeal. Just as foundations and corporations can make large grants to your business, but want to see that you receive plenty of operating revenue from
a variety of other sources, and do your accounts and proposals in a professional way, individual philanthropists do not wish to be the only or major revenue source on which you depend. Likewise, if you are an entrepreneur who has passionately given your time, energy, and a great deal of your own money to launch an equine business, you probably yearn for a handful of people you can rely upon
occasionally for short-term loans for significant
projects that traditional lenders would find a hard sell. But, if you are stuck in jeans caring for boarded horses forty miles from town working for next to nothing, or spending your own savings, you probably don't rub elbows with potential wealthy backers in the stadium skyboxes every weekend of football season, or don your finery on weekend evenings to hobnob with the swells at the symphony who have season tickets.
Without a full-time staffer who can identify VIP donors interested in equine projects for you, qualify these prospects, and package a presentation that appeals appropriately, you have to start somewhere.
Begin by getting all your other ducks in a row. Everything you need to present your business with a professional image to your community, the press, foundations, companies, and potential high-quality volunteers, you also need to
woo major private lenders or investors. Then, and only then, should you prospect among strangers, so that you do not "burn" opportunities. When you are ready it should not surprise you to learn that major non-profits use lead services to find such people, just like other sales forces do. A good service that saves you a great
deal of time, and can access data on income, past charitable contributions, and other relevant public records is worth its fees. Otherwise, the cost of subscribing to even one or two "Who's Who" kind of publications would be prohibitive, and you would need to know in advance how current the listings are. Also, the public records databases that show who has given large
donations are time-consuming to learn to use. It can take days to screen just a few names and get usable telephone numbers and addresses. When you are ready, these specialized "data miners" can also help you find gold and diamonds in your own records. That's right, if you have decent records of current and past visitors, small purchasers, special event attendees, and
clients, those names can be compared to the VIP databases to discover people who have already given you a little of their time or money who are actually potential major players. If you don't capture good information about the people who contact your equine business from the very beginning, you could be leaving many
sources of support behind. You owe it to yourself and the horses to do it right from the start.
Here's one called Wealth Engine, that helps non-profits find philanthropists interested in their field:
Once you have a program to recognize clients, staff, regular vendors and corporate or non-profit partners, and have hosted a few fund raisers, you will be able to capitalize on major VIP donors, and recognize them in meaningful ways, so that they form a special group of supporters. Once you can report successful outcomes of your projects in newsletters, grant conclusion
summaries, and press releases, you will know how to approach VIPs you have not yet partnered with, and how to keep those who have participated as lenders or investors coming back. Just as turnover in employees and vendors is costly, having to find new VIP partners takes time and money, so keeping a smaller group happy is worthwhile.
Many equine-related businesses have heard about grants, and are anxious to apply for them. There is a difference between a donation, a scholarship, and a grant. In order to write a grant request that will be read, much less approved, your organization typically must
meet several basic criteria:
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Passed the IRS 3 year start-up
probationary period. |
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Have a written: strategic plan,
annual budget, current filed IRS Tax Report,
and Certificate of Compliance from your state corporation commission |
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An annual revenue from sources other than grants for ongoing support of your core operation. Usually this level of financing must pass a dollar amount threshold for grants of significant sums. In other words, if your income from fees, logo item sales, special events, and hauling is $20,000 per year
over a three year history, it is unlikely you will qualify for a
$200,000 grant to build a covered arena.
The reviewers want to be sure you have ongoing support of your core
activity before starting a a new project that you may be unable to
sustain after the grant period ends. Similarly, they are not
interested in helping fund capital improvements for an organization
that does not have the funds for repairs and maintenance or to stay in
operation to use the improved site, horse ambulance, etc. |
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Write a good proposal with measurable
outcomes, such as increased clients served, horses trained, or special needs athletes participating in the Regional Show. |
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Include verifiable information about
the involvement and commitment of your Board of Directors. |
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Have a written plan how your new project, such as vocational training for at-risk youth, socially disadvantaged groups, or returning veterans, will be sustained year-on-year, or how your summer horse camp for military kids, or junior RTC leadership would continue without the support of this sponsor. That is, after the first year funded by a grant, how will the success be repeated and incorporated into your other
staffing and revenue producing activities. |
This means that all the business things you
do to start and run your horse business for success and longevity come
together in the grant writing effort. From recruiting a truly
effective Board of Directors, to keeping good horse maintenance
records, to filing your taxes on time, the welfare of your mission depends
on being a good business, as well as riding instructor or barn manager.
Write well. If you have not written
a business proposal in your past, read several grant proposals that
were addressed to appropriate philanthropic or government entities
that were accepted. If you do not think you can write a clear,
compelling, business-like proposal, get professional help.
Hire a freelance consultant, such as a technical writer or grant writer or business consultant. Contact us for more information.
Devote some real attention to the quality
of your website and brochures and client materials.
All of these will be evaluated for their appearance, coordination,
timeliness and effectiveness as part of the "due diligence" of a group
considering granting your proposal. So you should have these
"ducks in a row" first. If there is no way for a granting agency to "buy"
smoothly and conveniently when visiting your website, or after reading
your brochure, it appears to the grantor that the benefactor will be
throwing their money away. Also, if you practice writing good
brief clear compelling copy for web pages and tri-fold brochures and
press releases, you are gaining the experience and skills you need to
write grant proposals. Once you have honed a "perfect paragraph"
for your Mission Statement and your "About Us" web page, you will reuse
these paragraphs in many other written materials.
PayPal.com
You must ask for the order! When people visit your compelling website, they come from various searches. The "landing page" may be the ad for a particular horse for lease. Once someone navigates away from the one page where you have placed clickable reservation button or inquiry link, there is a 80% likelihood they will not return to
it. Put the links next to the topic. It may be your "home" page, or the story of a recent event you held. There should be an appropriate PayPal button on that page.
 Do you have boarders? There should be a "Pay My Board Bill" button on that page. PayPal enables
people to immediately make a reservation while the spirit moves them. It is safe, since they don't have to give you their credit card information. The buttons are easy to build. The money goes into your PayPal account, from which you can pay vendors directly, or transfer funds to checking or savings accounts. If you are not using PayPal to its full
potential, you are missing the boat! Today's boarder would rather click an onscreen button and fill a few fields on a form, than write a check, address an envelope, and put a stamp on it, or drive 20 miles to hand deliver a check or have his credit or debit card swiped. If you are not accepting online payments for board and training you are wasting both time
and money. Visit our Senior Horse Owner Resources, Quarterly Tips,
Forums, Blog, or Products for Horse Businesses for ways to save money.
Government regulation at the city, county, state and federal level is radically changing who, what, where, when and how people may interact with the environment and animals. Spurred by urban-based special interest groups and
academia, land use, energy use, animal care, property rights, personal safety, health, personal food production and consumption — all are now becoming regulated in ways that threaten man's relationship with horses, and his ability to house them, take them onto trails, or grow food for them and himself. These issues are frequently
addressed in our Blog. This means that every single farm in America, be it a family's backyard, a therapeutic riding center in the
city, a wedding carriage business, a boarding stable, or a trail ride operation into state lands must develop a plan and implement changes to showcase horses as:
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Environmentally sound - inot merely non-polluting but actually beneficial and energy conservative.
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Relevant contributors to the economic and social welfare of the broader local community.
Ten ways to make your horse operation more Earth-friendly, courtesy of TheHorse.com:
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Install gutters and downspouts on all buildings to divert clean rainwater away from high-traffic areas and reduce the amount of sediment that gets into the surface water. |
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Plant trees as dust barriers and protection for the banks of streams and ponds. |
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Use organic fertilizers and natural mineral compounds, such as rock phosphate. |
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Use biodegradable and nontoxic shampoos and cleaners around the barn. Channel wash water into grassy areas so it can be absorbed into the soil. |
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Mow weeds when you're about to rest a pasture; use nontoxic weed spray or a weed eater; mowing tall weeds also keeps mosquitoes down. |
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Install bird houses for purple martins, bluebirds, barn swallows, violet-green swallows and tree swallows, which can eat several thousand soft-bodied flying insects per day. |
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Set out shed or trimmed dog and horse hair so the bug-loving birds can use it for building nests. |
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Test the well water to see what your horses are drinking; filter the city water that they drink. |
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Install automatic waterers powered by geothermic heat to keep water cool in the summer and above freezing in the winter |
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Use wood byproducts (wood pellets or straw pellets) rather than virgin wood for bedding. Always avoid black walnut shavings because of potential laminitis complications. |
The Del Camino
Horse Owner
Products and Services catalog offers some
horse products of interest to owners of senior horses, and horses
being retrained or rehabilitated.
 E-book How to Make Your Horse Boarding Business Profitable in 10 Easy Steps .
The Del Camino Stable
Manager's Product and Services catalog offers products and
services of interest to those operating a horse facility.
 Mounting ramps and blocks for persons with disabilities, waler and gait belts, breakaway stirrups, bareback pads, therapeutic riding surcingles, reinbow loops, instructional aids for therapeutic riding
programs.
The Del Camino
forums provide a place to network
with other horse non-profits, and the
blog covers related timely topics.
If your company offers a discount to horse businesses, or offers them a service or co-marketing opportunity, please let us know. Presently, the best way to do that is by
e-mail with a contact name and website address.
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Del
Camino Equestrian Enterprises, Inc.
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