Episode Notes
Executive DirectorThe individual formally in charge of final decision making at an organization, who sometimes works closely with the organization’s Board of Directors. Sometimes a Founder is an Executive Director, especially early in a nonprofit’s growth stages. Mckenzee and NonprofitA non-governmental organization whose primary purpose is something other than selling goods or services. Specialist Julia celebrate our eight years of operation by discussing the year in review at The Open Sanctuary Project. We know that our audience of compassionate caregivers are often caught up in the day-to-day work of direct care for animals, so this is your chance to catch up with what’s new this year in freely accessible resources to help you do the work of operating your organization and caring for your residents! To get a rundown on the work we’ve done this year to help you, check out this episode!
This Episode’s Referenced Open Sanctuary Project Resources:
- The Open Sanctuary Project’s Animal Database
- The Open Sanctuary Project’s AI Tool Usage Policy
- When Cows Can’t Stand: Understanding Causes And Making Sure You Are Prepared To Help
- Daily Observation For Alpaca Health And Well-Being
- Daily Observation For Llama Health And Well-Being
- Addressing Equine Hoof Abscesses (vet reviewed)
- Understanding Flight Zone, Pressure Zone, And Point Of Balance In Sheep And Goats
- Pig Vision: More Than Meets The Eye
- A Cow’s Eye View
- Ocular Insights: Alpaca And Llama Vision
- A Goat’s-Eye View: How Goats See the World
- The Open Sanctuary Project’s Case For Support
- How The Open Sanctuary Project Measures Our Impact
Episode Transcript (Auto-GeneratedThe following content was transcribed through an automated process and may contain transcription errors or misspellings.)
Julia Magnus: Welcome to another episode of the Open Sanctuary Podcast. I’m Julia Magnus, the nonprofit specialist, and I’m with my friend and executive director Mckenzee Griffler.
Mckenzee Griffler: Hi friends.
Julia Magnus: And today we have a very special episode for you as well as a call to action. For those of you who utilize our resources regularly, you already know that the Open Sanctuary Project is a global lifeline for farmed animal sanctuariesAnimal sanctuaries that primarily care for rescued animals that were farmed by humans.. In a world where these vital havens often face challenges with limited resources and specialized knowledge gaps, OSP provides invaluable support. We offer free comprehensive, well-researched resources that allow sanctuaries to responsibly create and successfully manage a farmed animal sanctuaryAn animal sanctuary that primarily cares for rescued animals that were farmed by humans. and provide the best possible care for animals to help them live long, healthy, happy lives free of exploitationExploitation is characterized by the abuse of a position of physical, psychological, emotional, social, or economic vulnerability to obtain agreement from someone (e.g., humans and nonhuman animals) or something (e.g, land and water) that is unable to reasonably refuse an offer or demand. It is also characterized by excessive self gain at the expense of something or someone else’s labor, well-being, and/or existence.. We’ve been doing this now for eight years and we’re very proud of the strides that we’ve made, and it’s really clear that our community agrees with us. Not to toot our own horns, but we’re going to toot our own horns. Do we want to spend a moment highlighting some of the metrics that indicate the breadth and depth of the impact of our work?
Mckenzee Griffler: Absolutely. So, yeah, I just want to underscore how proud I am of all the work that the entire team of the Open Sanctuary Project does, and that’s you, Julia, Tara, Amber, Andy, and I’ll give myself a little credit as the executive director. In total since 2018 when we started, we have now published 812 resources freely available to the sanctuary and rescue community. That includes written resources, infographics, podcasts, downloads, videos, templates, and a lot of other stuff. That is a really big number of things, and wouldn’t you know, we have so many more things planned for the future. Also, in this year alone, we have newly published and updated 81 resources. I think that speaks to the critical value of us as a team treating the Open Sanctuary Project as a living encyclopedia. Because as information gets more refined, as we learn from the sanctuary and rescue community around the world, and as things like diseases get more complex in the landscape, it’s really important that we’re always providing that information as up-to-date and compassionately as possible. So, we always want to make sure that everything on our website is as up-to-date as possible. Having 81 things new or updated is really important to us. As of this month, we now have 117 vet-reviewed resources on our website and we are so excited by that. Having real DVMDoctor of Veterinary Medicine, an academic degree awarded to veterinarians in many countries. veterinarians who have true experience with a species that we are providing care guidance for is really important to us as an organization to make sure that we’re providing everything that sanctuaries could possibly know about these species and that they’re cross-referenced by professionals who have seen these situations and can provide their own context.
Vet review is one of the many things that we only can do with the support of the community because we pay our veterinarians to do so. So, we are so grateful—and we’re going to say it a lot of times—for the sanctuary community support and our listener support to be able to provide this information back to the sanctuary community. We now have 709 students in our compassionate care classroom. As you might know, we have many courses on the introductory care of various species in a sanctuary context now, including goats, sheep, large breedDomesticated animal breeds that have been selectively bred by humans to grow as large as possible, as quickly as possible, to the detriment of their health. chickens, and non-large breedA domesticated animal breed that has not been specifically engineered to grow as quickly as possible for the purpose of human consumption. In resources at The Open Sanctuary Project, "Heritage" breeds of turkeys, for instance, are "non-large breed", even if they are physically quite big. chickens. These are substantial free courses that end in a certificate that says that you’ve put in the time and that you’ve really demonstrated a lot of knowledge. In this year alone, we’ve had 121 students start a course. I just love that people are taking advantage of them because we know that a written resource can only go so far in teaching everything that one might need as introductory care guidance for these species. We’re so proud to be able to provide these tools. Much like everything else on our list, the compassionate care classroom is something that we are continually working on and continually doing the research to create new courses for additional species on our website. But being that each of these courses is upwards of seven hours of content long, including videos, diagrams, and quizzes, it takes time, and we really appreciate everyone’s grace in letting us take our time to make sure that they are the best courses possible.
This year alone, not including December, we have over 1.8 million hits on our website. That’s globally. That’s people looking at our resources, downloading our stuff, watching our videos, and listening to our podcasts. That is so many people accessing compassionate knowledge, and we couldn’t be more proud. We have over 3,400 downloads from our many downloadable resources. We’ve had over 269 of our care program evaluation checklists shipped globally to sanctuaries, and I’m constantly shipping new ones to new folks, and that makes us very happy. If you don’t know about the CPAC, we hope you check it out on our website at opensanctuary.org/care-evaluation. We have almost 300,000 unique users according to Google Analytics on our website this year. That’s individual people who are coming back to our website over and over again to see what’s changed and to learn new things. That is so many people in the world really dedicated to learning how to do right by these species and learning how to compassionately manage an animal organization. We have almost 10,000 downloads on this very podcast globally. That’s a lovely number, and I know that this information is relatively specialized. It makes me very happy to hear that it’s reaching so many people around the world.
Finally, we keep a count. It’s not a perfect count because it’s a relatively new thing we’ve been doing. But we keep a count of named animal organizations, sanctuaries, rescues, shelters, and animal protection organizations around the world that we know utilize our materials. I am so proud to say that we currently have a list of 1,091 named organizations in 46 countries accessing our resources. That just makes me so joyful that we can be of service to so many different organizations serving so many different animals and animal populations around the world. So, that’s a few of our numbers. I don’t want to get lost in it too much, but I’m really proud of everything we’ve achieved in the past eight years, but especially this year.
Julia Magnus: Yeah, that’s wild. Those numbers, hearing you read them aloud, is pretty affirming and it’s wonderful. Thank you all for making use of the very many hours that we spend researching and writing resources for you. It’s just great to know that you like it, you use it, and you value it. So, with all of that, we do know that it can be hard for busy caregivers to keep track of what we’ve released. We wanted to do this podcast to highlight some of the work that we’ve done this year specifically. We hope that this might help busy caregivers and give them a veganAn individual that seeks to eliminate the exploitation of and cruelty to nonhuman animals as much as possible, including the abstention from elements of animal exploitation in non-food instances when possible and practicable as well. The term vegan can also be used as an adjective to describe a product, organization, or way of living that seeks to eliminate the exploitation of and cruelty to nonhuman animals as much as possible (e.g., vegan cheese, vegan restaurant, etc.). smartboard of things to catch up on and also offer our supporters some more insight on a year in the life of OSP. So, let’s get started. We’ve mentioned this before, and obviously we’re coming at you from the podcast world, but it bears mentioning that OSP is a multimedia resource. Do you want to give a little overview of the kinds of resources we offer and why we offer information in so many different formats?
Mckenzee Griffler: So, we offer courses, infographics, written resources, this podcast, administrative tools, and some videos. We are very keen on recognizing the ways that animal caregivers and administrators in animal organizations are very busy people, and typically resources, especially the resource of time, are very limited. So not only do we want to provide as many different opportunities for different learning styles, but we also want to provide accessibility so that if somebody might not have the time to read a long resource on something, they can at least listen to a podcast about it or find a download that breaks it down easier, because ultimately we just want people to have good knowledge to help animals and we don’t want to presume to know that there’s only one way to do that.
Julia Magnus: So, you talked about the compassionate care classroom a bit before, but we could maybe break down some of these categories more and maybe even say more about the compassionate care classroom. Do you want to go down that road with us?
Mckenzee Griffler: Sure. So, for instance, with the compassionate care classroom, we developed that with caregivers and volunteers in mind and how they would most likely best interface with this material. We wanted to make sure that it’s very easy to make progress, but then you can leave for a while and come back to it when you need to, and it will save where you’re at. It has really carefully written lesson plans building from foundations to more advanced topics, and it’s supported with photos, videos, and brief quizzes to make sure that everyone’s on the same page, especially with more complicated things going on. Our courses are also peer-reviewed by sanctuary experts to make sure that we’re not missing anything from our own lens of understanding on the material. All sensitive medical issues that are covered in a compassionate care classroom course are also reviewed by a qualified veterinarian just to make sure that we’re giving you the best information possible and that you can trust what you’re learning in the process. We are really happy that you get a certificate at the end of your final quiz because then if you’re a volunteer or you’re new at a sanctuary, you can boast a little bit that you really did pick up a lot of introductory material. While it’s not the same thing as hands-on experience, it can go a long way in getting you more comfortable with learning about these different species and individuals that you’re providing care for. So, we have basic chicken care parts one and two, and that’s broken down between non-large breed chickens and large breed chickens because they have relatively different care needs when it comes to many different categories of care. We’ve launched sheep and goats, both part one and part two. Tara, who takes the lead on building the compassionate care classroom courses, is looking forward to updates to the chicken course next year, as well as starting a brand new course for everybody. So, that’s another thing to be on the lookout for next year.
Julia Magnus: Super excited about that. I love reviewing those new courses. You also mentioned administrative tools. Can we talk about a major release that came out this year with the help of our friend Kyle Barrett?
Mckenzee Griffler: Absolutely, and I’m so happy about this tool. We’re so aware that keeping thorough up-to-date records of your residents’ health and life events is an absolutely critical aspect of sanctuary care. It’s why we have so many different resources on that topic specifically. We want to make sure that the recordkeeping process is as simple, efficient, and safeguarded as possible. So, with Kyle’s extensive help, we’ve launched a free database tool that you can copy and begin using for free today. This database tool is built on Airtable. It’s very flexible, but it’s got lots and lots of templates to get you started. Kyle was also kind enough to record a podcast with us about it and release many videos, which you can see on our website, all about how to get started, how to make it your own, all the little intricacies, and what you might need if you’re running into trouble with it. We could not be happier with this tool being available out in the world because before this tool, there really wasn’t a sanctuary-focused database tool that either wasn’t something that you had to cobble together and kind of make your own based on shelter tools or something slightly outside of what a sanctuary might need, or it was just so tremendously expensive that it was really outside of the budget of many organizations. We could not be happier to have this animal database tool that Kyle Barrett helped create with us. So, in addition, this is year three of the Open Sanctuary Podcast. Let’s talk about the thought and the work that we put into this resource for caregivers and some of the feedback that we’ve received.
Julia Magnus: I think this is another great example of accessibility as one of our core values at Open Sanctuary. We always want our audience to be able to access their work. For years, people were asking us if there was some way they could get an audio version of our resources because they were too busy during the day to sit down and do a bunch of reading. We’re really happy with how the Open Sanctuary Podcast has been received and the way that it’s grown over the last three years. This is our 59th episode, and I think that’s very impressive considering our staff are the ones recording it and sharing their wisdom on top of all of the other work that they do for Open Sanctuary. I really want our audience to keep in mind we are a small team. We are five people, and I cannot be more proud of the fact that we can all come together in all of these different ways and support each other. I think that this podcast is so special, and feedback has been generous and so positive. It’s really a space that caregivers, volunteers, and sanctuary and rescue people can just listen to as they go about their day-to-day tasks or when they’re on one of those many inevitable visits to and from the vet. We’re so excited to present even more podcasts in the coming year on top of everything else we’re doing. We’re very excited to have some special guests that we’re hoping to have on next year who can also start to share their insights through our podcast with the sanctuary community.
Mckenzee Griffler: I’m really excited about the podcast, too. I was nervous about it at first, but I think it really worked out well, and it just is lovely to think about some of my friends who are driving on the way to the vet who get to listen to a whole episode and kind of make double use of their time. But in addition to the podcast, obviously, we probably are best known for our meticulously researched written resources. As you mentioned, we’ve published a total of 812 resources of all types at this point, with more to come before the end of the year. Each year we cover even more topics for sanctuary and rescue friends, and we’re always thinking about the endless list of additional resource offerings that we’d like to give you. There’s far more new this year than we can cover in a podcast, but maybe we can talk about some of the highlights. You did mention updating resources and the importance of that. It’s probably really important to underline that because it’s not a one-and-done ever at OSP. Like I said earlier, we’re always looking at updating our resources, and now that we’re in the 800s on resources, that’s a lot of resources to review and make sure that they’re good, but our team is on top of it.
We have a structured plan for making sure that our stuff is still up-to-date. Of course, we’re always happy to hear from our supporter base, our audience, and our user base if something is feeling a little bit in need of a refresh. We always welcome feedback like that because it helps us identify important priorities on our website. This year, for instance, we made a lot of big updates on our various turkeyUnless explicitly mentioned, we are referring to domesticated turkey breeds, not wild turkeys, who may have unique needs not covered by this resource. care resources. TurkeysUnless explicitly mentioned, we are referring to domesticated turkey breeds, not wild turkeys, who may have unique needs not covered by this resource. are very near and dear to our hearts, especially this time of the year. Being able to get our turkey resources updated and vet-reviewed again and just in a space that we feel really good about them is really important to us. We also are constantly thinking about our own governance and our own internal policies. For example, this month we re-reviewed our use of artificial intelligence and we’ve updated our AI tool usage policy which you can find on our website. In case you haven’t heard the update, it got a little bit more granular, but the bottom line is that we don’t use AI tools or LLMs for generating our content. We just don’t do that. We don’t do it for research either because we know that our information for farmed animalA species or specific breed of animal that is raised by humans for the use of their bodies or what comes from their bodies. care is so rare in the world that LLMs just are not in a place where they can really be relied upon to give that information from a compassionate lens. There’s just too much non-compassionate information that they’re pulling from. So that is one reason why it’s critically important for us as a team to really have human eyes on all of this research to make sure that it’s as compassionate and accessible as possible.
Julia Magnus: One thing I want to add to that actually is I wanted to mention we never use AI to analyze or organize donor data, which I feel is really important because we have questions about how private that all is for our valued donors and we respect your privacy, so it feels important to just take note of that as well. We made it explicit in our policy this year.
Mckenzee Griffler: 100%. Other new resources we did this year include work on a really important and really extensive resource on when cowsWhile "cows" can be defined to refer exclusively to female cattle, at The Open Sanctuary Project we refer to domesticated cattle of all ages and sexes as "cows." can’t stand up, which as you might know from a sanctuary perspective can be a major challenge for sanctuaries and for the individual cows. We’ve gotten really deep in our daily observation by species resources, which I’m really happy with because daily observation is one of the most important tools for assessing the health and wellness of different species. It looks different for different species, as you can imagine. We’ve worked on more equine-based resources such as working on hoof abscesses. We’ve also worked on things like flight zones for sheep and goats, which if you’ve ever worked around sheep and goat residents, is a real topic and it can make a big difference to have the diagrams and the explanations in our resource so that you can understand how to keep sheep and goat residents feeling safe and comfortable around you, but also to help move them when they need to be moved.
Julia Magnus: Do you know that one actually came really in handy for me this year because we had a couple sheep show up in Chicago. One who broke free from a slaughterhouse by busting through the window and catching that sheep and getting her to sanctuary was a whole thing. Everyone involved read that resource and it really saved us a lot of pain and that just makes me so joyful that we have these accessible resources even for our own staff members because we’re all cross-trained in different disciplines and working with different species. We don’t all know everything, but being able to come together as a team and have solutions for each other in our own rescue dynamics is really wonderful.
Mckenzee Griffler: I can definitely say that getting a sheep to go where you want them to go is quite different than a chicken, and that’s my area of expertise. Sheep are not the same. Another thing is Amber actually started in on a series of senses resources. These are smaller resources that focus on farmed animal senses, and she began with vision. I love this resource series. I deeply admire Amber and the way that Amber thinks about individual species and enrichment and how to make individuals of different species more comfortable. Amber pitched this really brilliant idea that species will feel more or less comfortable based on their perception of the world. It’s human-centric to assume that they’re going to have the same stimulus reaction in terms of how they see things, how they hear things, and how they feel things. Amber has been doing this really wonderful resource series about the different ways that species might interact with the world and how we can support those to make them more comfortable instead of accidentally stressing them out because they might see or hear things differently from us. I think that is such another wonderful building block in creating a nourishing, safe space for different species of animals in sanctuary.
You mentioned it above, but I want to underline again that a lot of our resources have been veterinary reviewed. As of this moment, we’re up to 117 vet-reviewed resources. There are probably going to be more this year and we anticipate even more to come. The knowledge that you’re getting is not only just researched by us but is overseen by qualified veterinarians, and that is so valuable to me. It just builds another layer of trust that I personally really cherish. I do want to mention we also had another area of work; we had another webinar this year. Do you want to talk about our agency webinar series?
Julia Magnus: I certainly do. Our community education specialist Andy and Dr. Emily Trinetti have been working together on this agency in sanctuary education guide, which was just this incredible guide that they released that you can find on our website. Recently, they held a community webinar entitled “Agency-Centered Sanctuary Education: Transformative Practices for Nurturing Empathetic Connections with Farmed Animals”. This followed that 68-page guide that’s available on our website. If you listen to our podcast feed, you might have actually heard the whole webinar, but you can also watch the webinar on our website if you’d like to see the accompanying slides or download those. We are so proud at the Open Sanctuary Project to be a voice in this space and to share resources on this very critical topic in vegan and sanctuary advocacy because we know that this information is hard and it’s not easy to come by. But for people that really want to do the work in an effective, compassionate way, we know how important it is. We had over 50 sanctuaries and humane educators attending our most recent webinar series, and it’s really nourishing to see how much the sanctuary community and the humane education community has responded to this incredible work by Andy and Emily.
Yeah, that series and that guide are tremendous. I do want to mention that we’ve dropped those in the show notes. So, if you are interested in following up on anything we’ve mentioned, check out the show notes and you can find it. It’s probably super clear to our audience by now that we’ve had a very, very busy year at OSP and we’re super proud of what we’ve accomplished in our eight years of operation. We also have some exciting previews to share with you for next year.
Mckenzee Griffler: So, next year we are launching an enrichment guide for farmed animal sanctuaries. We are so excited about that; that’s going to be incredible. We are launching a sanctuary education lesson plan curriculum and guide. Another extensive, wonderful resource I’m looking forward to. We are, as said before, doing a lot of updates and additions to the compassionate care classroom. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about the last one.
Julia Magnus: Yes, I would love to talk about the last one. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for years. If you’ve listened to the podcast, you probably heard me mention cockfighting in the past. It’s an area that I’ve worked in quite a bit and I really, really, really love survivors of cockfighting. I think they’re wonderful. It’s been in my mind for some time that we need to create a series on how to assist survivors of cockfighting that focuses on the many complex ethical dilemmas that you may face, focuses on their specialized care needs, and helps set you up for success in giving them safe, enriching, loving homes where they can live out their lives and enjoy the care that they really deserve. So, I’m really excited to work on that next year.
Mckenzee Griffler: I couldn’t be prouder of you for all of the work that you’ve already done in this space and your willingness to go deep and share this knowledge with others because I know how critically important it is and I’m so grateful to be able to give you the space and the platform to do this work.
Julia Magnus: Yeah, it’s hard to imagine any other place where this could be done in this way and so I’m really grateful to you for having built this. Thank you. Finally, we mentioned that we were going to offer you a call to action. Times are challenging. We all know this for more reasons than one and all nonprofitsNon-governmental organizations whose primary purpose is something other than selling goods or services. are facing some difficult challenges in these times. We’re not exempt at all. We are definitely facing funding challenges and you have helped us, audience and supporters, in these times and we are asking for your help once again. Mckenzee, do you want to describe some of the ways that our audience and supporters can continue to help us through?
Mckenzee Griffler: Y’all have been so supportive to us. The fact that we’ve gone eight years is because of our audience, because of our supporters, because of people that believe in knowledge for kindness and the importance of capacity building on an international scale. I will underscore that we at the Open Sanctuary Project are facing a budgetary situation next year and we’re working on rectifying it, but it is scary. So this year, more importantly than ever, if you can donate via our donation page, opensanctuary.org/donation, that would mean the world to us. Anything would help us continue to bridge the gap so that we can continue doing this work with our capacity as long as possible because we have so many things planned for the community and we need your help to be able to keep going. It’s also helpful if it’s not financially feasible that you can do things like like and comment and share posts of ours, either posts from our website or our social media posts of new announcements. It’s also extremely helpful if you rate and review our podcast and you share our podcast because more visibility for our work helps us in so many ways. Like I said earlier, we have 1.8 million hits on our website this year alone.
There are so many people accessing our information, and so I truly believe that there’s a groundswell of support for us. It’s just a matter of us continuing to build that momentum. Our impact has extended far beyond what we’re able to share in one podcast episode, as you can imagine. As a result, we do have an updated case for support document that you can check out on our website to get a better sense of our work’s impact. You can find that linked in the show notes below and you can find even more on our impact page which is on our website. If you feel so inclined to help get some eyes on our impact page or our case for support, we would be really grateful if you could send it along to other people in the movement or with shared values who you think might be interested in supporting a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that supports many other nonprofits.
If you’re interested in helping us out and helping increase our capacity by acting as a volunteer fundraiser or even someone who could just help generate ideas for our funding, please feel free to reach out and contact us using the contact form on our website.
Julia Magnus: I’d also like to encourage you if you do have capacity to consider giving us a monthly gift. You can find that link as Mckenzee mentioned on our website and you could sign up to donate maybe $8 a month in honor of our eight years of operation. We’re soon to be nine, so it could be $9 or it could be $10. The more the merrier, but a monthly gift really helps us in that it helps us have a clear sense of study funds coming in. It’s a great way to honor us and help us in our work. We also always welcome your feedback. Again, please consider leaving us a five-star review. If you have additional feedback or ideas for subjects you want us to cover, feel free to reach out to us. Again, donations are so welcomed right now. We really appreciate everybody who supported us to date; it’s helped us keep going to where we are now. As Mckenzee mentioned, we’re a 501(c)(3), so your donations are tax-deductible and will help keep us in our missionThe stated goals and activities of an organization. An animal sanctuary’s mission is commonly focused on objectives such as animal rescue and public advocacy. of providing freely accessible resources long into the future so that every sanctuary is a success story. Thanks for listening and Mckenzee, thank you so much for explaining all that. It’s really fun to hear you list off the stats and all the accomplishments we had this year. I really appreciate it.
Mckenzee Griffler: Thanks for giving me the space, Julia. We will be signing off of the Open Sanctuary podcast for 2025, but we’ll be right back in your feeds in 2026. See you then and happy new year all. Goodbye, friends.
