Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, June 07, 2008
After years of financial troubles and changing leadership, the Ottawa Humane Society has quietly turned its fortunes around. The society has millions of dollars in the bank, has steadily expanded the number of staff and is planning a new building. It's a good-news story, but at the organization's annual general meeting next week, members should ask how all the extra money is benefiting animals. The answer is frustratingly elusive.
Animals are still being euthanized due to lack of resources, and the society won't even produce the numbers.
The financial success is easier to see. According to the audited financial statements for the year ending March 31, 2008, the humane society has just over $5 million in various operating and capital funds. That's up $800,000 from the year before. The biggest pot of money is a $2.6-million trust fund that's available for any purpose the society board deems appropriate.
Executive director Bruce Roney says it's important to keep the money set aside for unexpected capital expenses.
Humane society chief Bruce Roney says the number of animals euthanized is a measure of the community, not the society.
The society had a healthy operating surplus of $144,000 in the last fiscal year, on a budget of $3.6 million. The previous year, the operating surplus was $103,000. Last year, the society even showed a surplus of $30,000 on the operation of the municipal animal shelter, which is funded by pet adoption fees and by a city grant of $775,000. The city grant has increased by $100,000 since 2004 and is driven by a deal that automatically provides the humane society with money to cover raises and inflationary costs of other items.
City bylaw-services director Susan Jones says the annual grant increase is a good deal for the city. A consultant studied the situation and advised that running a pound directly would cost more money.
Roney says he would like to have enough set aside to cover a full year's operations. Perhaps the society has become overly cautious due to its troubled financial history, but one wonders what the risk is. The shelter operation is fully funded by the city and the fees paid by people adopting or dropping off pets. Barring a collapse of donations, the society should have no trouble in providing its other programs.
Fundraising has grown in leaps and bounds. The society took in just over $2 million last year, about three-quarters of that from individual donations. The previous year, it raised $1.8 million. Fundraising has seen double-digit annual growth for most of the last 10 years.
Roney will only discuss plans to replace the group's cramped building on Champagne Avenue in general terms, although the group's financial statement says it has made a deposit on a piece of land worth $1.7 million and has until December to confirm the deal. The city has already agreed to contribute $1.8 million towards the construction of a pound at the new building.
The substantial donor generosity does enable the humane society to provide a wide variety of educational and community programs, but the number of animals euthanized remains disturbingly high. It's not a number that one can readily get from the humane society, however. The organization's annual report provides information on the number of animals taken in and the number who found new homes, but not the number euthanized.
Roney says:
"We don't talk about the number. It doesn't mean anything." The number of pets euthanized is "a measure of the community, not a measure of the humane society. Unfortunately some people want to use it as a measure of the humane society and that's not appropriate."
Roney is right to say that the number itself, without context, isn't meaningful.
The problem is, the humane society won't provide the context. It doesn't offer statistics on how many animals are killed for medical or behavioural reasons, or just because of lack of capacity at the shelter.
In Calgary, where the shelter is run by the city, complete numbers for euthanization, adoption and return to owners are posted on the website.The humane society here does itself a disservice by posting only the total numbers of animals taken in and the number that are adopted. Others are returned to owners, but the society offers no information on this. It makes the euthanization number look even larger than it actually is.
We do know that the society took in 10,500 cats, dogs and other small animals in 2006-07. It found homes for 4,276 of those animals. Not all the rest were euthanized, but thousands were. In an interview, Roney said about 60 per cent of dogs are reclaimed by their owners, but only four to seven per cent of cats. By deduction, about half the 7,152 cats taken to the shelter were euthanized. The previous year wasn't any better. The society took in 10,670 animals and found homes for 4,470.
The group's euthanasia protocol leaves lots of room for exercising judgment where behavioural or health issues are combined with lack of resources, particularly lack of foster homes to take animals when the shelter itself is full. Roney stresses that it's important for adopted animals to be "ambassadors" for the humane society, well-behaved pets that will encourage other people to adopt. It's a reasonable point of view, but it suggests that only the very best animals are really put up for adoption. There isn't enough money for medical care to help all the animals that might be adoptable, Roney says, despite the society's healthy bank account.
Similarly, the number of animal cruelty complaints has risen steadily, but the society's spending in that area hasn't kept pace.
The community gets the humane society they pay for," Roney says.
But does it? All this makes one wonder if the proper balance is being struck between building up the bank account and helping the animals.
Surely, more can be done by the humane society, the city and the public.
The only reason the humane society has to euthanize so many animals is because so many of us abandon our pets and so few of us are willing to either adopt or foster the rejected animals.
There are simply too many animals for the society to deal with. An aggressive campaign by the city to get pets either licensed or microchipped would reduce the number of surplus animals and give the humane society a better chance of dealing with the remainder. In Calgary, the pound program is paid for through the fees of pet owners. Here, taxpayers shell out nearly $800,000 a year because the city hasn't been successful in making pet owners take responsibility.
The humane society is performing valuable work in the community. Without its efforts, more than 4,000 stray or abandoned pets a year wouldn't find new homes.
The organization could stand to be a little more forthright with the public. For example, the society sells itself to donors as a group that receives no government funding. Neither the annual report nor the audited financial statements identifies the municipal support the humane society receives. Its website does refer to operating the municipal animal shelter contract for the city. It's vague, to put it kindly.