Allowing horses and humans to connect on an emotional and physical level helps participants develop essential life skills and significantly enriches our horses’ lives. Enabling such connections to happen safely, in a secure environment, facilitated by caring and appropriately trained Mentors comes at a cost – but one that’s worth it.

Our main costs are:

Program Costs
Delivering programs includes expenditure on:

• equipment, saddlery and tack
• consumables and materials
• volunteer and staff training
• wages for our program staff

Horse Care

The cost of rescuing, rehabilitating and ongoing care for our horses and ponies is expensive because of their high health care needs.

Our Horse Care Plans ensure the horses and ponies in our care benefit from an environment rich in variety.

When an animal comes to the Sanctuary, they are here for life. We do not re-home an animal because there is no way to guarantee the level of love and care they will receive at their new home. We would never risk any of our horses being neglected or abused again.

Volunteer Costs
Our volunteers are the lifeblood of the sanctuary. We simply couldn’t do what we do without them. Having such a large team of volunteers is vital for the smooth running of the sanctuary. Costs in this area include:

• training (including first aid and CPR)
• shirts and PPE
• refreshments
• sunscreen and hygiene products
• voluntary workers insurance policy

Facility Maintenance

Although this is a large expense, our facility maintenance costs are largely offset by facility maintenance grants from the Sunshine Coast Council.

Fundraising
While most of our fundraising activities don’t have any costs at all, some require up-front expenditure.

We monitor our fundraising campaigns to direct our resources into our most successful fundraising activities and ensure we make a healthy profit.

Administration
We are blessed to have very low administration costs. All our admin staff are volunteers and almost all our office supplies are donated. What remains are unavoidable expenses that include:

• public liability insurance
• telephone and internet costs
• annual audit fees.

We undergo an external independent financial audit every year.