The Association Blog

Brother Wolf Animal Rescue’s ED reflects on how her resilient team navigated Hurricane Helene—and came out stronger on the other side

I’ve always thought of Brother Wolf Animal Rescue as being surrounded by magic. Having worked alongside the organization in some capacity for the last decade, I’ve seen magical things happen that brought goodness to our doorstep, and I’ve seen the organization navigate immense challenges and come out stronger, more impactful, and more determined.

So when I stood in disbelief, staring at our campus fully submerged in the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene last fall, I knew in my heart that this organization and its dedicated staff, fosters, volunteers, donors, adopters and supporters, would be uplifted by the force of good that drives our work. We would somehow – with the help of so many…and some magic – make it through.

Now, six months after that day, my biggest takeaway is this: We didn’t know it, but we had been preparing for a natural disaster long before we orchestrated an emergency evacuation of 100 animals in just two hours – ahead of the most devastating storm that has ever hit Western North Carolina.

Over the last six years, our team has concentrated on implementing strong nonprofit business practices, building a culture where people and animals thrive, adopting animal welfare programmatic best practices, and forming meaningful relationships with those we collaborate with on all levels.

The following elements were in place prior to Helene, and we leaned in to them while navigating next steps and building a future in the wake of catastrophe. These are the things I would encourage every nonprofit to do now, because you never know what lies ahead.

Adaptability

One of our core values at Brother Wolf is adaptability: We are scrappy and we make things happen in the face of challenges. The groundwork that we laid in truly integrating this value meant that we had a team who embraces the pivot, and expects it. Our team knew there would be major changes and they were proud to be a part of them because it’s true to who we are on a daily basis. Our team’s ability to immediately adjust their daily duties to focus on what is most critical proved incredibly valuable.

We have a process for onboarding new foster homes in about fifteen minutes when urgency is key. We believe that if you’re willing to help save animals’ lives, you belong in our network, so we work to eliminate barriers and welcome all to help us. This is how we were able to evacuate 100 animals in just two hours into emergency foster homes.

Strong Relationships

We believe that by collaborating we can create a better tomorrow, so we continually work to have strong relationships with other animal welfare organizations. National and local known partners made a world of a difference to us when we were in crisis: bringing us supplies, taking in displaced animals, caring for our most vulnerable populations, and pushing through emergency grant funds.

The good relationships we’d established with local media helped us get the word out fast when we had to evacuate our shelter and told our story in the aftermath of the storm. Meaningfully integrating our volunteers, fosters, donors and supporters into our work has resulted in a true sense of ownership and belonging; they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us on our hardest days.

Our board of directors oversees the organization at a high level, putting the daily management in the hands of our staff members. The trust that we’ve built with our board meant that we could move fast and make critical decisions knowing that we’re aligned in our overall strategy.

Financial Transparency & Acumen

In the aftermath of a natural disaster, people who have never heard of your organization step up to help. For new donors, it was extremely helpful that we had high ratings and information built out on sites like Candid and Charity Navigator. Since we distribute monthly financial statements to our leadership team, they were able to have informed conversations with these new donors. Methodically saved financial reserves gave us the fuel we needed to march forward in an emergency situation. A wide array of established giving channels made it easy for anyone to give (PayPal, Venmo, ApplePay, etc.). And a ‘Ways To Give’ page on our website gave donors detailed information about giving avenues, such as stocks, donor-advised funds, and qualified charitable distributions.

Established Communication Channels

In times of crisis, communication is key. It was critical that we had established email, phone, and texting communication channels with our foster homes and volunteers, so we knew how to get in touch with each other. Our email communication system is easy to use and effective, enabling us to get timely and impactful messages out to our supporters. Years ago we redid our website in order to have a functional site that can easily be updated, and our phone system can be quickly adjusted by our team as needed. We’ve built a strong social media presence and our community knows to look there for updates from us. Social media was a key post-disaster communication tool. All of our animal records, personnel files, and donor records were digitized years ago. This became incredibly important when everything was destroyed by water.

Care

Brother Wolf is an organization that works hard to care for the wellbeing of our staff because we know that the wellbeing of each individual greatly determines the strength of the organization. We often talk about mental health and the impacts of working in animal welfare. Our employee assistance program offers free therapy, and we have an ongoing relationship with a local therapist who works in-person with our team. When crisis hit, these tools were incredibly valuable for providing staff with the support they needed. We also rented spaces equipped with running water and electricity so that our staff could meet their basic needs while working in a disaster zone.

We believe that there is immense joy in animal welfare work and we strive to share this joy with our community of supporters as well as our staff. Even in the aftermath of a disaster, we took the time to distribute to our staff the kind words of support we received from around the world and happy photos of adopted animals safely in the arms of their families.

Donor gratitude is extremely important to us. We take the time to connect with donors through handwritten notes, text messages, and thank you phone calls. With thousands of new donors, we were able to still accomplish our valued donor gratitude touchpoints with the help of many, many volunteers.

Impact

We publish an annual impact report that’s visible on our website so people can understand the impact of the work Brother Wolf does and what our focus is. Our commitment to helping animals in need is well known by our supporters and expected by our staff. In the weeks following Hurricane Helene, we partnered with other animal welfare organizations to bring free veterinary care to over 1,200 impacted pets in our community and launched a new program to keep pets and their people together. We stayed true to who we are in our hearts and it uplifted us all to be of service after losing everything.

We have a strong sense of self at Brother Wolf – we know “who” the organization is because we live by our values and keep our mission at the heart of what we do. Our hearts broke over the devastation, our hearts filled back up when so many rushed in to help, and our hearts are more determined than ever to rebuild. With natural disasters impacting so many communities, it’s imperative that nonprofits build internal fortitude to weather whatever lies ahead. It’s nonprofits, and the magic that we all have within us, that communities lean on in the hardest of times.

More from Leah Craig

Blog: A Place Where All Living Beings Thrive
Roundtable Recording: Help Your Team Thrive