Animal Welfare Professionals

We're a nonprofit organization (Animal Humane Advocacy) that has successfully hosted low-cost vaccination and wellness clinics for years, serving pet owners who otherwise would not have access to basic veterinary care. Our longtime veterinarian, who generously supported this work, is now retiring, and we are seeking a new licensed veterinarian to partner with us so these critical clinics can continue.

That said, we'd genuinely appreciate insight from others in the animal welfare and veterinary communities. From your experience, have you encountered veterinarians who view nonprofit clinics as a threat to their business? If so, how have you successfully addressed that concern and built trust and collaboration?

If you are a veterinarian-or know one-who believes access to care and private practice can coexist, we would love to connect. Collaboration, not competition, is the goal. Thank you for your insight, experience, and referrals as we work to keep this essential service available to our community. 

Paul Barthel

Author/Founder Animal Humane Advocacy

Hi Paul,

I have been doing this type of work with a few different organizations through the years. In each one we did meet some resistance from local vet communities, but I think the one thing that helped us the most is we never really took on true "clients", and only served as a basic resource for those really in need. The only clients we probably had long term were ones who truly could afford basically no care at all, and those were ones the local vets had already agreed they would not want or take on as clients anyway.  

Another thing that I think helped earned their trust is I never referred to any of the local vets as "high cost" or trying to just rob clients or things like that.  Many of the folks that have come in to our clinics have talked with me about how outrageous their local vets prices were and that we were the ones that truly cared because we were working with them and doing things at prices they could afford.  I politely kind of shut down that thinking at the start, explaining that this was really not the case at all, and that those vets would love to be able to do things for free or at a reduced cost, but they cannot survive that way.  I explain the only real reason that we can help people at the prices we can is because we, as a non-profit, have access to income and revenue streams that those practices do not (donations, grants, etc.)  If we could not access those, then our prices would likely be just as high or close to it. That seemed to help a lot of people understand things better, and it showed the local vets we were really not out to compete with them, but to complement what they are doing.  

Finally, one other thing that we did was serve as more of a "referral" type clinic for pet owners who had emergencies or needed expensive procedures done on their pets that they could not afford the cost of up front.  We were able to take care of the animal, but then refer them right back to that vet for any follow up care or for further regular vet care.  We had a lot of pyometras and other things like blocked cats or severe dental disease that were referred to us by local vets.  The only other option in those cases was often euthanasia.  When we kind of showed it helped keep the pet alive and with their owners, it also put a lot of those local vets in a positive light in the eyes of the owner as well, because it showed the owners the vets did care about their animal, and even though they could not make it work at their clinic, they worked to find a way to get that animal help.  

So I personally feel that starting small, letting the vets know you are there to help provide care in certain situations, and showing them that you are not out to "steal clients away" goes a long way towards building that trust.  The biggest key, to me anyway, is not joining on the "all vets are out to just make all the money with their prices" emotional bandwagon that clients will come in with and explain to clients why we can do things we can at our prices. 

Happy to discuss more with you if you want.  Hope this helps and you are able to find a new vet to carry on your great work out there. 

Bryan

Bryan Langlois, DVM

Medical Director, Spay/Neuter Save Network

AVC 2005

We're a nonprofit organization (Animal Humane Advocacy) that has successfully hosted low-cost vaccination and wellness clinics for years, serving pet owners who otherwise would not have access to basic veterinary care. Our longtime veterinarian, who generously supported this work, is now retiring, and we are seeking a new licensed veterinarian to partner with us so these critical clinics can continue.

That said, we'd genuinely appreciate insight from others in the animal welfare and veterinary communities. From your experience, have you encountered veterinarians who view nonprofit clinics as a threat to their business? If so, how have you successfully addressed that concern and built trust and collaboration?

If you are a veterinarian-or know one-who believes access to care and private practice can coexist, we would love to connect. Collaboration, not competition, is the goal. Thank you for your insight, experience, and referrals as we work to keep this essential service available to our community. 

Paul Barthel

Author/Founder Animal Humane Advocacy