Business Plan, Vision & Marketing Review | Prepared for DeeDee Golberg · Spirit Horse Equine Rescue & Education Center

A mission that deserves a plan that matches it.

Spirit Horse has eighteen years of life-saving work behind it, a board, a federal nonprofit designation, and a vision worth funding. What's missing isn't the work — it's the connective tissue: the website, the story, the donor journey, the marketing engine. This is a clear-eyed read of what's strong, what's leaking, and what to fix first — prepared as a friend of the mission, not a vendor pitching it.

Materials Reviewed

Business Plan & Needs Assessment (2026 update), current website, public profiles

Prepared By

Alek Olson · Sonder Advisory · Director of Marketing at Kairos Coaching

Date

June 2026

Status

Private deliverable · For DeeDee & the Spirit Horse board

01 / 08Executive summary

The mission is real. The container around it is under-built.

Spirit Horse Equine Rescue has done something most nonprofits never do — survived eighteen years on volunteers, foster homes, and grit. The 2026 Business Plan and Needs Assessment lays out a coherent vision: a dedicated facility, equine-assisted therapy for veterans with PTSD, Natural Horsemanship education, and a $1.5M capital fund drive structured around a community giving pyramid. The plan is sound. The execution surface around it — website, story, donor journey, public-facing narrative — isn't keeping up. Fixing the connective tissue is what turns a strong plan into a funded one.

— 01

The website is publicly marked "Under Construction."

The homepage at spirithorseequinerescue.org opens with that banner. There is no donate button on the homepage, no navigation visible, no contact info, no social links, no capital campaign page. A donor who Googles you and clicks through sees a site that says "we're not ready." During a $1.5M capital drive, that is the single most expensive sentence on the internet.

— 02

The story is buried in a PDF.

The Business Plan is genuinely moving — 200 horses rescued, veterans with PTSD, wild mustangs as ambassadors, a 68% adoption rate, a lifetime return-policy contract. That story belongs on the homepage, in 30-second video clips, in a donor narrative arc — not locked inside a 9-page document only insiders ever open.

— 03

The capital drive has no online front door.

The giving pyramid (1 @ $250K all the way down to 2,000 @ $50) is a beautifully designed structure for community participation. But there is no public landing page for it. No "name a stall" page. No paver-walkway form. No way for a 50-dollar donor to feel they joined something. The funnel exists on paper. It does not exist online.

Priority	Finding	Why it matters
Critical	Homepage shows “Under Construction” during an active $1.5M capital drive	Every prospective major donor who visits leaves believing you're not ready
Critical	No homepage donate CTA, no capital-campaign landing page	Zero conversion path from awareness to gift
Critical	Donations route to a third-party (Zeffy) with no on-site bridge	Donor leaves your brand mid-funnel; tracking and storytelling break
High	The veterans & PTSD therapy program is mentioned but not productized	This is the single most fundable program you have and it's hidden
High	No public success metrics (200 rescued, 68% adopted, <5% return rate)	You have major-gift social proof and aren't using it
High	No email list capture — first-time visitors can't be re-engaged	Most donations close on the 3rd to 7th touch, not the first
Medium	Branding (logo, colors) reads as 2008-era homemade vs. the seriousness of the mission	Major donors give to brands that feel as professional as the ask
Medium	Reputation risk: a 2018 blog post + town board records surface negative context	Active storytelling drowns out stale negative signal
Medium	No public board page, no annual report, no 990 link — standard nonprofit trust signals	Sophisticated donors check; absence reads as opacity
Low	Founder LinkedIn / professional credentials not prominent on the site	Major-gift donors invest in the founder as much as the cause

02 / 08The mission

The mission is distinctive. Lead with the part nobody else has.

The Business Plan correctly identifies that Spirit Horse is rare in three ways: rescue + education, attention to mental and emotional equine health, and equine-assisted therapy for PTSD. That third one is the program that opens doors with VA referral networks, veteran-focused funders, and major gift donors. It should be the headline, not a paragraph buried on page 1.

02.1 High

The PTSD-and-veterans program is the flagship. Position it that way.

“Equine-assisted therapy for individuals with PTSD and other trauma, including military veterans” is the line in your plan with the most fundraising leverage. It connects to real research (HRRV, EAGALA, PATH Intl.), real referral networks (county veterans service offices, the VA Whole Health program), and donors who specifically fund veteran causes at higher average gift sizes than general animal welfare. Make this its own program page. Give it its own donate path. Give it its own story.

02.2 Medium

Three audiences, one site. Don't try to average them.

The plan correctly identifies three audiences: horse lovers (events, clinics), horse owners in crisis (surrender, training help), and trauma-recovery clients (therapy program). Each one wants a different first sentence. The current site tries to say everything at once and says nothing distinctly. The fix is structural — three clear program pillars on the homepage, each with its own page underneath: Rescue, Education, Healing.

02.3 Medium

The wild-mustang ambassador herd is a brand differentiator, not a footnote.

Keeping a small herd of wild mustangs as living ambassadors of the American West is the kind of detail that makes a donor remember you. It's photographable, story-rich, and unique among Midwest rescues. Give the herd names, faces, and a sponsor-a-mustang page. Story-rich detail is what separates a $50 gift from a $500 one.

03 / 08The business plan & vision

The plan is well-structured. A few additions would make it fund-ready.

The 2026 Needs Assessment hits the right pieces: mission, audience, competition, facility requirements, cost tiers, conceptual site plan. As a working document for the board, it's strong. As a donor-facing document, three things are missing — and adding them is what separates a 30% close rate from a 60% one on major gifts.

03.1 High

Add a clear impact-per-dollar story.

Right now the plan says “$1.5M for land, buildings, fencing.” Donors fund outcomes, not line items. The same money translated: "$1.5M lets us rescue 50 horses a year instead of 12, and serve 200 veterans through equine therapy annually." Run those numbers with the board. Put the impact math on the cover, not the receipt math.

03.2 High

The giving pyramid is good. Make it interactive.

The pyramid in the plan (1 @ $250K → 2,000 @ $50) is a real fundraising tool, but it's sitting in a PDF. Turn it into a live page where:

Each tier shows what it names (a stall, a paver, a building wing, the roundhouse)
Each tier shows how many are claimed vs. open
Each tier has a one-click give button at that exact amount
The page updates as gifts close — social proof compounds

That single page is the single highest-leverage build of the entire campaign.

03.3 Medium

The cost analysis is credible. Show your work.

The plan mentions “toured dozens of existing properties” and “researched current prices.” That's exactly the due diligence sophisticated donors want to see — but it's not in the document. Add a one-page cost-breakdown appendix: land range, infrastructure, fabric building cost-per-square-foot, fencing per linear foot, contingency line. Major donors (especially those at the $25K+ tiers) read those pages first.

04 / 08The website

The current site is actively losing you donors.

This is the most fixable critical finding in the entire audit. The current site at spirithorseequinerescue.org opens with a literal “Under Construction” notice. For an organization with eighteen years of operating history and an active capital campaign, that signal is doing more damage than any single other thing on the marketing surface.

04.1 Critical

The "Under Construction" banner has to come down. This week.

Even if the rest of the site stayed identical, removing that banner alone would stop the bleeding. Better path: a one-week rebuild that delivers a focused homepage with five pieces — story, three program pillars, donate CTA, capital campaign progress bar, and a footer with contact + 501(c)(3) trust signals. Nothing fancy. Just “we are real, we are working, here's how to help.”

04.2 Critical

No donate CTA above the fold. Nowhere.

The donation page lives on a third-party platform (Zeffy) with no on-site bridge. That means every donation requires the visitor to (a) find the Zeffy link, (b) leave your site, and (c) trust a domain they don't recognize. Donation conversion rates fall roughly 40–60% at each broken trust step. Keep Zeffy for the back-end processing (it's a great no-fee platform for nonprofits) but build a branded donate page on your own domain that embeds or redirects cleanly.

04.3 High

No email capture. Every first-time visitor is being thrown away.

Industry data is clear: most donations close on the 3rd–7th touch, not the 1st. Without an email list, you have no way to follow up with someone who visits once, cares, and isn't ready to give that day. Add a single newsletter signup with a real promise (“Monthly: who we saved, what we built, what's next”) and you'll compound a donor list over the campaign window.

04.4 High

No trust signals. Major donors check.

Sophisticated donors verify before they wire. Standard nonprofit trust elements that should appear on the site:

501(c)(3) status badge with EIN (61-1555471)
Board of Directors page with names + brief bios
Most recent Form 990 linked publicly
Annual impact report (even a one-pager)
Charity Navigator / GuideStar / Candid badges
Press logos (Homes for Horses Coalition, any local press)

Each of these is a single afternoon of work. Together they shift the conversion math.

04.5 Medium

The branding can be elevated without losing the heart.

The current logo (handwritten “Spirit Horse” on yellow with a small horse silhouette) feels authentic but also reads as homemade-2008. For a $1.5M capital ask, the brand should match the seriousness of the work. That doesn't mean corporate-cold; it means warm, confident, intentional. A small refresh — typography, color discipline, photography standards — lifts everything else downstream.

05 / 08Story & brand voice

You have a donor's story. You're telling a brochure's story.

People don't give to organizations. They give to specific horses, specific veterans, specific moments. The Business Plan has facts. It's missing the one horse, one human stories that move money. Donald Miller calls this “the customer is the hero, not the brand.” The donor is the hero of the Spirit Horse story. The rescue is the guide.

05.1 High

Lead with one horse. Then scale to two hundred.

Every great nonprofit homepage opens with a specific story before it ever gets to statistics. One horse you rescued, with a name, a before photo, an after photo, and one paragraph of what happened. Then “200 horses like [her name].” Then the donate button. That sequence is the single most studied conversion pattern in nonprofit web design and it works.

05.2 High

The founder story needs to be visible.

Eighteen years, two hundred horses, a Homes for Horses Coalition advisory board seat, a 501(c)(3) shepherded through the 2009 economy collapse. That's a founder story most donors would invest in regardless of cause. Put it on an “About the Founder” page. Photo, two-paragraph origin story, why this work, why now. Major-gift donors invest in the founder as much as the cause.

05.3 Medium

Address the negative search results head-on.

A 2018 blog post and a couple of town board record entries surface when people Google the rescue. Those don't go away — but they get drowned out by active, current, higher-quality storytelling. The fix isn't to hide; it's to publish enough current truth that the stale signals fall to page two. Monthly impact updates, named adopters, real outcome numbers. Reputation is downstream of consistent output.

06 / 08The fundraising engine

A capital drive runs on three engines. You have one running.

Capital campaigns at the $1M–$2M level typically run on three parallel engines: major gifts (top of pyramid, 1-on-1), institutional grants (foundations, government, corporate), and community giving (the broad base). Spirit Horse is operating the third one informally. The first two are wide open opportunity.

06.1 High

Major gifts: name every line on the pyramid.

The $250K, two $125K, and five $50K tiers are major-gift territory. Those don't close through a website — they close through 1-on-1 conversations and a credible package. What the website should do is make the introduction easier: a “Founding Donors” page with named naming opportunities (the roundhouse, the classroom, the barn manager's cottage), each with renderings and a “start the conversation” button. That's the on-ramp for the call DeeDee actually makes.

06.2 High

Grants: the veterans-PTSD program is a grant magnet.

There are foundations and government grants that specifically fund equine-assisted therapy for veterans — the Bob Woodruff Foundation, the Wounded Warrior Project, VA Adaptive Sports grants, the PATH International EFP grants, state veteran service commission grants. These programs award $25K–$250K to organizations that can document outcomes. Spirit Horse has the program in the plan. What's needed is the paperwork muscle — logic model, outcome measurement, fiscal sponsor relationships. This is a 2026 priority worth its own quarter of work.

06.3 Medium

Recurring monthly donors are the quietest compounding asset.

A $25/month sustaining donor is worth $300/year and tends to stay 4–6 years — roughly $1,500–$1,800 lifetime value. A campaign of 100 sustaining donors is $30K–$36K a year of unrestricted recurring revenue. That's a barn manager's salary. Add a “Join the Herd” monthly giving option alongside one-time gifts.

06.4 Medium

Events: concentrate, don't proliferate.

The plan mentions 150 educational events over fourteen years — bake sales, western dinners, pet expos, county fairs. That's an enormous volunteer load with uneven return. For a capital campaign year, fewer-larger usually beats many-smaller. Two signature events (a Founder's Gala in spring, a Mustang Open House in fall) with real sponsor packages will likely outperform a dozen small ones at a fraction of the volunteer cost.

07 / 08The 5 Bridges Farm fit

A note on the property itself — from someone who works there.

One layer of context worth being transparent about: I'm the Director of Marketing at Kairos Coaching, which currently operates on 5 Bridges Farm. So I'm not a neutral observer of the land — I know it. I'm sharing the read below because I think it's useful to you regardless of who you eventually buy from or partner with.

07.1 High

The “steward the land for generations” alignment is real.

You wrote that the line in Josh's video about wanting the next owner to “steward the land” landed on you because it's exactly the legacy Spirit Horse is trying to set up. That alignment is not a coincidence and it's not small. Property is a finite-supply asset. The donors funding your $1.5M campaign aren't just funding land — they're funding a commitment to how that land gets used for the next thirty years. 5 Bridges has that ethic baked in. That story will resonate with capital donors who care about legacy, not just utility.

07.2 Medium

Match the plan's facility checklist against the property line by line.

The Business Plan has a specific feature/purpose table: minimum 50 acres, flat topographic area, well-drained soil, fabric indoor 100×200, rescue roundhouse, housing for manager + interns, classroom, office, store, parking, fencing. Whatever property ends up being the right one, that checklist is your scoring rubric. Some elements of 5 Bridges meet it out of the gate; others would need build-out. A side-by-side comparison — what exists, what needs building, estimated delta cost — would give the board a clean decision document.

07.3 Medium

Co-location strategy is worth a conversation — on both sides.

Kairos Coaching runs leadership and personal-development retreats on the property. Spirit Horse runs equine therapy, education clinics, and rescue. There's a non-zero chance that those two missions can co-exist on the same land in ways that lower cost-of-capital for both. Whether or not that's the right path is a board-level conversation; what I can say is that the conversation is worth having before anyone signs anything.

08 / 08What I'd do first

Three phases. One quarter. Then the campaign has a real surface.

Below is the order I'd run it if it were mine. Phase 1 is what stops the bleeding. Phase 2 is what builds the donor on-ramp. Phase 3 is what compounds. Every line below can be run by a focused team in a quarter — not a year.

Phase 01

Stop the bleeding.

Weeks 1–2

Take the “Under Construction” banner off the homepage today.
Add a homepage donate CTA above the fold, branded to your domain.
Add a footer with EIN, board contact, phone, address.
Add 501(c)(3) trust signals: GuideStar/Candid badge, Charity Navigator if rated.
Publish one named-horse rescue story as the homepage hero.
Add an email capture (“Monthly: who we saved, what we built, what's next”).

Phase 02

Build the on-ramp.

Weeks 3–6

Build the live capital campaign page: progress bar, named giving tiers, current totals.
Build the three program pages: Rescue, Education, Healing (veterans/PTSD).
Add a “Founding Donors / Naming Opportunities” page for major gifts.
Add an About the Founder page — DeeDee's story, why this, why now.
Add a Board & Governance page with names, bios, and most-recent 990 link.
Set up monthly giving (“Join the Herd”) alongside one-time.

Phase 03

Compound.

Months 2–3 and beyond

Publish monthly impact updates — one rescue story, one program update, one ask.
Document the veterans-PTSD program with a logic model and outcome metrics for grant applications.
Identify and submit 3–5 priority grant applications (Bob Woodruff Foundation, VA Adaptive Sports, state veteran commissions).
Plan two signature events — a Founder's Gala (spring) and a Mustang Open House (fall) — with real sponsor packages.
Stand up basic donor CRM (a no-cost option works fine) so 1-on-1 major-gift conversations get tracked.
Re-evaluate brand identity at the end of the quarter, after the storytelling has built up momentum.

DeeDee — a note from Alek

Whether we work together or not, this audit is yours.

When you sent me the Business Plan and asked me to take a look, you weren't asking for a sales call. You were asking because I happen to sit in the marketing director seat at the property you might end up calling home. So I read it the way a friend of the mission would — carefully, honestly, and without trying to make it the start of something it doesn't need to be.

What you have is strong. Eighteen years of work, a real plan, a real board, a real federal designation, a real story. What's underbuilt is the surface between that work and the people who want to fund it — the website, the donor journey, the way the story gets told publicly. That gap is fixable. None of it is expensive. None of it requires rebuilding what you already do well.

If you want help building it out — the website, a tightened marketing plan, the giving-pyramid landing page, the program pages, the founder story — I'd genuinely love to dig into it with you. That's the work I do every day and I'd enjoy doing it for a mission like this one. We can talk scope, pace, and what makes sense for where Spirit Horse actually is in the campaign cycle.

And if you don't — if you already have a team, or you'd rather run this with the volunteers and board you have — that's completely fine. This audit is yours either way. Take any line in it that's useful, leave the rest. I'm glad I got to read your plan. The horses you've kept out of the slaughter pipeline for eighteen years made it worth the afternoon.

Continue the conversation

If you want help — what it could look like

The Spirit Horse marketing build — if you want it

Two-week sprint: ship Phase 01 (banner down, donate CTA, footer, trust signals, hero story)
Capital campaign landing page with live giving-pyramid tiers
Three program pages: Rescue, Education, Healing (veterans/PTSD)
Founding Donors / Naming Opportunities page for major-gift conversations
Founder, Board, and 990-transparency pages
Monthly impact-update template + email-list setup
Optional: brand refresh aligned to the seriousness of the ask
Optional: grant-application prep for the veterans-PTSD program