If you read last month’s blog, you already know that Horse and Buddy has never owned our actual land. We own our barn, arena, hay barn, fencing, gazebo, and a bunch of horses, but we did not own our dirt. That was never really an issue, as our land owners were fabulous, but as we started to think about expanding our program, building an additional arena, and leaving our legacy, we really wanted to own the property.
In 2019, we spent a great deal of time creating marketing materials, naming rights, and other goodies to give out at the house parties we intended to throw during the “silent phase” of our capital campaign. For those who have never had the pleasure, the experts say you should raise close to half of your capital campaign money before you go public. That would have been $500,000 for us, but we weren’t planning to stop there. Go Big or Go Home! We were going to raise the entire $1,000,000 in 2020. Check out our fabulous logo!
Of course, then 2020 happened, and a capital campaign was not in the cards in that crazy world. At some point, we began exploring bank loans. Unfortunately, they all wanted from 30-50% down as a deposit, and we didn’t have close to that. Luckily for us, our land owners came through again. They offered to finance the land for us. 20 years, zero down. WHAT??? We jumped at the chance, and signed all the relevant paperwork on February 1, 2022.
If you would like to help support our land fund, you can do that by donating at: https://www.horseandbuddy.org/capitalcampaign. You can also get your name on our facility forever and ever by purchasing one of our naming opportunities. If you have a cool million, we’ll even change the name to Horse and Buddy Therapeutic Riding at the “your name here” center!
So with that… Horse and Buddy has officially embarked on our capital campaign. It is not traditional, it is not following the expert’s advice, but is very much ours. One of our favorite phrases at the barn is, “It’ll all work out. It always does.” We use it in all sorts of circumstances, and it really does help us keep things in perspective. And honestly, we’ve never been super conventional in anything we’ve done, so why would our capital campaign be any different? 
Hope to see you at the barn soon!
Janet Mason
Executive Director
Horse and Buddy 
Leave a Reply