Who we are

Humane Animal Rescue is a start-up animal rescue that saves cats & dogs from death row in pounds and places them within a foster carer network. We rehabilitate cats & dogs with behavioural and vet treatments and then place these animals for adoption. 

We believe every animal deserves a fair chance and kindness. We exist to make sure every animal is cared for with compassion - from the moment they're saved from death row, while they’re in the foster care system, throughout their adoption, and beyond. 

Humane Animal Rescue was founded by friends in Naarm (Melbourne) after years of fostering dogs and cats with some of the largest rescues & shelters. We are here to offer an ethical, supportive and caring rescue for poochies, pussies and the people who save their lives. 

We strive to always:

• Only use science backed training - force free training and treatment of animals in and out of care 

• Provide everything required for an animal in care such as beds, toys, food, vet bills, treats, enrichment, collars, etc. to make fostering as accessible as possible 

• We hero volunteers (as we have been in their position). Our foster carers and volunteers are the best people in the world who give their time and labour looking after rescue animals. It can be bloody hard work! 

• We pride ourselves on ongoing support. We do this by having a dog load of procedures, manuals and resources for our foster carers but we also utilise vets, vet nurses & animal behaviour specialists.

Since starting in December 2022 we have rescued 130+ cats, dogs, and even one bunny! 

Our project (that we need your help for!)

We need a designated rescue space & volunteer hub. 

We strive to make fostering accessible for the incredible humans that care for our animals by providing the resources required so it's easy and doesn’t come at their expense. We receive donations of food, bowls, toys etc and as we’ve grown we have run out of space at our volunteer’s homes to store, clean, and organise these for distribution into our foster homes. 

We also provide a last litter service where we take in cats/dogs that may be pregnant or have given birth. We take the babies into our care and desex the mum animal and return it back to the owner.

In addition we have a dog food pantry service where we provide 5kg sandwich bags of labelled dog food to people in need through our charity partners - Helping Hands Mission. 

We believe our foster animals are always better off in foster homes as these homes can closely mimic their future adoption homes and are full of care and love. We are not wanting to create a shelter space to house animals, we are looking for a designated rescue space and volunteer hub where we can: 

• Store, clean, and organise animal resources, food, and donations that we can then distributed to our foster network

• Have a designated volunteer space to take in animals as they go into foster homes, to serve as a central accessible meeting point for our last litter program

• A space where we can organise and distribute all of our food for our pet pantry service

• A place where we can hold pet adoptions and do meet & greets for our animals not in our foster carers homes.

• A location that we can open to the public to get involved, learn about adopting an animal, and increase our overall capacity as a rescue. 

We are looking to open our rescue hub around the West Footscray 3012 area. 

We want to open our location in West Footscray because:

• The commercial rent is affordable

• Our roots are in West Footscray and a lot of our community is based here 

• There are no nearby animal charities/rescue spaces!

Budget breakdown

Our goal is to raise $40,000 for the rescue space. 

Rent - $30,000 

The cheapest commercial leases around the area start at $30,000 for one year's rent. We have inspected several locations and are confident that this will meet the rescue's needs. 

Outgoings on lease - $6,000 

In addition to rent commercial leases have outgoing expenses also - these can vary but on average are around $4,000-$8,000 for each lease. Anything over or under the actual lease will go into the fit out cost. 

Fit out - $4,000

As we are using this as storage, workspace and volunteer hub our fit out is low cost, we are going to need a wash up station, washer & dryer, storage and a lick of paint. We are hoping to get lots of these things donated and use any left over money for the space. 

We understand that this is a huge amount of money that we are asking for in this climate. We know to increase our capacity and accessibility a space is vital, the above amounts we are fundraising are to pay one year's rent in advance so we don't have to take any financial resources away from saving animals and won't have to choose between rescuing animals or paying rent.