My Nonprofit Reviews

DO NOT SUPPORT THIS ORGANIZATION. The animals under Jameson’s care deserve safety, love, attention, and support. But Jameson’s leadership (specifically its founder) is a sham and does NOT have the animals’ best interests in mind, and NEVER WILL.

Jameson’s physical space is way too small for the sheer volume of animals it houses. The pigs, cows, sheep, horses, and cats live in tiny, cramped spaces with no space to run around, have zoomies, or even have privacy from their animal neighbors. The pigs live in a corner of the property that is filled in with concrete and only a thin layer of soil, preventing them from rooting and digging, both essential pig behaviors. And yet, the founder actively tampers with any attempts to get an animal adopted out, particularly the farmed animals. She will come up with any arbitrary excuse to not let a perfectly suitable and vetted family adopt one of the animals. That way, she can continue to control every aspect of the animals’ lives, overfeed them tortilla chips and junk food, and show them off as “ambassador” animals at donor events. After every event, the animal care team would convince her to not bring the animals out again because of how stressful it was for them. And yet, as soon as another donor event rolled around, she would insist on bringing them again, forcing them to interact with crowds of loud, excited people for hours. You can imagine how stressful that would be for an animal living in “sanctuary”.

The animal care team members were consistently treated passive-aggressively, and told to get more done in less and less time. The organization draws in more than $1 million a year, and yet we were told there was no money for a few minutes of overtime when we had to help move animals due to intense flooding making their spaces uninhabitable. My teammate and I skipped lunch on several occasions to make sure the animals were safe and got some enrichment time. No matter how many times I patiently explained how overweight many of the animals were, and how that was negatively impacting their longevity and quality of life, the founder would not stop giving out huge handfuls of tortilla chips, apples, and worse every single time she walked by the animals.

I honestly do not understand where the million dollars go every year. There are several actual animal sanctuaries in the area with much better spaces and more animals, that operate on much smaller budgets.

Every single fence line on site was haphazardly built by random “contractors” or untrained staff members. As such, it felt like I spent more time repairing fences and gates than actually caring for animals. At one point, the cows broke through the fence into the backyard of the house on site, breaking plant pots and eating everything. The founder refused to do anything, claiming she didn’t have the money for fencing. It took a month of the cows breaking the fence more and more every day, threatening to break through the other side into the parking lot and then the busy road, for her to finally agree to get the fence fixed.

The organization does a lot of good, namely community outreach and low cost/free veterinary services. But the animals housed at Jameson do not deserve the lives they live there.

Jameson’s founder/president cares more about making sure everyone is adhering to the vegan mandate on site than actually providing quality care for the animals. As long as she stays in a position of power, Jameson will never be a good place for animals.