Oasis at Risk: 1995
Here's a piece I did for the September 1995 issue of Animals Magazine
exploring the gigantic challenges of running a critical care veterinary
hospital in the third world -- a world where families literally depend
on the health and safety of their work animals. The hospital profiled
in the article -- The American Fondouk -- is sponsored by the
Massachusetts
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), a non-profit
Animal-protection organization in Boston, and Angell Memorial Animal
Hospital in Boston, one of the largest and most sophisticated animal
hospitals in the world. The MSPCA was also the publisher of Animals
Magazine, where I worked at the time as an editor.What was nice about this piece was that it was the only feature article in Animals Magazine at the time that was used specifically for fund-raising purposes. It was an experiment. We conceived it, wrote it, reprinted it, re-packaged it, and created direct-mail marketing campaigns for it specifically to raise money for the Fondouk itself. We never did that with any of the other news or feature articles in the magazine. It worked out well, though, and brought in a few grand in the first few weeks. Not bad. That money goes a long way in Fez, Morocco. Although the article was used to raise money, I didn't change how I wrote the piece at all. It was just packaged a little differently and positioned more aggressively, just as any good marketing piece would be.
