Big Cat Rescue

The Challenge

Big Cat Rescue relies on supporters to help educate the public and to try to change legislation, but for the first 11 years of its existence, "no one knew we were here," Baskin says. The sanctuary was fulfilling the first part of its mission—care of displaced big cats—but could not achieve the visibility necessary to fulfill the second part with widespread education. Two volunteers created a website for the sanctuary in 1995, but within a few years they had moved on, leaving Baskin with a site she couldn't access and didn't know how to use. Armed with a copy of Microsoft FrontPage, Baskin created the site anew herself, and thought she was done.

"Wrong. If you build it, they won't come, unless they know you're there," Baskin explains. Faced with competition from some 36 million competing web pages using the term "big cat" but no advertising budget of her own, Baskin started reading everything she could about attracting Web traffic.

Meanwhile, the plight of big cats seemed to be getting worse. Since the sanctuary started keeping records in 1999, the number of big cats being discarded was doubling each year, reaching 312 in 2003. Efforts to enact legislation on big cats' behalf were not succeeding.