Big Cat Rescue Entrepreneurial Audit

Jaclyn Gutierrez & Josh Cooper ENT6930

Introduction

One of the main staples of Corporate Entrepreneurship at the University of Florida involves performing an entrepreneurial audit. This audit is to be performed by a team of graduate students (Jaclyn Gutierrez and Josh Cooper) by the permission of the executive team of Big Cat Rescue. The purpose of the entrepreneurial audit is to measure the frequency and intensity of entrepreneurship being performed at the company. In addition, it highlights ways the company can incite increased innovation and entrepreneurial action through their employees. Howard and Carole Baskin gave a wonderful tour of the Big Cat Rescue campus and allowed themselves as well as others a part of their team to be interviewed.

To begin it is very important to understand the concept of entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship in the context it is being discussed in the class. Entrepreneurship has many different definitions, but the majority of them include the same elements. They way we define entrepreneurship in the course is “the process of creating value by bringing together a unique combination of resources to exploit an opportunity” (Morris). On the other hand, corporate entrepreneurship holds many names including, “organizational entrepreneur,” “intrapreneurship,” and “corporate venturing.”(Morris) By examining the definition of entrepreneurship above it becomes clear that entrepreneurship is not specified by organizational context. As a result, “Corporate entrepreneurship is a term used to describe entrepreneurial behavior inside established mid-sized and large organizations” (Morris). Thus corporate entrepreneurship relies on management and employees to innovate in every facet of the business. Such entrepreneurship is paramount to helping companies that hope to establish a sustainable competitive advantage in the market.

The entrepreneurial audit aims to engage Big Cat Rescue in reflection of the entrepreneurial mindset present at the company. The audit hopes to measure this presence in Big Cat Rescue as well as in the employees. In the interest of the audit’s purpose, entrepreneurship must be quantified in a manner that enables Big Cat Rescue to decipher the amount of entrepreneurship present in their company as well as compared to other nonprofits similar to them.

This entrepreneurial audit of Big Cat Rescue will target aspects inside of the company that foster entrepreneurship. The aspects inside of Big Cat Rescue that will be evaluated are strategy, and culture.

Background

Big Cat Rescue is an animal sanctuary located in Tampa, Florida committed to the rescue and rehabilitation of big cats. The sanctuary is the largest in the United States serving specifically to big cats and is staunch on ending the private trade and ownership of big cats. The nonprofit has evolved overtime and started when the founder Carole Baskin rescued numerous bobcat kittens from a fur farm. Originally, the company bred and sold some big cats early on, but shifted focus once Carole Baskin came to the realization that big cats should not be pets nor bred in captivity. As a result, Big Cat Rescue became determined to outlaw the private trade and ownership of Big Cats in the United States through legislation. Pushing legislation has become a main focus for Big Cat Rescue and they engage their visitors to become active in joining their efforts.

Strategy

Entrepreneurship in strategy is key for companies that hope to stay ahead of their competition. An entrepreneurial strategy is defined in the course as “a vision-directed, organization-wide reliance on entrepreneurial behavior that purposefully and continuously rejuvenates the organization and shapes the scope of its operations through the recognition and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunity’ (Morris). When this strategy is applied to organizations it enables the company to prosper in even the most competitive markets. Most organizations, however, find difficulty in balancing their efforts of seeking the full potential of their current markets and products versus innovating to find new markets and products. Finding the correct balance can be a difficult process, but well worth the reward. Applying this to Big Cat Rescue, we will focus on the company’s market strategy and the company’s strategy for developing innovation internally in order to attain organizational goals.

In order to address the entrepreneurial presence in strategy at Big Cat Rescue, we will highlight several key factors and discuss the entrepreneurial activities that exist in each. The key factors we will examine are the development of an entrepreneurial vision, increasing opportunity recognition, promoting the need to be innovative, placing value on employee’s ideas, and acknowledging the importance of failure. The first area we will highlight is the development of an entrepreneurial vision. All great organizations have clear concise visions that drive the company to a larger overarching goal. In the case of Big Cat Rescue, their vision has evolved overtime, but one key element has stayed consistent. That element is that the care and rehabilitation of big cats has been paramount to their beginning goals and transformed into the vision they have today, which is to end the private trade and ownership of Big Cats.

Throughout the tour and multiple interviews it was clear from the employees and upper level management where they hope to go and how they hope to get there. Big Cat Rescue prides itself on pursuing legislations as a means of protecting Big Cats. Their actions match their vision and this is shown in multiple ways. The first is on their website, where the first page shows visitors the most important thing they can do to help protect Big cats. This involves messaging various political figures in order to push bills through Congress. In addition, Big Cat Rescue prompts visitors to their sanctuary to call their government representatives as well.

Another area of emphasis is increasing opportunity recognition. This is an area Big Cat Rescue excelled in and it was evident throughout our tour. The founder, Carole Baskin, was extremely keen on being at the forefront of any possible opportunities that gave the sanctuary new and different ways of donating. An example she mentioned during the interview involved a new feature of Facebook that allowed users to donate easily to certain charities. The company utilizes various social media accounts to seek more awareness and increase donations. The ability to recognize new opportunities also relies on upper management’s ability to let employees be innovative. It was obvious throughout that employees could share new opportunities that they found and would have them welcomed by management. This is crucial for a company that hopes to continuously be on the lookout for new opportunities.

This transitions to the next key area, which is placing value on employees’ ideas. Carole Baskin mentioned in the interview that when employees come up to her with problems most of the time she responds with some variation of, “You’re smart you can figure it out.” Carole says this to make a point that she values her employees and their judgment. This is very beneficial for a company that hopes to have an entrepreneurial strategy. Big Cat Rescue does not hire externally and promotes from within their pool of volunteers. This combined with the attitude that the employees are able to solve their own problems without running to management to solve it emphasizes that they place value on their employees’ ideas.

The final key area in an entrepreneurial strategy is recognizing the importance of failure. The ability for employees to be comfortable with failure must come from the top down. Carole Baskin made it very clear to us that she embodies this and stated in the interview, “Fail fast, and move on.” An example that she provided involved raising chickens in the sanctuary. This move was made in order to keep from feeding the cats’ commercial chicken, which has pesticides and antibiotics in their meat. Unfortunately, this new opportunity failed because they could not grow chickens fast enough and they did not provide enough meat for the cats once fully grown. As a result, Big Cat Rescue had to pivot and begin feeding them other sources of meat, but the lesson of the importance of failure became evident.

Culture

Culture represents the collective values and behaviors that develop the specific environment that the company operates in. At the epicenter of Big Cat Rescue’s culture is the desire to help protect all big cats. While this may seem obvious it was clear to us the importance of big cats’ well being through management and employees dedication and fervor to their individual jobs. The company does an excellent job of recognizing their employees and this is shown through multiple pictures of employees on various organizational charts displayed throughout the sanctuary.

Big Cat Rescue uses a color coordinated shirt system to display the experience levels of their volunteers. The volunteers move to different color shirts, the more years they gain volunteering at the sanctuary. This is a clear and easy way of illustrating the company’s organizational hierarchy through experience. It also allows volunteers to easily be able to seek out more knowledgeable volunteers if they have a question or if there is a problem. The shirts serve as a visual representation of the volunteers dedication to the animals and are worn with pride as a volunteer progress to higher shirts.

Big Cat Rescue has a Code of Honor for the sanctuary that was developed by volunteers. This is code of honor was developed by the volunteers and serves as a platform for how volunteers should act while on the job. The company’s’ ability to put the code of honor in the volunteers hands is very empowering for the volunteers and shows the commitment of the company to valuing their employees. The company furthers this by establishing a committee comprised of Carole Baskin and her daughter and two volunteers that meet weekly. This committee discusses any problems or issues that may have come up and seeks ways to resolve them in a way that’s beneficial to all parties. Big Cat Rescue defines their volunteers as rescuers. This was an important point to realize because it denotes a greater sense of importance for the volunteers.

In addition, the executive team at Big Cat Rescue exhibits a high sense of urgency. This urgency is rooted in the belief that legislation will soon be passed to ban the ownership and trade of big cats.

Customer service is very important to Big Cat Rescue and each member of the executive team that we interviewed echoed this. Jeff Kremer, The Director of Donor Appreciation, was most vocal on the subject and explained his attention to detail in regard to customer service. He mentioned how important it was to give personal attention to donors and notes that donors have become friends. He seeks to create personal relationships with supporters and donors and this mentality keeps donations flowing back to Big Cat Rescue. One of his biggest points was to present as many options as possible to donors as well as finding prospective donors that take as little of Big Cat Rescue’s resources as possible. This helps illustrates the entrepreneurial mindset that is so prevalent throughout the company.

Core Competencies

Big Cat Rescue and it’s leadership demonstrate numerous entrepreneurial competencies that have been vital to the company's success The entrepreneurial competencies include: opportunity recognition, opportunity assessment, risk management, conveying a compelling vision, tenacity, creative problem-solving, resource leveraging, guerilla skills, value creation, maintain focus yet adapt, resilience, self efficacy, and building and using networks. Throughout Big Cat Rescue’s existence they have displayed all of these competencies in some form, however certain competencies stick out. The most important competency they show is their ability to convey a compelling mission. Their vision has evolved overtime, but has been crucial to their success as it is manifested in every employee's’ tireless efforts. Another competency embodied at Big Cat Rescue is a high level of self-efficacy. This entrepreneurial competency begins at the top of the organization and trickles down to the volunteers.

Carole Baskin instills a high level of efficacy in her employees through the expectation that each individual was hired for a reason and thusly has the ability to solve the majority of the issues that may arise. Since Big Cat Rescue is a non-profit and seeks donations it is very important they maintain an expansive network. This is another entrepreneurial competency that the company epitomizes and maintains to be successful.

Structure and Human Resources

The structure for Big Cat Rescue is set up in a manner that promotes the entrepreneurial mindset. The structure is extremely flat for a non-profit of that size and allows for easy communication between the management team, employees, and volunteers. The structure is set up so any issues that arise can be communicated and addressed in a timely manner. This structure also benefits the entrepreneurial presence in the company because it easily allows volunteers and employees the opportunity to express any new and innovative ideas to top management. From our surveys, we gathered that most of the employees and volunteers feel they have the right amount of direction as well as ability to speak up if needed. The human resources side of Big Cat Rescue is simple. They hire from within their volunteer pool, and this helps keep turnover low while also creating a dedicated group of employees.

Methodology

In order to gain a proper understanding of the entrepreneurial intensity and the inner workings of Big Cat Rescue, we analyzed their website, interviewed 4 members of upper management and sent out a survey to the employees of the company. We were very fortunate to have every employee respond and participate in our survey.

Interviews

We spent an hour each with Howard Baskin, Jeff Kremer, Carole Baskin, and Gale Ingham. We asked them questions about their backgrounds and the day to day of the organization. Some of our questions asked about how communication worked in the company, how were decisions made, and how much ownership of tasks do employees have. We crafted these questions to understand how often the company pivots, what their culture is like, and how entrepreneurial they are.

Howard Baskin joined the organization in 2003 and helped turn the company around. He is the treasurer and CFO, having a background in finance and working with small for profit companies. Howard Baskin was able to transform Big Cat Rescue from a non-profit that was barely breaking even to one with $3.7 million in their bank.

Jeff Kremer is Big Cat Rescue’s Director of Donor Appreciation. His job is to coordinate fundraising and to maintain relationships with donors. A lot of his job is taking pictures and videos of the cats and sending them out to donors. He explained to us that a good way to maintain relationships with their donors is to find out which cats are their favorites and to keep these donors updated on these cats. He has increased donations by having communication with donors that doesn’t involve asking for donations, which improves the organization's relationships with the donors and makes them want to give even more.

Carole Baskin is the CEO and Founder of Big Cat Rescue. She began the sanctuary in 1992 with her now late husband, after rescuing bobcat kittens from a fur farm. Carole Baskin had gotten involved in rescuing the kittens after already owning one bobcat and her husband wanting another. They stumbled in a fur farm and bought all the kittens in order to save them from their death. Carole Baskin attempted to rehome the kittens but eventually realized that most people are incapable of giving these animals good homes and that this trade needs to stop. She now views herself as the cheerleader of the organization. Carole spends her time supporting her employees and volunteers while brainstorming new ideas to further the organization.

Gale Ingham is the Operations Manager of the organization. We met her after she had spent a significant amount of time trying to wrangle a pair of bobcat kittens, which gave us a special insight about her day to day. Gale’s began her involvement with Big Cat Rescue as a visitor. She was new to the area and took a tour and decided to stay for a volunteer orientation and has been volunteering ever since. Gale was an accountant before she became a full time employee at Big Cat Rescue.

Survey

As we mentioned earlier, we were lucky enough to have every single employee answer our survey about the entrepreneurial climate of the organization. Getting a 100% response rate says a lot about the company without even looking at the results. This is clearly a motivated and close-knit group. Most of the surveys weren’t procrastinated on and were completed the day after they were distributed.

We distributed our survey on Qualtrics, which enabled us to see how quickly our surveys were completed and how long each person took on the survey. On average our survey took about 5 minutes to complete. We had one outlier who left the survey open for 5 days, which we excluded from this calculation. Our survey taking 5 minutes shows that they did take time to read and carefully answering our questions. We used questions that could be answered with long written responses and on a scale from 1-5. As expected, we received only a few answers for the open-ended questions, but the answers we did receive were helpful.

For the most part, employees gave rather similar answers to each of our questions. For questions about employees being free to make decisions and about the company having open communication, most respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed. Employees agreed that rule breaking/bending is not encouraged, which is to be expected when you think about the nature of Big Cat Rescue’s rules. Most of their rules revolve around animal handling and care. Employees don’t have strict guidelines to follow though when it comes to their daily activities.

In many questions of the survey, there was one respondent who seemed to be in disagreement with what everyone else was saying. This individual seems to view Big Cat Rescue as having a rigid chain of command and they do not feel that they have a lot of freedom in their job. We are unsure about the position of this individual so we don’t know if they feel so micromanaged because they are working directly with the cats, which is a position that has a lot of controls, or because of another factor.

Despite this one responder, most employees seemed to agree that they had a lot of freedom in their role and that their input was taken seriously.

Entrepreneurial Audit

We’ve found that Big Cat Rescue is an incredibly entrepreneurial company. They haven’t been afraid to make major pivots when they’ve been needed and are always on the cutting edge. From supporting new legislation to traveling around the world to support other rescues, they frequently find new ways to support their cause of protecting big cats.

Below we will discuss why Big Cat Rescue falls here on the entrepreneurial grid.

Degree

Big Cat Rescue is a fairly innovative organization. They’ve found ways to always be ahead of the trends in nonprofits and how to innovate within their organization to ensure success.

One of the most innovative practices Big Cat Rescue participates in is their hiring practice. They very rarely hire from the outside. For instance, when the organization realized that they needed someone to head up donations and maintain relationships with donors, they looked internally rather than find someone who has worked in the field before. They selected a dedicated volunteer, Jeff Kremer, to fill the position. They had learned from past mistakes that it is much more efficient to find someone who is already passionate about their cause and train them for a position, than to find someone who is trained and experienced.

Big Cat Rescue also places an incredible amount of importance on educating their volunteers, which is not something that always happens in a non-profit environment. Big Cat Rescue had classes offered that teach their volunteers important skills like first aid for humans and animals and how to become properly involved in legislation.

Big Cat Rescue is also innovative in the variety of ways they finance their organization. They solicit donations and they also offer tours of their facility at varying costs. They offer 11 different types of visits to their facility, including multiple tours, weddings, parties, and field trips. Big Cat Rescue’s website also features a donation page that is filled with different ways to support the organization, including donating Bitcoins, sponsorship options, and an Amazon wish list.

Frequency

Big Cat Rescue is rather frequent in the number of entrepreneurial events. The day we visited they had just launched a new class for their volunteers and a new donation tool. Since they are a rather small organization it is easy for them to move things around to better serve their purpose. There isn’t much red tape when it comes to the business and fundraising end of the organization since there is frequent communication between the employees and upper management. We heard in our interviews and from our employee surveys that open communication is encouraged and that most employees didn’t feel like they were micromanaged and that they had a lot of freedom in how they could accomplish their tasks. Something we heard often during our visit was “You’re smart, figure it out”. This seems to be the unofficial mantra of Big Cat Rescue; no one needs to be told how to do things, you’re smart enough to figure it out so go and do it.

Big Cat Rescue has created a culture in which frequent entrepreneurial events are encouraged. If someone has an idea, it’s easy to talk it out with management and they are listened to. This makes it easy for the organization to embrace good ideas and implement them quickly. That being said, in other aspects of the organization Big Cat Rescue doesn’t really change. They’ve had three major pivots in vision in their history. The first came when they decided to stop breeding some of the smaller breeds of cats such a bobcats, the second when they stopped allowing humans to interact with the cats, and the third when they became heavily active in legislation. They were able to make this first pivot in 1997 and the last two in 2003.

The first pivot was originally fought by Carole Baskin’s then husband. He really enjoyed having the bobcat kittens around and he believed that by breeding them they were helping to preserve the species and grow its gene pool. After his disappearance, there was no more disagreement on breeding and Big Cat Rescue was able to easily transition into being only a sanctuary.

When Carole proposed ending interaction with the animals, she faced a lot of fight from within her organization. Most of her employees and volunteers were stunned by the idea. Many guests came to Big Cat Rescue because they wanted to interact and take pictures with the cats and the employees and volunteers felt that no one would come if Big Cat Rescue stopped offering this. They knew that there are many other sanctuaries that visitors could choose to support and still get to interact with the animals. The fear of losing guests was based on the misunderstanding of why people came to the rescue. The employees and volunteers thought people cared most about interacting with the animals, when in reality they were satisfied with observing and learning about the cats. Visitors understood that it was in the best interest for the animals if they did not interact directly with humans and they respected this.

Eventually, Carole’s staff accepted the idea. They realized that it is better for the animals and that by allowing guests to interact with the cats they sent a mixed message. The sanctuary was founded to show that these animals do not make good pets, but interactions conflicted with this vision. Carole believes that by ending contact with the cats, Big Cat Rescue has stopped sending out a muddled message and has actually increased visitors because of this clear mission.

The third pivot came with the realization that Big Cat Rescue was not doing anything to solve the problem of big cats being kept as pets. They were giving the cats they rescued great life time homes, but there were still countless cats being sold off as pets to homes that really could not support them. The pivot to add legislation to their mission was regarded as a great step forward to their organization. It wasn’t fought like the first two pivots, but was embraced since everyone could see its importance.

The employees and volunteers were happy to work towards supporting legislation that aligned with the organization’s goals and the sanctuary shifted some aspects of its day to day to enable working towards legislation. Big Cat Rescue has put quite a bit resources towards finding good representatives to support their bills and have allocated a space on their property to encourage people to sign petitions to end the selling of big cats as pets. They also utilize their social media accounts to help get the word out there of legislation they support and to encourage people to contact their representatives about the bills.

Big Cat Rescue innovates often on a small scale. Their day to day gets shaken up all the time, which is a big part of the nature of running a non-profit organization, especially one with animals. They are always ready to try something new and open communication is a core value that is vital to the survival of Big Cat Rescue. That being said, Big Cat Rescue has only had 3 major innovative shifts in vision, which is rather infrequent.

SWOT

Strength

The strongest strengths of Big Cat Rescue are its leadership, staff, and vision. The employees and volunteers clearly believe in their leaders and it motivates them to come and work hard. Their staff is another strength because they are so incredibly dedicated and hardworking. They really believe in the cause and don’t mind making sacrifices to help out the animals.

Big Cat Rescue’s strong vision is the foundation of all of the organization. It helps keep everyone motivated and working towards their goal of ending big cats in private homes. They are aware that this vision would essentially put them out of business and they embrace that. The finances are a clear strength of Big Cat Rescue since they have become so financially sound since the addition of Howard Baskin to the group. He has helped to ensure that they can take care of their cats until their deaths.

Donor relations are another area they excel in. They have figured out how to engage their donors without soliciting them for money. By keeping up with their donors, they create a friendly relationship and it helps keep the donors coming back.

Weakness

A weakness for Big Cat Rescue is that a large part of their revenue comes from donations and visits. If something happens to donors they rely on, Big Cat Rescue may not be able to function. They do generate their own revenue through tours and special events; donations are still key to their financial stability.

Government regulation is considered to be a weakness since the rules of regulating the care of these animals change often which requires Big Cat Rescue to stay on top of regulation and be ready to adjust to new rules at all times. This utilizes a lot of time and energy that could be spent in other ways.

Opportunity

Legislation is a massive opportunity for Big Cat Rescue to reach their goal of ending private ownership of big cats. Without legislation they wouldn’t really have a way to end the trade and ownership of these animals.

Threats

While Big Cat Rescue does not view other sanctuaries as threats or competitions, they still do compete for donations and support. If annual donations that Big Cat Rescue has come to expect go to another organization, it could mean disaster for Big Cat Rescue. This will more than likely not ever actually happen since Big Cat Rescue works hard to maintain relationships with donors and they have saved up a lot of money so that they do not have to worry as much about getting enough donations to feed the animals every year.

Big Cat Rescue actively pursues passing legislation that makes it impossible to own big cats as pets and while legislation is almost always their ally in this mission, it is always possible that legislation could be passed that will make it more difficult to run this sanctuary. We don’t foresee this occurring, but felt it was still worth mentioning.

Recommendations

As we’ve discussed, Big Cat Rescue is an incredibly entrepreneurial company. They understand the importance of open communication and being open to new ideas. No day is routine for them. Big Cat Rescue also realizes the importance of flat structure when it comes to their hierarchy (we are not discussing volunteer hierarchy since those controls steam from safety protocols).

One of the biggest weaknesses we found while we were completing our audit is that it seems that Big Cat Rescue employees parrot back what their leadership says. We worry that Big Cat Rescue has fallen victim to groupthink and that employees are just agreeing with what is said to them. We are open to this assumption being wrong. This weaknesses was discovered through our survey. We felt that the answers given by employees were almost too similar. If the surveys had not been anonymous, we would recommend speaking with the one employee who felt differently than the others since they seem to have a very different view of the organization. Since that is not an option, we recommend discussing with employees the importance of not falling into groupthink and that it is ok and welcome to challenge ideas.

Another recommendation we have that came from our survey is for Big Cat Rescue to be more transparent about their decisions to employees and volunteers. In our survey results, it was brought up that often management does not inform employees about decisions that have been made or changes to procedures. Employees feel confused and an inconsistency with their work when this happens. Big Cat Rescue should make a point to quickly send out memos when important decisions are made and they should make sure that people know as quickly as possible when decisions that affect their day to day are made.

Our last recommendation is that Big Cat Rescue should improve their presence on Instagram. Currently, their Instagram posts inconsistently and does not seem to interact with visitors who have posted their pictures from Big Cat Rescue. We think they are missing out on a great opportunity to engage their visitors by liking and commenting on their posts. This could get visitors to follow Big Cat Rescue’s social media accounts which would keep the organization in their mind and possibly increase donations. Big Cat Rescue’s presence on Instagram would also help to combat the trend on Instagram of accounts that show big cats as pets. They could use this as an opportunity to directly fight this mindset and show that these animals should not be kept in private hands.