By T. D. Thornton
Approaching its 10th season, the Nov. 2-3 Breeders' Cup pledge to benefit New Vocations is widely recognized as one of the most immediate and charitable ways owners and trainers can share the success of participating in the sport's world championships with the nation's largest rehabilitation and placement program for retired racehorses.
This association between the Breeders' Cup and giving back to help aftercare is now firmly established. But Anna Ford, the longtime Thoroughbred program director for New Vocations, recalls a time when the annual fundraiser represented a bit of a gamble for the accredited non-profit racehorse adoption program.
Nearly a decade ago, when Ford and her team at New Vocations were first kicking around ideas for an autumn fundraiser, she wasn't initially sure she could come up with a donation model in which 100% of the proceeds benefitted the charity.
“Back in 2009, we were trying to figure out how we could have a late fall fundraiser, and anytime you're trying to raise funds, the most important part is trying to keep your costs low,” Ford explained in a recent phone interview. “We were brainstorming, and I'm a huge fan of the whole Breeders' Cup event. And looking at the amount of purse earnings that was being given out over those two days, I was like, 'Wow, if we could just get a small percentage of that earnings base, that would be huge for us.' That's when we started thinking if we could get owners and trainers to pledge a percentage, this could work.
“So that first year, I just went to people who were already in our support group and donor base, and every single one that I talked to said, 'Absolutely, we're in.' So right off the bat, I was like, 'Wow, this is something that could actually work,'” Ford said.
It certainly did. By getting owners and trainers of Breeders' Cup entrants to voluntarily pledge from one-half of one percent to 10% of purse earnings (donors choose their own percentages), past New Vocations pledge drives have netted anywhere from $40,000 to $120,000 during the course of each year's two-day championships. All of the money goes straight to aftercare efforts.
“It's great because there is no overhead cost for us to put on the event,” Ford said. “The Breeders' Cup is the event. The horses are the show. We just need to get in front of the right people and get them to understand what our program is about and to see if they'll pledge a percentage of purse winnings of their choice, and it becomes a win-win situation.”
Perhaps most rewarding for New Vocations is when owners and trainers send a post-race donation anyway, even if their pledged horse fails to earn significant Breeders' Cup purse winnings.
“We do end up having one or two people every year who don't come in the money, but they still send us a check anyway because they want to support the program and they believe in what we're doing,” Ford said.
“People are excited just to go the Breeders' Cup, and I think it helps them to know if they do well in the race, they have a chance to give something back to a charity, and we've found that people are ecstatic to be donating as part of their overall experience,” Ford said.
The 2019 Breeders' Cup online pledge form is here. The New Vocations crew will be doing outreach to the connections of Breeders' Cup entrants as the fields solidify, but Ford said she has already had prospective donors get in touch with her, which she appreciates.
“It gets easier for us to ask participants if they'll pledge because now they are more aware ahead of time that the fundraiser has an established history,” Ford said. “Without even having to ask, the other day I had an owner of a potential Breeders' Cup starter email me to say, 'Hey, we're pledging if we run in the race.' So it's nice to get those, because normally we have to make calls and emails, and it was nice to have somebody reach out to us before I even reached out to them.”
Ford said that trend is helped, at least in part, by the growing recognition on the part of owners that exit strategies for horses need to be factored into their business models.
“The industry is just really embracing aftercare now,” Ford said. “And this fundraiser is also a really easy concept for people to get behind. The more we can get the word out there, we feel the more willing owners and trainers are to donate. We need to make sure that everybody knows we're doing it, and that we want them to be a part of it.”
As an indicator of how quickly time has flown since the inception of the fundraiser, Ford said New Vocations is now taking in the progeny of stallions who ran–and were pledged by their owners and trainers–in previous Breeders' Cup events.
“We definitely are seeing horses in our program that are being sired by horses that ran in the Breeders' Cup,” Ford said. “Right now we've got two Uncle Mos. That is really cool because Mike Repole and Todd Pletcher have been supporters of our program for a really long time. They pledged Uncle Mo when he ran. And I will say that Uncle Mo's offspring, the ones that we've had here in our program, they've all got great minds. They're making really, really good riding horses.
“I know it's not the original plan–for owners to want the offspring of their horses to come through our program,” Ford said. “But we value a connection like that. The horses that do win Breeders' Cup races, obviously, they're not the ones that need our services. It's the horses that don't that we really have to support.”
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