Questions & Answers
We've organized our FAQs by audience. Whether you're a rescue organization, a funder, or someone learning about our work for the first time, we hope this answers what you're wondering. If it doesn't, please reach out.
For Rescue Partners
Our goal is to understand your organization well enough to design funding that's actually useful to you — not to audit or test you. Our vetting process for partnership is straightforward and includes:
We're looking for mission alignment and a willingness to collaborate honestly — not a perfect organizational track record.
Partnership with Lữ Rescue Alliance is designed to be collaborative rather than transactional. What you share with us shapes what we do next — not just how we work with your organization, but where we focus our efforts across the sector. The conditions you're operating in, the pressures you face, and the gaps you describe are exactly the information that tells us where support is most needed and what form it should take.
Each grant period in Phase 1 lasts approximately three months. At the start, we establish a shared understanding of your current situation and what we're hoping to learn together (through a partner intake form and conversation with your organization's leader). At the end, we ask you to complete an outcome survey and submit basic documentation of how funds were used, and photos where appropriate. No formal narrative reports are required. We aim to keep the process straightforward — for you as much as for us.
What you share doesn't stay with us. Findings from across our partner cohort — always aggregated and anonymized — are published as sector-level insights. Your experience contributes to a body of evidence that benefits the wider rescue field in Vietnam, not just your own organization.
Our pilot phase is intentionally structured to learn from partners, test our assumptions, and adjust before we grow. That means we'll ask for honest feedback. If something isn't working — a grant structure, a reporting requirement, our communication — we want to know.
No. Our funding is designed to support your work, not direct it. We do not require rescues to change their operational structure, adopt specific policies, or align with any particular animal welfare philosophy as a condition of partnership. Grant agreements will specify how funds may be used within a given round, but decisions about how your organization operates remain entirely yours.
We ask for basic documentation for three reasons:
ComplianceAs a U.S. nonprofit distributing funds internationally, we're required to ensure donor funds are used for charitable purposes consistent with our tax-exempt mission. Documentation is how we demonstrate that obligation is being met.
Funder AccountabilityTo sustain and grow our grantmaking, we need to demonstrate to individual and institutional funders that resources are reaching vetted partners doing real work. Good documentation helps us direct more funding to rescues over time.
Baseline DataDocumentation of how grants are used — what rescues spend on, the types of cases that need the most attention, where the pressure points are, and what adequate resourcing actually looks like in practice — is part of how we build a picture of the sector. We're also interested in how that picture varies by location: different parts of Vietnam face different conditions, and understanding those differences is part of what makes our baseline useful. This information isn't used to evaluate your organization. It contributes to the baseline that shapes our future work and informs broader advocacy for Vietnam's rescue community.
To be clear, we are not:
Depending on your grant, documentation may include receipts or invoices, a simple expense breakdown, or bank transaction records showing funds were used as intended. We will always communicate exactly what's needed before each round begins — you won't be surprised mid-round by requirements you weren't told about upfront.
Reporting is intentionally light and proportional to the funding received. We've designed it to take as little of your time as possible.
We understand that rescue work is unpredictable and that administrative capacity varies significantly across organizations. If something comes up that affects your ability to submit documentation on time or in full, we ask that you communicate with us early rather than go silent. We will always try to find a workable solution before making any decisions about continued partnership. Our goal is to support your work, not to create barriers to it.
Yes. We recognize that many of Vietnam's most active rescue operations function informally, without official registration. Legal standing is not a prerequisite for partnership. What matters is your commitment to the animals in your care and a willingness to collaborate transparently. Vetting procedures and documentation requirements are adjusted proportionally based on organizational structure.
Data collected through our partnership serves two purposes. The first is practical: it helps us understand your organization well enough to design funding that's actually useful to you. The second is sector-level: across our partner cohort, that same data builds a picture of the structural conditions facing companion animal rescue in Vietnam — one that currently doesn't exist in any systematic form.
The data we collect includes organizational capacity, financial conditions, veterinary access, sterilization activity, community prevention involvement, and intake patterns. Over time, this baseline becomes the evidence that shapes what comes after Phase 1 — including how we approach sterilization support, veterinary access, and community education in later phases of our work.
Findings are published in aggregated, anonymized form only. No individually identifiable information about your organization is shared externally without your explicit written permission. Partner data is retained for seven years following the conclusion of our partnership, stored securely, and accessible only to Lữ Rescue Alliance staff directly involved in program operations.
If you have questions about how your data is handled at any point, we're happy to discuss further.
We recognize that English is not the first language of many of the organizations we hope to work with, and that language accessibility is important to a genuinely equitable partnership. We are working toward offering translated versions of our key documents, forms, and communications by our third funding round. In the meantime, we welcome communication in Vietnamese and will do our best to respond in kind or with translation support. If language is a barrier to completing any part of our process, please reach out directly and we will find a workable solution.
For Funders
Partner selection is deliberate. We're not casting a wide net — we're looking for organizations whose situations and willingness to engage will help us build a reliable picture of the sector.
Every prospective partner completes a structured intake and baseline assessment before any grant is made. This covers their operational profile, financial conditions, staffing, veterinary access, sterilization activity, community prevention involvement, and the pressures most affecting their day-to-day work. That baseline serves two purposes: it tells us whether a grant partnership makes sense given their current capacity, and it contributes to our sector-level data from the moment engagement begins.
We do not select partners based on size, registration status, or presentation. Some of Vietnam's most active rescue work happens in informal, unregistered organizations. What we're looking for is transparency about real conditions and a willingness to engage honestly — because that's what produces data worth publishing.
All partners go through standard compliance screening required of U.S.-based international grantmakers before any funds are disbursed. Selection is documented and retained as part of our grant records.
We measure impact at two levels, and we're honest that Phase 1 is as much about building the foundation for measurement as it is about producing impact claims.
At the partner level, we track whether the organizations we work with are more stable and better resourced at the end of a grant round than at the start. Indicators include financial runway, veterinary debt, reporting capacity, and partners' own assessment of their operational stability. At the animal welfare level, we track sterilizations completed, emergency cases treated, vaccination coverage, and intake patterns.
At the sector level, Phase 1 is building a baseline that doesn't currently exist. What does veterinary access actually look like across rescue organizations? What drives intake? Where are the sterilization gaps? What financial pressures most commonly destabilize rescues? This baseline is what makes Phase 2 meaningful. Phase 2 focuses on community-level interventions — community sterilization programs, veterinary access mapping, and community education — work that happens upstream of rescue intake entirely. At the end of Phase 2, we collect data again: from rescues, veterinarians, and community members. The question we're asking is whether those interventions produced any measurable change in intake pressure on rescue organizations. Phase 2 will likely span several years.
We publish throughout. Phase 1 baseline findings are published on a rolling basis as patterns emerge — the descriptive picture of what the sector looks like before any community-level intervention. During Phase 2, interim observations are shared as we learn. Phase 3 is where the full longitudinal picture comes together: the baseline, the interventions, and what the data shows about whether upstream efforts produced any measurable change. That body of evidence is what we believe can inform animal welfare strategy across Vietnam, not just for our direct partners.
We do not claim impact we cannot demonstrate. Our phased structure exists precisely so that our eventual claims are grounded in evidence rather than assumption.
All grants are disbursed under a signed Partner MOU and pilot-specific Grant Agreement that outline the permitted uses of funds, reporting requirements, and disbursement conditions. No funds are released without a signed agreement in place. We maintain a grant register and reconciliation records for all disbursements, and partner financial documentation is retained for seven years following the conclusion of the partnership.
We are a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) organization (EIN 41-3646656) operating under IRS nonprofit compliance requirements.
Publishing is core to what we do — not a secondary activity. Being embedded with rescue partners gives us access to ground-level information about Vietnam's companion animal welfare sector that doesn't exist anywhere in systematic form. We take that seriously, and we design our data collection from the start with publication in mind.
Early publications will focus on baseline conditions: what our intake assessments reveal about veterinary access, sterilization capacity, rescue sustainability and organizational capacity, financial pressures, and intake drivers across our partner cohort. This is the descriptive foundation — a picture of what the sector actually looks like, documented rigorously and published openly. Later publications will report on outcomes from Phase 2 community-level interventions — sterilization programs, veterinary access, and community education — and what the data shows about their effect on upstream intake pressure.
All findings are aggregated and anonymized. No individually identifiable partner data is published without explicit written permission. We publish on our website and share directly with funders, partner organizations, and researchers working on related questions in the region.
We publish on a rolling basis as meaningful patterns emerge — not on a fixed calendar. We'd rather publish something accurate and useful than something timely and thin.
General
Our founder spent seven months in Vietnam in 2020, visiting shelters and rescues firsthand and developing a clear picture of both the commitment of the rescue community and the structural conditions working against it. The combination of high intake demand, limited community prevention infrastructure, a growing but under-resourced rescue sector, and almost no systematic data on what's working made Vietnam a compelling place to test a different kind of intervention.
Vietnam is also a country where companion animal welfare is at an inflection point — public attitudes toward pets are shifting, a younger generation of animal advocates is active, and the conditions for meaningful systemic change are present. We believe a well-timed investment in infrastructure and data could have significant and lasting impact that extends well beyond the organizations we directly fund.
We are focused on Vietnam specifically rather than the broader region because we believe depth matters more than breadth at this stage. We would rather understand one context well than replicate a surface-level model across multiple countries.
We do not rescue, shelter, foster, or rehome animals. We exist because the people who do that work are already doing it — and because doing it sustainably requires infrastructure that most grassroots rescues cannot build alone.
Our focus is on the conditions that allow rescue organizations to keep operating: financial stability, the upstream factors that drive intake, and the systems that connect good work to the funding it deserves. For rescue partners, we offer structured grant support designed around their actual operational needs. For funders, we do the vetting and relationship work that makes it possible for resources to reach informal or grassroots organizations with confidence.
But there's a second layer to what we do that direct rescue organizations aren't positioned to do: we collect and publish systematic data on the sector. Every partner intake, every grant round, every outcome survey contributes to a picture of Vietnam's companion animal welfare landscape that currently doesn't exist in any documented form — what rescues need, where the gaps are, what's driving intake, and where upstream intervention is most likely to matter. That information doesn't just help our partners. Published openly, it's available to other funders, researchers, policymakers, and organizations working on animal welfare across Vietnam. The goal is that what we learn through direct partnership ultimately reaches further than our direct partners.
The most valuable thing you can do right now is connect us with people who should know about our work — rescue organizations in Vietnam looking for structured partnership, funders with interest in Southeast Asian animal welfare, animal welfare advocates working in Vietnam or abroad, researchers or data collectors working on related questions, and advisors with experience in nonprofit capacity building, systems change, or international grantmaking.
If you work with or know of rescue organizations in Vietnam that might be a good fit for our pilot, we'd welcome an introduction. If you are a funder, advocate, or advisor interested in following our work as it develops, we'd encourage you to reach out directly through our contact form.
We are not currently accepting general donations, but we expect to open individual giving as our model matures and our impact data develops. If you'd like to be notified when that changes, let us know through our contact form.