LIVERMORE, Calif.--Nancy Janes fell into founding Romania Animal Rescue by accident, she often testifies.

Just five years ago she knew little about Romania, and less about the dogs there.

Now Dana Coustin, cofounder with Rolando Cepraga of the ROLDA shelter in Galati, Romania, says Janes "represents, from my point of view, a model for everyone who wants to help animal charities abroad."

Costin asked ANIMAL PEOPLE to profile Janes because she believes many other U.S. animal advocates could adopt overseas animal charities, much as Romania Animal Rescue is in effect a support group for ROLDA. But Romania Animal Rescue was not formed specifically to help ROLDA. Instead it developed that mission as the most efficient way Janes could find to fulfill her charitable goals.

Romania Animal Rescue is now the largest single source of support for the rapidly expanding ROLDA program. Programs which include advocacy, humane education, street dog and cat sterilization, feeding and medicating the dogs at two overcrowded and under funded municipal shelters. Also, operating the ROLDA shelter as a model of how sheltering ought to be done. Among 22 shelters that ANIMAL PEOPLE has visited in Romania and five neighboring nations, the ROLDA shelter is the only one that would currently exceed a score of 80 by the strictest application of ANIMAL PEOPLE's own 100-point evaluation scale.

Romania Animal Rescue raised nearly $44,000 for ROLDA in 2004, with overhead expenses of about $12,000 (21%, about as efficient as charities ever are while still growing and not subsidized by interest from endowments).

ROLDA has had other major funders. Greyhound Action International, of Britain, made the grant in 2001 that enabled ROLDA to expand from animal rights advocacy to sheltering. A DELTA Rescue grant to help ROLDA feed and medicate the Galati pound dogs was the biggest that ROLDA has ever received.

At least six individual readers of ANIMAL PEOPLE also substantially aid ROLDA, many of them since reading a June 2004 profile of the organization.

The difference between Romania Animal Rescue and the other ROLDA funders is that Romania Animal Rescue extends a range of other support services. Nancy Janes has become both an efficient self-taught fundraiser and a capable publicist, who in only three years has helped ROLDA to become probably the Romanian animal charity best known to U.S. donors.

Janes also brings Romanian dogs to the U.S. and finds homes for them, with recent help from Tony LaRussa's Animal Rescue Foundation executive director Brenda Barnette.

By the separate testimony of both women, Janes has become almost an elder sister to Costin, as gentle and patient as Costin is sometimes impatient and temperamental. They often dream and brainstorm together via the Internet.

"Dana and I are always looking for new and innovative solutions. Our donors regularly give suggestions, which we encourage," says Janes. "In my opinion, animal welfare is still a learning experience. If we knew all the answers, we would not have the problem!"

Janes was not looking for any such relationship or a new avocation, when five years ago she ran a Google web search for information about "Romania Dogs."

Born in Milwaukee, Janes spend much of her childhood in Lake Bluff, Illinois; spent her teen years in Santa Fe, New Mexico; worked for two years as a bank teller and five years as an American Airlines flight attendant; then for 20 years kept the books for her husband Rory Janes' two horse equipment shops in the east San Francisco Bay area.

Janes' experience in a nonprofit work was limited to leading hikes for the Sierra Club for about six years and staffing information booths on behalf of the Greenbelt Alliance.

Animal advocacy was among her concerns in both activities--"I have always viewed helping the environment as the best way to help wild animals," she says--but she did not work with any animal groups.

In 2001 Janes and two friends joined a Sierra Club hiking tour of the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania. They discovered the most abundant street dog population in Europe, and some of the most backward and brutal animal control methods.

"I tried to work with established groups, but with no luck," Janes recalls. "No one wanted to take on Romania, especially after what happened to Brigitte Bardot," who made a huge investment in street dog sterilization in Bucharest only to see mayor Traian Basescu (now president of Romania) unleash one of the most ruthlessly vicious dog pogroms of recent times.

"My thought was, 'well, the dogs are still suffering, and something needs to be done. If no one helps me, I'll try to do it myself," Janes remembers.

Janes began using the Internet to interview potential project partners.

"I was ready to set up a place in Romania on my own," Janes admits. "What a mistake that would have been! Dana enlightened me on how to deal with the Romanian authorities. Dana," a law student, "works diligently and cautiously with the authorities and has taught me the rules to follow and how to be patient.

"I think it is important to understand how the country you are trying to help works," Janes emphasizes, "weather you agree or not. You are definitely not going to change their ways overnight!"

Janes also emphasizes the importance of personally meeting potential partners.

"You must meet the people you are going to work with and check out what they do in person," Janes states. "Do not believe everything you read on the internet!"

E-mail persuaded Nancy and Rory Janes to help ROLDA buy a truck, urgently needed to haul materials, supplies, and dogs from central Galati to the shelter site. They then flew to Romania in 2003 to see what had been done with the investment. Two weeks of volunteer work at ROLDA convinced them to make it the focal project of Romania Animal Rescue Inc., which received U.S. charitable status in August 2003.

"I found Dana to be determined and bold," Janes recalls. "She's tough, and has made perfectly clear that she can handle herself without my help. I like that in her!"

nancy and Rory Janes also spent working vacations at ROLDA in 2004 and 205, and brought Costin to the 2004 Conference on Homeless Animal Management and Policy, in Orlando, partly as a training opportunity, partly to help her expand the ROLDA support network.

While in the U.S., Costin visited and personally thanked as many high donors as she could. She will return to the U.S. for the 2005 CHAMP conference, in Anaheim, co-sponsored by Romanian Animal Rescue and ANIMAL PEOPLE.

"Regular site visits are a must," Nancy Janes says. "Donors must feel confident about you, and you need o feel confident about the work being done. Each donation is important to each donor, and therefore needs to be supervised. Supervisions the job of the sponsor."

Janes does not confuse supervision with direct management.

Traditionally, charities in donor nations support projects in less affluent parts of the world either by starting foreign outposts, or by making grants on a project-by-project basis. Either traditional approach permits the trustees of donor charities to keep close control of the money.

Unfortunately, both traditional approaches also inhibit program success.

Missionary projects often become permanent expatriate enclaves, making little progress toward penetrating and changing the cultures surrounding them. All ideas and initiative come from the parent organization. Locals are just hired help, seldom acquiring deep understanding of the work.

Giving grants on a project-by-project basis frequently achieves even les. Recipient organizations often lurch from new activity to new activity, unable to sustain even their most successful initiatives, and are limited to pursuing goals on a part-time basis because grant givers rarely fund operating costs or salaries.

Few grant-givers want to help existing programs. Frequently a grant-giver will fund the acquisition of a building or a vehicle, but not the ongoing expense of using or maintaining it. The result is that in the name of avoiding waste, grant-giving foundations in all branches of charity have littered the world with half-finished construction and lightly used junk prominently bearing their nameplates.

"Romania Animal Rescue has not only changed my life, it has become my life," Janes admits. "It is all I think of, not because I have to, but because I want to.

"It has been a real challenge for us financially," Janes acknowledges. "Rory and I never argued about money. Now we do."

Among Rory Janes' contributions, beyond cash, business savvy, and patience, is organizing an annual fundraising golf tournament at the Clayton Valley Country Club. The second tournament was promoted by KOIT radio and SFgate.com, the news website jointly sponsored by the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. Prizes were donated by many prominent San Francisco Bay area businesses. It netted $7,000, quite a decent take for a still young charity.

Old friends "have been openly critical of my choice to help Romania," Nancy Janes says. "Needless to say, the hardest part is raising funds. I hate asking good people for money--they should not have to sacrifice for the abuses of others. Unfortunately this is not the way the world works," Janes laments.

"The people I would like to make pay huge amounts to animal welfare are the abusers. The SIDEX steel factory in Galati for instance, should have to pay for poisoning as many as 3,000 dogs this winter," Janes opines. "They are evil, and must be punished. This is black-and-white as far as I am concerned. But I guess if the good people were the most powerful, animals would not be in a crisis in the first place.

"People are suspicious as to what they are funding," Janes continues, "and they just don't have an idea of what it is really like for the dogs of Romania. They ask, 'why help dogs in Romania? Fogs need help in the USA!' and 'What about the children?'

"I knew this would be hard to do, as a U.S. person helping in Romania, and it is a constant challenge. How do I convince another person that there is a crisis requiring help, especially if the potential donor does not even know me?" Janes asks. "Others are helping with other very worthy charities. All I can hope for is to see in Romania the progress that western countries have made for dogs.

"I wish I had known how much time and money this would take," Janes concedes. "I wish I had known that who you know is probably the most important thing in fundraising. No matter how good we are, how honest, and how hard we work, recognition seems to come only when we become connected with the right person or people. Not being comfortable around people has made this difficult for me. I am always nervous at conferences and meetings, but I am working on that!

"Animals and I seem to naturally bond together," Janes confesses, "and before starting Romania Animal Rescue I would avoid human contact. I did not know there were so many good people out there," as now assist her in helping Romanian dogs.

"This experience has not only enriched the lives of the dogs, but mine as well," Janes concludes.

--Merritt Clifton
Animal People