Durham animal sanctuary needs volunteers in order to expand operation To keep the operation going, Hurst says it costs between $50,000 and $75,000 a year — a figure he says he hasn’t been hitting since the pandemic started.Hurst says it’s a combination of donations being down and not being able to generate any revenue with tours and visits due to the pandemic.In addition to losing money, Hurst says he’s lost half of his volunteers.“We can’t really take a lot of animals now because we’re in that situation where we don’t have the volunteers to look after them.
The last thing we want to do is overstretch, go beyond our ability to take care of the animals,” said Hurst.Ray Smith has been volunteering for the past year.