Survival of the marketable
Faraon, king of the beasts, was taking in some air and sitting pretty for onlookers last week at the Warsaw Zoo.
Faraon is also up for adoption along with about 2,000 other animals at the zoo. Adoption, however, does not mean making house pets out of creatures of the wild. Rather, it's part of a sponsor program to gain funds to maintain and build services at the city zoo.
"It is great when somebody decides to give money for animals, and just the fact of sponsorship is positive anyway," Andrzej Szoff, a Warsaw student, said last week while admiring Faraon's coat. So what that sponsors take the opportunity to advertise their brands, he said.
The sponsorship program, called Panda, Foundation for Development of the Warsaw Zoo, was set up eight years ago by zoo director Maciej Rembiszewski. The design was to get money to supplement city subsidies and revenue from ticket sales to broaden the zoo's collection and upgrade facilities. Improvements have been made, but progress is slow, zoo officials said.
"We need about zl. 8 million ($2 million) per year to run the zoo," said Wlodzimierz Konrad, the deputy director of the Warsaw Zoo. "Our costs are covered by the city, which gave us zl. 5 million ($1.25 million) this year, and the remaining zl. 3 million ($750,000) is from ticket sales."
But that's the operating budget. Supplemental funds from the adoption business vary from year to year. In 1997, the zoo collected zl. 138,000 from 174 sponsors. Last year, the number of sponsors dropped to 167, but revenue more than doubled to zl. 308,000. "I am worried, because by September we collected only zl. 176,000 from the assistance of 189 sponsors," said Wika Mirecka-Januszewska, the foundation's marketing specialist.
Adopting an animal is easy. A sponsor simply signs an act of adoption, promising to pay a monthly amount to cover support costs, such as food, shelter and medical care, some of which are predictable, others are not. In exchange, the zoo will set up a billboard declaring patronage. Adoption also comes with a free, right of passage to the zoo and can be tax deductible, according to the foundation.
There are no official estimates or fees for the cost of sponsorship, partly because some costs are unpredictable. But generally speaking, it costs about zl. 12,000 a year to keep a lion in food and shelter, zoo officials said.
The bear, with its tremendous appetite not counting hybernation, is the most expensive animal to maintain and comes with a bill of zl. 18,000 or zl. 1,500 a month. Giraffes run zl. 800 a month and a seal costs zl. 450, which covers the tab for its sushi-like diet of seven kilos of fresh fish daily, officials said. The cheapest adoption paper runs zl. 100 a month for birds, turtles and snakes.
The number of sponsors changes every year and there are no iron-clad rules for sponsorship, Mirecka-Januszewska said. "We are flexible because it is an honorary sponsorship and the act of adoption doesn't describe the period of sponsoring," she said. "There are companies that choose the adoption time frame."
Canal + Polska adopted Faraon and his female cavemate Rosa in a one-year adoption contract that ended last February. Whether the broadcaster will sign on again remains uncertain.
"We haven't made a decision yet and we try to support different undertakings every year," said Tomasz Kazmierowski, deputy director with Canal+ Polska. "Whether I say 'yes' nor 'no,' it will be considered within the upcoming two weeks."
"I don't understand how it works, but sponsors like supporting predators," Mirecka-Januszewska said. In addition to Rosa and Faraon, the third lion in the zoo, Roxana, was picked up by builder Hydrobudowa-6; Telewizja Polska adopted two Siberian tigers; Jerzy Urban's weekly paper Nie supports a hyena and insurer Commercial Union chose bears.
Some sponsors, however, prefer less threatening beasts. Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC, Era GSM), for example, has taken on a school, or is it a flock, of 14 penguins.
"Era GSM chose penguins because they are the symbol of one of our products, system Tak-Tak," said Robert Niczewski, Era GSM spokesman. "We have plans to sponsor all the penguins in Polish Zoos."
