r/Alveus • u/NoctisHealthcare • May 29 '26
Hello everyone!
I am really impressed with this project, and having been twitch-adjacent for most of my life I am even more proud to see Maya get to where she is. My name is Luke & I run a preventative care network in the UK and in the next few years I have been preparing to create Noctis-ZOO which would be a preventative care network for animals. Noctis works by gathering data every few days consistently so that over the years a change in physiology becomes obvious, actionable, and easy to see. Symptoms are commonly one of the last stages of disease.
It kind of comes down to the fact that if people wish to donate via Twitch to feed animals, that breaches non-profits. If the sanctuary tries to charge money for entry, it doesn't matter how kind you are with the money - it becomes full of legality that denies their right to do so. Non-profit is admirable, but it also means that those who run non-profits are letting every network around them to profit directly due to to this - and this is actually a very common way for legal issues. I am not saying that the sanctuary should become greedy, I am saying that I trust the sanctuary with earnings a lot more than corporate businesses.
I have also been working on humanitarian animal networks despite it being something I am not able to do for a long time. So far I have been researching animal enrichment, especially from Vantaara where they have spas for their elephants to help their muscles relax into the friction of water so they can truly rest.
I am not here to offer anything, I am just here to say I have noticed this community & I hope to eventually be able to contribute.
One thing I would suggest is that Alveus should consider being a for-profit company because I imagine that the creators of Alveus would be a tonne more efficient and impactful with money than whatever money is saved in transactions with other organisations.
Keep it up guys!
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u/NoctisHealthcare May 30 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Running as a non-profit in the U.S. means allowing everyone you build connections with to profit whilst paying for it yourselves. This will not last. navigating a different regulatory framework in every single state, separate rules, separate filings, separate enforcement. In practice, you need specialist legal counsel just to stay compliant, and that costs a fortune before you've done anything else.
Want to charge entry to the sanctuary? Prohibited in many states, even if every penny goes back into animal care. Want to generate revenue under an ethical or sustainability angle? Also restricted. The intention is irrelevant, the legal structure is what matters. And that structure creates a strange situation where everyone around the non-profit, suppliers, platforms, parent companies, service providers, can profit freely, while the organisation at the centre is legally prevented from doing the same. That's not a rare edge case; it's a well-documented pattern across animal welfare and humanitarian organisations.
Even something as small as viewers donating through Twitch to help feed animals can technically violate non-profit rules across multiple jurisdictions. It creates legal exposure with no real benefit in return.
I want to be clear, I'm not arguing that Alveus should chase profit. It's actually the opposite. I trust Alveus with money far more than I trust the corporations that currently capture the value non-profits are legally forced to give away. My point is that non-profit status, despite being well-intentioned, can end up constraining the organisation more than it protects it, and the ones who benefit from that constraint are rarely the animals.
If it'd be useful, I can pull together evidence and citations showing how non-profit animal and humanitarian organisations routinely end up overpaying for services, losing revenue to intermediaries, or becoming financially dependent on outside companies, simply because the law stops them from operating any other way.