Lovie’s Haven is a big dream — 150 acres, a herd, a pavilion, a village — and we want to be completely honest about what it costs. The full build is more than any single raise can cover. The Founding 150 is the part that has to come first: the land, and the sanctuary itself. And we're inviting exactly one hundred and fifty people to be the ones who did it.
Here's the honest picture: the full estate — pavilion, bungalows, village — is a fifteen-to-twenty-million-dollar build, and no single raise was ever going to cover all of it. The Founding 150 funds the part everything else depends on.
Founding capital buys the land and builds the sanctuary itself — elephant-grade fencing, water, wallows, the barns, the farm — plus the first doors that earn: the café and the first village huts, open early so the herd's care has income from year one. We won't borrow against any of it — we never want a loan payment competing with an elephant's care budget. Once the land is ours and the herd's home is funded, we raise the rest the way institutions do: named gifts, grants, and partners who want their name on a building, phase by phase.
The Founding 150 opens once, fills once, and closes forever. After the hundred-and-fiftieth member joins, there will simply never be another — no matter what comes later.
$1,250,000Meadow founders
$2,500,000Lakeside founders
$3,750,000Sky View founders
$7,500,000A hundred and fifty places, one raise, closed forever
$25,000, once.
The lifetime class pass — every class in the Sky View Pavilion, yoga to sound baths to evening talks, any day, forever.
A complimentary one-night stay on the estate every year, for life, and two seats at the annual Founders’ Gala, every year.
$25,000 · 50 places
$50,000, once.
Everything in Meadow, and a complimentary two-night stay every year, for life — with priority on the water bungalows.
$50,000 · 50 places
$75,000, once.
Everything in Lakeside, and a complimentary three-night stay every year, for life — first choice of dates each year, and first invitation to everything this place ever opens.
$75,000 · 50 places
Stays include breakfast and all classes, just like any guest. Founders book ahead within the eleven cabins like everyone else — keeping this place small and quiet is the whole reason it works.
The tiers set your nights. Everything else is the same for every founder, because there's only one Founding 150 and every member of it matters equally.
And underneath it all sits one promise: your money builds the sanctuary first. Your benefits begin the day the gate opens — and they'll mean something because you're the reason it opened.
Every founding dollar goes first to the herd's side of the plan — the land under everything, and the things an elephant actually needs — and then to the first earning corners of the retreat, because the retreat is what pays for elephant care. We'll refine the budget against the final property, share it with founders line by line, and keep publishing the real numbers as we build.
Phase Two — the full Sky View Pavilion, the rest of the bungalows and huts, the village, the endowment — is the capital campaign that follows, funded by named gifts, grants and partners. That campaign becomes possible the day the founders put real land under it. That's the gift of going first.
$2,200,000The 150-acre property, closing, surveys and permits
$1,600,000Elephant-grade fencing, water systems, wallows, shade
$1,200,000Veterinary barn and retirement barn
$250,000Winnie’s Farm — rescue barn and paddocks
$1,000,000The café and the first village huts — built early, so the estate is earning for the herd's care before the rest of the village exists
$500,000Transport, intake and first-year care for the first residents
$750,000Contingency and the first year of operations
$8–12M targetThe estate — pavilion, bungalows, village, the rest of the endowment — raised from named gifts, grants and partners
A promise of "free stays for life" is only worth making if the numbers truly work. Ours do, and we'd rather show you the whole calculation than ask you to take our word for it.
All hundred and fifty founders together use 300 room-nights a year. Our eleven cabins offer roughly four thousand. That means founders fill under eight percent of the estate's nights — the rest are sold to guests, and every sold night funds elephant care. Classes cost us nothing extra: the instructor is already teaching, and the room already faces the meadow. And the gala is one evening a year we'd be hosting anyway — there's simply nobody we'd rather host.
So founders aren't a cost this place carries. They're its foundation — a hundred and fifty people with a lifetime reason to love and protect it.
300 a year50×1 + 50×2 + 50×3, across all hundred and fifty founders
~4,000 a yearEleven cabins, year-round
~7.5%Of the estate's capacity, forever
RevenueStays, memberships, retreats, weddings, café, shop, farm
Tell us which tier feels right. A reservation is just a conversation and a letter of intent — no money moves yet.
Every founder signs the same written founding-membership agreement: your benefits and our obligations, spelled out in plain language.
Your funds are held safely in escrow until the raise completes and the land closes. If either doesn't happen, every dollar comes back to you.
You'll follow the build the way sponsors follow the field log: honestly and completely — budgets, actual costs, delays and all.
Your benefits begin opening week and never end. And so does the herd's retirement — the thing you really built.
Tell us which tier speaks to you, and ask us anything about the plan, the budget or the herd. We love the hard questions — the people who ask the most tend to be the ones who join.
A founding membership is a one-time contribution with defined lifetime benefits, documented in a written agreement. It is not a share, security or loan, and nothing on this page is an offer of securities or a promise of financial return. Figures are the current working budget, the full-build total is a working estimate, and every number is finalized in the agreement. Lovie’s Haven is at concept stage; the property shown is a target, not yet secured.