Animal shelter fundraising with quirky new Zoom service

As the world adjusts to working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, online video meetings have become a necessity to connect with colleagues but one struggling animal sanctuary has found a way to raise money while adding some fun to boring Zoom meetings.

Sweet Farm, a non profit animal sanctuary in California, is offering a service to invite a llama, goat, cow or a range of other farm animals to make appearances on a live video calls.

Beginning in mid March the farm introduced ‘Goat 2 Meeting’ as a way to raise revenue during COVID-19 restrictions, and they have already made over 300 appearances Sweet Farm co-founder Anna Sweet told Business Insider.

Beginning at $65 people all over the world can request a range of animal interactions from a virtual tour of the farm, to one on one time with their favourite animal or just have a llama (by far the most requested animal) join a conference call for that Monday morning meeting.

Sweet Farm is designed to "connect people to where their food comes from” and is partly funded by in-person visits which are currently impossible under coronavirus restrictions so ‘Goat 2 Meeting’ is helping to make up some of the lost revenue.

The animals happily hang out with the online callers and keep meetings fun with random animal noises in between pitches or just provide a cute face on screen to keep work in isolation interesting.

"I think we're all a little stressed with what's going on many of us have been sitting inside," Ms Sweet told Business Insider.

"We're just hoping to bring some smiles to people's faces while bringing them out to the farm at the same time."

Sweet Farm also offers virtual excursions for schools and has already provided the online tour to schools in UK and Brazil.

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