Live compassionately
Compassion is...
...standing in solidarity with all life, arising from a wish for mutual happiness and growth.
...creating an atmosphere of love and empathy.
...not exclusive to simply humans, but all life.
...home
Our Mission
The mission of Rancho Compasión is to provide a loving, lifelong home for rescued farmed animals, and to change public perception about animals typically viewed as “food”. Our Sanctuary promotes a compassionate and sustainable lifestyle for the sake of non-human animals, our planet, social justice, and our physical wellbeing.
Our story
Rancho Compasión was founded in 2015 in the beautiful hills of west Marin to provide a forever home to rescued farmed animals. What started with the Schinner family adopting two goats became a community effort, blossoming into a non-profit sanctuary that provides a safe haven and forever home for 80 non-human residents of 10 different species today.
The organization is run by a Board of highly-involved and passionate community members, over 30 monthly volunteers, and a small staff managed by the founders’ daughter. We are sustained by the generous contributions of individual donors. As a sanctuary, we spend our days providing food, shelter, medical and veterinary attention, and socialization for our residents, and as an organization, we provide visitation, volunteer, outreach, and humane education programs to all ages of the public.
Our Name
The ancestral home of the Tamal Coast Miwok, our village, formerly called Echta-tamal, was colonized in the 1800s by Spanish missionaries and rancheros, who enslaved, killed, and displaced most of the Coast Miwok peoples. Our town was turned into a several thousand-acre ranch called Rancho Nicasio that exploited both indigenous peoples and the bodies of animals like cows and pigs, providing industry and wealth to the missionaries and colonizers. After the Spanish lost the war with the United States, white ranchers then colonized the land, further displacing the Native peoples, and introducing non-native invasive grain grasses, unnatural farmed animals, and drastically altering the ecosystem and landscape of the region.
Rancho Nicasio today is a bar, restaurant, and popular music venue (they offer a vegan Beyond Burger and kale salad). We chose the name Rancho Compasión, Spanish for "compassion ranch" to offer contrast to this area’s brutal history and its legacy today as a continued ranching zone; our name places a stake in the ground that we are here to relate to non-human domesticated animals with kindness, justice, and compassion. Compassion is at the heart of what we do and how we live.
Our Vision
We envision a world where non-human animals are no longer seen as here for human use. We, like other sanctuaries, have set forth a model where animals are not food, property, or products—they can simply just be. In our vision of a farmed animal sanctuary, the animals we typically associate with a barnyard setting, production of byproducts and flesh, or consider dirty, dumb, or less-than, are deserving of the same awe we would give a magnificent whale, adoration of a cute puppy, respect of fierce lion, and the humanity and personhood we give our own species.
We wish to see a world where systems of oppression and exploitation of all beings are dismantled and rebuilt upon a foundation of compassion.
We are vegan because we believe in reducing harm to our fellow earthlings. We believe in a vegan future.