Rescue centre costs

I would love to have a breakdown of just what it costs to manage a dog rescue centre. Our long term goal is to get a facility where all the dogs we care for are in one place with a visiting centre and possibly a treatment (and possibly even a resident vet, who knows). But it is very difficult to find out exactly what the costs are. I have had a look at the accounts of other dog rescue charities, and those that I have found that give breakdowns seem to spend strange sums of certain areas - for example one spent £3 a day on dog food. That's a premium diet! Surely even if the very best dog food was purchased a discount could be obtained, or even purchased at wholesale price from a warehouse.

Our own rescue centre is of course a long, long term aim. We have very favourable terms with Birch Hill Kennels and for the present time we could not consider anything but using their services. However BHK have their own dogs and are linked to Birch Hill Dog Rescue so space is at a premium. While we remain small, and our funds limited we can only cater for the number of dogs we currently have, but as funds increase as they hopefully will we will need to revisit kennel space again, possibly looking at other kennels to use. This of course is not ideal. We prefer to have all our dogs in one place for a number of reasons but this may not be viable in the short term.

What I am trying to find out is the day to day costs - electric, gas, water, refuge, food, cleaning, salaries, veterinary bills, rates, etc, everything except the actual cost of the land and buildings.

The cost of buildings and land is something altogether different. It seems we have to look at one of several options a) buying an existing boarding kennel b) buying a house with land and renovating, c) buying farm buildings/land or d) a complete new build. Each of the options as pros and cons that I won't labour on about here. Besides it remains a dream for us at this stage, but one that we are nonetheless focused on achieving.