Why Stolen Horse International's website is a .com instead of a .org

Mailbag: If Stolen Horse International is a nonprofit, why do you have a .com website instead of a .org website extension?

This is a very good question and one to answer easily. Keep in mind that the internet was brand new and everything our founders, Harold and Debi Metcalfe did was a huge learning curve. They knew literally nothing about the internet or website. 

Many years ago when our founder's horse was stolen, .com websites were the most popular. Honestly, Debi didn't know the difference at the time and didn't know anything about the internet. Keep in mind that there was never a master plan to start a nonprofit organization. 

Debi and Harold Metcalfe just wanted to find their horse, Idaho, stolen from their farm in 1997. They sent out the first stolen horse alert on the internet and people started contacting them right away offering their help. They also contacted them to see if they could get help finding their own horses. 

A website was created

One of these new friends, Chris Berry, made a webpage on her site for Idaho. She suggested that Debi and Harold have a website to put Idaho, along with the growing number of other stolen horses on so that people could help each other search for the different horses.

The first website was hosted on a quick webpage site first. Debi needed to name the website.  She had no idea what to pick. Since she was bringing people from internationally together,  Stolen Horse International was a name that made sense at the time. 

Debi had only heard about .com websites so she bought the domain name www.netposse.com.

Why NetPosse? 

Why NetPosse you may wonder? Why not stolen something or another? By the time Debi started her first website, the Charlotte Observer had picked up the story about the Metcalfe family search for Idaho. It was picked up and by the AP news and was seen worldwide. In the story, the writer, Joe Depriest, nicked named Stolen Horse International as NetPosse. NetPosse was a combination of thoughts. The net was short for the internet. The word "Posse" was added to the word, "net" because Stolen Horse International was bringing people together on the internet to search for missing, lost, and stolen equine internationally.

A few years later

It was a few years later in 2003 that Stolen Horse International was incorporated as a nonprofit organization. By that time the .com site was branded internationally. The cost to switch from a .com to a .org was not something the organization could afford financially to switch then, or now. It would cost thousands of dollars and infinite time to switch all of the .com links to .org. 

So yes, Stolen Horse International, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and your donations may be tax-deductable. Now you know the rest of the story. 

You can reach the site by using www.netposse.org which also points to the .com site.