Payout Date: January 15, 2018
Total grants: USD 150,000
Number of grantees: 7
Thank you for donating to the EA Animal Welfare Fund. I’m recommending new disbursements of $150K and want to provide a little explanation behind my allocations.
My goal is to maximize the marginal impact of each dollar in reducing animal suffering. I view Animal Charity Evaluators’ new top charities as the benchmark for this fund — and I think it’s a strong benchmark. If you disagree with my reasoning, I encourage you to donate to those charities — you can do that through ACE or EA Funds.
To beat this benchmark, I think I need to identify groups that are potentially as or more promising than ACE’s top charities and have greater room for more funding (but not so much room for more funding that we’ll have invested time at the Open Philanthropy Project in making a large grant to them). Typically these groups will be small, esoteric, or high risk.
I’m recommending grants to five groups that I think meet this description:
$50K to Wild-Animal Suffering Research, via the Effective Altruism Foundation $30K to Compassion in World Farming USA $20K to The Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal in Brazil $20K to Sinergia Animal $10K to the Sentience Institute
I’m also recommending a smaller sum to two ACE top charities that may have some capacity for extra funding — I view this as basically following the benchmark with the remainder of the funds.
$10K to The Humane League $10K to the Good Food Institute
(I previously recommended $180K in disbursements in April. I continue to be excited about all of these groups but am not recommending re-granting to half of them because we subsequently made large grants to them via Open Phil that reduced their room for more funding. This creates a risk that EA Funds partially got “funged” by Open Phil, but I think more commonly these groups used the smaller EA Funds grants as bridge funding to help them scale up before the Open Phil funds arrived.)
Wild-Animal Suffering Research / The Effective Altruism Foundation ($50K) Research on improving the welfare of wild animals. The April grant from this Fund enabled Ozy Brennan, Persis Eskander, and Georgia Ray to launch Wild-Animal Suffering Research under the Effective Altruism Foundation. I think that the importance and neglectedness of wild animal welfare argue for focusing more resources on the issue, even if we don’t yet know if the issue is tractable. I agree with Ozy that “in my ideal world the [wild animal welfare] field would consist of conservation biologists, wildlife managers, ecologists, ethologists and other people who can apply their academic knowledge to the question of improving wild animal welfare.” But I also agree with them that in the meantime the talented researchers at WAS-Research are a good start. They have clear needs for more funding, which I don’t expect other funders to fully address: they’re seeking $93K total over the next 12 months, and with this $50K “would increase hourly rates to $16USD for all researchers and move two of the three researchers into full-time (Persis and Georgia as Ozy doesn't plan to work more hours). Or alternatively, move one researcher into full-time (Georgia) and hire another researcher with domain expertise to work part-time.” I also view the clear focus and diversity of the group’s leadership as positives.
Compassion in World Farming USA ($30K) Corporate outreach. I continue to be impressed by the track record of CIWF USA in securing major corporate commitments to reduce the suffering of layer hens and broiler chickens. Most recently it helped secure new broiler chicken welfare pledges from Nestle, Unilever, and Moe’s. It also launched EggTrack to push companies to fulfill their cage-free pledges. In addition to CIWF USA’s strong track record, I like its narrow focus on utilizing an effective tactic to seek reforms for the most numerous farm animals and have a high opinion of its leader, Leah Garces. Open Phil already accounts for about half the group’s budget, limiting our ability to fund it further, and its lack of an ACE top charity recommendation (though it is a standout charity) and its welfarist focus make it less likely to receive other funds.
The Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal ($20K) Corporate outreach and grassroots campaigning. This small Brazilian group continues to play a leading role in securing pledges to eliminate hen cages and pig crates from supply chains. Most recently it helped secure cage-free policies covering all Latin American operations of Subway and Kraft-Heinz. My concerns about its continued work on less impactful non-farm animal issues like rodeo are outweighed by its significant room for more funding on farm animal work. Open Phil already accounts for about half the group’s budget, limiting our ability to fund it further, and we’re unlikely to prioritize considering major additional funding for it soon. Its other fundraising options are constrained given Brazil’s challenging fundraising environment.
Sinergia Animal ($20K) Corporate outreach and grassroots campaigning. This new Latin American group is focused on securing corporate progress on farm animal welfare through hard-hitting campaigns in Chile, Argentina, and Colombia. This focus makes sense: these countries are much more neglected than Brazil and Mexico by advocates but still have large numbers of farm animals (360M birds alive at any point in time between the three countries). The new group is led by Carolina Macedo Galvani, whose work at the Fórum Nacional I was impressed with, and in its first few months has already helped secure a pledge from a Chilean restaurant company with 320 locations to eliminate cages and crates from its supply chain. Because the group is completely new and outside of the US, I think it’s unlikely to raise significant funds quickly. It’s also too small for us to prioritize granting to it via Open Phil for now.
The Sentience Institute ($10K) Research. I think there’s a need for more high quality research in the farm animal movement. I don’t yet know if the Sentience Institute will fill that need, but I was impressed by its first work product, a survey on US attitudes toward farming animals, and I’ve been impressed by its co-founders, Kelly Witwicki and Jacy Reese. Given that the group has immediate funding needs, and that I generally would like to see more startup groups pursuing potentially promising new approaches, I think it makes sense to provide a small experimental grant here.
The Humane League ($10K) Grassroots campaigning and movement building. I continue to be impressed by THL’s success in securing major corporate pledges to reduce the suffering of layer hens and broiler chickens. I also think that THL is taking a thoughtful approach to building a large grassroots movement for farm animals — especially through its international Open Wing Alliance — and continues to attract very talented activists. I’m not recommending more funding primarily because I expect Open Phil and other funders to fill most of what I perceive to be THL’s room for more funding this year.
The Good Food Institute ($10K) Advocacy for animal product alternatives. I view GFI as the most effective group operating in an important space: promoting technological alternatives to factory farmed animal products. I view this area as one of the most credible long-term solutions to farm animal suffering. I’m not recommending more funding primarily because I expect Open Phil and other funders to fill all of what I perceive to be GFI’s room for more funding this year (though there could be value to more multi-year gifts to GFI, which will give it more security to expand rapidly).