Animal Welfare Fund: Payout recommendations from May 2022 to March 2024
Introduction
This payout report covers the Animal Welfare Fund’s grantmaking from May 1 2022 to March 31st 2024 (23 months). It follows the previous March-April 2022 payout report.
Since the previous report was written, the Animal Welfare Fund made a conscious decision to deprioritize public reports so that fund managers can have more time and capacity to work on high-quality evaluations. However, now that I (Linch) am working for EA Funds full-time, I’ve attempted to consolidate and streamline the report writing process, so that hopefully regular reports can be written again without unduly using up limited fund manager time.
Total funding recommended: $7,079,301
Total funding paid out: $6,943,301
Number of grants paid out: 109
Acceptance rate (excluding desk rejections): 111⁄409 = 27.1%
Acceptance rate (including desk rejections): 111⁄685 = 16.2%
Report authors: Linchuan Zhang (primary author), Kieran Greig (fund chair), Karolina Sarek, Zoë Sigle, Neil Dullaghan
16 of our grantees, who received a total of $1,068,540, requested that we do not include public reports for their grants (you can read our policy on public reporting here).
Highlighted Grants
(The following grants writeups were written by me, Linch Zhang. They were reviewed by the primary investigators of each grant).
Highlighted grants correspond to grants that the AWF team rated highly, usually because they thought the grant was very likely to be very cost-effective or the potential upside was very high.
Planet For All Hong Kong ($63,000): Stipends and professional services to launch Hong Kong’s first aquatic animal welfare movement
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $63,000 grant to Planet For All Hong Kong from September 2022 to August 2023. The funding covered stipends, marketing, website, and professional services for one full-time employee and two part-time employees to launch Hong Kong’s first aquatic animal welfare movement. The organization plans to engage with industry stakeholders, government, and policymakers; raise public awareness; and build partnerships with corporations to incorporate animal welfare in their sourcing policies.
The Animal Welfare Fund was excited to fund this project due to the region, focus area, and the organizations’ leadership and project plan. Hong Kong is a high-priority region with high fish consumption, and the work is very neglected. The fund believes the small organization has good leadership and a reasonable project plan. However, we did have concerns that the additional focus may distract from their very important work on chicken cage-free reforms. This concern is partially mitigated by the grant being used to hire an external person for the full-time role, so existing projects are hopefully less likely to be negatively impacted. Overall, the importance and neglectedness of the work are strong arguments in favor of supporting the grant.
Outcomes: During the grant period, the organization identified supportive stakeholders and a local campaign opportunity regarding “Fish Culture Zones,” building rapport with local marine conservation organizations and meeting with modern fish farmers to better understand the feasibility and challenges of promoting aquatic animal welfare. They connected the Fish Culture Zone campaign with the importance of aquatic animal agriculture and met with the Aquaculture Division of the Hong Kong government. The organization successfully launched “Sea Life Matters,” the first public education campaign about aquatic life welfare in Hong Kong, engaging with about 1,000 citizens, partnering with more than 30 online influencers, and collaborating with over 10 restaurants and retailers.
Animal Empathy Philippines ($33,000): PT stipend to increase community building work and support farmed animal welfare projects in the Philippines
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $33,000 grant to Animal Empathy Philippines from June to November 2022 to support their community building work and farmed animal welfare projects in the Philippines. The Philippines is a priority country for farmed animal efforts, with over a billion farmed animals. Before the grant, Animal Empathy Philippines had been funded for about six months and had only 1.5 full-time equivalent staff.
Fund managers believe that talent, alongside identifying and implementing scalable, cost-effective interventions, may be the main bottleneck in the region. Given that EA Philippines already has a large, robust community, providing additional engagement opportunities to people interested in working on farmed animal welfare could help build the movement and develop talent in this region.
Animal Empathy Philippines has shown a promising trajectory with their community building and public communications. Further, there are no other natural funders for animal-focused community building work in Asia, as the Centre for Effective Altruism will no longer support EA chapters outside of the UK, US, and a limited number of key locations in the EU. However, there are concerns that this grant may, in practice, displace other general funding (“funging”) for EA community building in the Philippines. While we highlighted this grant in particular, please note that the Animal Welfare Fund has funded Animal Empathy Philippines multiple times, as we’re broadly happy with their work.
Outcomes: During the grant period, Animal Empathy Philippines conducted an 8-week Animal Advocacy Introductory Fellowship for 39 fellows across two cohorts and organized six virtual and four in-person events and activities. They generated 25 project ideas through regular one-on-one meetings, the fellowship, and networking, which they can act on in future years. Additionally, they conducted a scoping study on alternative proteins and provided assistance to other EA-aligned animal advocacy organizations.
Animal Welfare League ($40,000): 12-month budget support for a new organization’s nationwide cage-free campaign in Ghana
In November 2023, the Animal Welfare Fund provided a $40,000 grant to Animal Welfare League, a new Open Wing Alliance group founded in 2021, for their campaign to “end abuse of 25 million chickens in cages” in Ghana. Animal Welfare League is the only organization focused on cage-free advocacy in Ghana, where there are currently around 25 million layer chickens. Ghana’s rapidly growing economy makes early advocacy for cage-free campaigns potentially high-impact, as it may prevent or reduce lock-ins in the poultry industry.
While some fund managers thought that Animal Welfare League’s plans were too ambitious for their first year, their overall goals seemed reasonable, and their leadership appeared promising. Interested readers may find Animal Welfare League’s 2023 Review useful, although we should note that the Animal Welfare Fund’s funding barely covers the period discussed in the review.
Outcomes: As the grant period is still ongoing, the Animal Welfare Fund has not yet collected information on the outcomes of this grant.
The European Institute for Animal Law & Policy ($31,396.64): Funding for research on aquatic animals and insects in EU animal law and policy
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $31,396.64 grant to The European Institute for Animal Law & Policy from August 2022 to June 2023. The grant covered 3-6 month stipends for a senior legal and policy researcher and an intern to deliver two reports on (1) aquatic animals in EU animal law and policy and (2) insects in EU animal law and policy.
A collection of resources on insects could be invaluable in helping groups understand the space and the implications of insect farming on land vertebrate farming. While aquatic animals in the EU are relatively neglected, insects are even more so.
Fund managers were impressed by Alice Di Concetto’s research quality and track record. Her previous work, including prior research notes and the 2021 annual report, seemed valuable and informative. A fund manager highlighted three salient examples: (1) noting that some alternatives to male chick-culling proposed in EA circles are intractable in the EU context due to the existing aversion to gene-editing in the food space; (2) mailing published materials directly to key decision-makers rather than relying on op-eds; and (3) attracting key figures in the EU animal advocacy space from politics, NGOs, and media to their first hosted event, demonstrating their importance and value within the network. In general, Di Concetto and her team provided strong technical expertise in areas where animal advocates often have less knowledge.
Unlike many other researchers, their research work seems focused on being thoroughly scoped and actionable, increasing the likelihood of decision-makers actually acting upon her work.
Outcomes: The grant helped Di Concetto and Pauline Koczorowski author 3 Research Notes, including a published report on aquatic animal welfare legislation and two reports on farmed fish welfare and insect welfare, which are slated for publication by Q3 of 2024. They also translated all the reports to French to increase engagement and readability for key French policymakers.
Koczorowski stayed with the Institute for a year, from January to December 2023, and is now working at the French Ministry of the Overseas, where she conducts France’s maritime conservation policies in overseas French territories.
Crustacean Compassion ($62,537.74): Funding for a Senior Policy and Public Affairs Advisor to include decapod crustaceans in UK animal welfare legislation
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $62,537.74 grant to Crustacean Compassion from July 2022 to July 2023. The grant covered a 1-year stipend, travel costs, access to an online legal research platform, and other work expenses for a Senior Policy and Public Affairs Advisor to include decapod crustaceans in three types of animal welfare legislation in the UK.
At the time of the grant, Crustacean Compassion was the only group doing policy work on crustaceans, and their efforts in the UK could potentially lay the groundwork for EU policy. The organization had a track record of success, having previously used funding from the Animal Welfare Fund to work with a policy expert to include decapod crustaceans in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act, a goal they achieved.
Crustacean Compassion has significant contacts in relevant positions within the UK government, particularly in the Conservative Party. On the other hand, one potential worry is about the short shelf life of these contacts, given the likelihood of the Conservative Party losing power in the coming election cycle. As with some of the other grants, potential funging with Open Philanthropy was a significant concern when making this grant.
Outcomes: During the grant period, Crustacean Compassion secured multiple productive meetings with senior leadership in the UK Conservative Party to discuss the welfare of decapod crustaceans and engaged with key figures in Scotland and Wales.
Rethink Priorities ($64,000.00): Funding research on improving the welfare of farmed Black Soldier Flies
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $64,000 grant to Rethink Priorities from September 2022 to March 2024 to fund Dr. Meghan Barret’s research on improving the welfare of Black Soldier Flies (BSF).
Well-scoped insect welfare grants are rare, making this project both promising and neglected. The scale of BSF farming is substantial, with over 200 billion BSF farmed annually, and this number is expected to increase significantly in the future.
Dr. Barret and Rethink Priorities have previously worked on BSF welfare, so this grant supports the continuation of their existing research.
Outcomes: During the grant period, they published “Welfare Considerations for Farmed Black Soldier Flies (Hermetia illucens),” an extension of a peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Barret.
(I was also employed by Rethink Priorities when this grant was made. I was not in any way involved with the decision to make this grant). Kieran Greig also recused himself. In general, our COI policy is that anybody significantly involved with an organization would not be involved in the grantmaking decision).
Kafessiz Türkiye ($30,000): Funding for the director’s stipend and campaign support for a Turkish animal welfare organization
The Animal Welfare Fund provided a $30,000 grant to Kafessiz Türkiye, also known as Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği, from June 2022 to June 2023. The grant supported the Turkey-based chicken and fish welfare organization, with $25,000 allocated for the director’s 12-month stipend and $5,000 for their chicken and fish campaigns.
Kafessiz Türkiye is a small but growing team, with 3 full-time and 3 part-time employees as of late 2021 and an organizational budget of $145,000. They have an impressive track record, with over a dozen cage-free commitments secured in Turkey in the previous year, including commitments from large companies such as a major mayonnaise producer.
The $25,000 salary for a Director-level position is low relative to the skillsets required and the expected impact of their work. Overall, fund managers view Kafessiz Türkiye as very impactful and cost-effective and are thus excited to support them further.
Outcomes: During the grant period, Kafessiz Türkiye secured cage-free commitments across 24 brands owned by 18 firms. They completed the Özsüt (one of the largest bakery chains in Turkey) cage-free campaign in March 2023, which they had started in late 2021. The organization also had numerous successes in mobilizing more volunteers, gathering more signatures, and increasing their Instagram presence by 28,000 followers. Additionally, they became a Recommended Charity by Animal Charity Evaluators.
Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal ($80,000): Funding for a Brazilian nonprofit to conduct audits ensuring companies keep their cage-free and gestation-crate-free commitments
The Animal Welfare Fund provided an $80,000 grant to Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal, a nonprofit in Brazil, from March 2023 to March 2024. The grant covers stipends and other staff expenses for conducting audits to help companies adhere to their cage-free and gestation-crate-free commitments.
The fund recommended the grant based on several factors:
Leadership: Fórum is a well-known organization with a professional, experienced approach to their work. One reference described their leadership as “[among] the most on top of it advocates I’ve ever met.”
Track record: Fórum has a history of success in animal advocacy.
Scale of potential impact: Brazil has a large farmed animal population, with 255 million layer hens slaughtered in 2021 according to FAOSTAT data. Relative to the potential impact, funding for farmed animal advocacy in Brazil is neglected compared to the US and Europe, although not as neglected as in parts of Asia or Africa.
Tractability: Holding corporations accountable for their cage-free egg commitments is crucial for animal impact. The theory of change for audits and other plans to help companies keep their commitments seems relatively straightforward. Companies with such commitments are generally open to acting on them but may need reminders to prioritize implementation. Many companies have made cage-free commitments with 2025 deadlines, making this a critical time to ensure they follow through.
Outcomes: During the grant period, Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal made significant progress in their accountability work, contacting 189 companies and receiving reports from 50 on their cage-free transition. They estimate an impact on three million layer hens, with a projected impact of 13 million layer hens if and when the reported commitments are fulfilled. Fórum Animal also encouraged 5 universities to commit to not using cages in their teaching farms.
Other writings
I’ve asked the Animal Welfare Fund (AWF)’s fund managers about other articles or writeups that can provide a good overview of the Animal Welfare Fund, or otherwise be very helpful to donors and community members. People highlighted the following pieces of writing:
The EA Animal Welfare Fund (Once Again) Has Significant Room For More Funding (Fundraising ask from December 2023):
The bar for animal welfare funding in 2023 (likely 2024 as well) is somewhat higher than in the past
In particular, there were ~7M of high-quality projects to fund, and only ~5M of donations
Further, many of the funded projects are expected to (or are able to) grow while maintaining similar levels of cost-effectiveness.
The article provides a list of marginal grants that are just above or just below the bar for funding, to help donors get a better sense of what types of projects their money is likely to buy on the margin.
Giving What We Can’s Evaluation report for the EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF):
As part of GWWC’s Evaluating the Evaluators project, GWWC made in-depth evaluations of the Animal Welfare Fund. The article enumerates a number of advantages of the fund:
Looks for international/national level work in priority countries that has leverage, not localized work in small lower priority places
Looks for opportunities with scaling potential & longer term TOC
Helps get things off the ground
Providing significant funding to an organization so it can undertake projects that could achieve impact at scale if successful.
A focus on a high-priority (and arguably underexplored) cause in a high-priority geographic area for that cause.
An intervention for which there is either some empirical support or a good theoretical case for cost-effectiveness.
Funds capacity building in promising and arguably underexplored causes (such as fish welfare and insect welfare) and geographies (such as South Asia and Africa), and in the effective animal advocacy movement more broadly.
Providing more support to the highest-potential grants rather than just making more grants
Older comments
Questions AWF frequently tries to answer when making funding decisions
Do they seem to be operating in an area that seems high-impact?
Also, do their plans in that area seem reasonable?
Are plans concrete and detailed?
Combining 1 and 2, when applicable, does some quantitative back-of-the-envelope calculation suggest they impact a high number of animals per dollar spent?
Are we aware of any going ons regarding that group that should give us pause (staff retention, reported infractions, adverse relationships with other organizations)?
What is that group’s current financial position (reserves, other funders)?
Considerations for how AWF thinks about its role in the ecosystem, when there are larger funders
An especially large concern is charitable funging
Ideally AWF is excited to fund areas or interventions that are higher risk or less proven than ones funded by larger organizations like Open Phil
Other Grants We Made During This Time Period
Below is a list of about 100 other grants, totaling over $6 million, that the Animal Welfare Fund made during this period to support work on farmed animal welfare in many countries.
Please note that we also referred some grants to other funders during this time period.
| Grantee | Amount | Grant Purpose | Award Date |
| The Good Growth Co | $46,000 | PT salary for building FAW/AP research organisation and supporting FAW/AP research and community building in Asia | June 2022 |
| Animal Advocacy Careers | $80,000 | A 3 month FTE work placement for 8 fundraising professionals in Effective Animal Advocacy organisations | July 2022 |
| Anonymous | $97,000 | 12 months FT salary for hiring a Fundraising and Operations lead and a three-month research fellowship program | July 2022 |
| Institute of Animal Law of Asia | $30,000 | 1-year fees and salary for an educational center for research & info on the farmed animal law & policy issues in Asia | July 2022 |
| Tanzania Animal Welfare Society (TAWESO) | $22,000 | Additional costs to conduct survey on Farmed Fish Welfare in Tanzania aiming at inclusion in the Fisheries Policy | July 2022 |
| Effective Altruism Singapore | $40,000 | A 3-day farmed animal advocacy retreat for those working in Southeast Asia to connect and strengthen the community | July 2022 |
| Aquatic Life Institute | $80,000 | Build capacity and strengthen the effectiveness for the Aquatic Animal Alliance’s current and future work | July 2022 |
| Australian Alliance for Animals | $87,000 | Funding for a new organisation to unite the Australian animal protection sector to increase its influence and impact | July 2022 |
| The Humane League UK | $74,876 | 1 year salary x 4 roles: actions for farmed fish, caged hens & broiler chicken welfare | July 2022 |
| Sentient Media | $66,000 | 12-month project providing training for farmed animal advocate writers in neglected geographies and groups | July 2022 |
| Animal Law Italia | $171,247 | A 2 years plan to advance the legal protection of decapod crustaceans in Italy | July 2022 |
| Animal Welfare League | $20,000 | 12-month budget support to a new org for a nationwide cage-free campaign to end abuse of 25 million chickens in cages | July 2022 |
| Ethical Seafood Research | $90,000 | Piloting a protocol for assessing the welfare of farmed Nile tilapia in pond and cage systems globally | July 2022 |
| Legal Impact for Chickens | $76,000 | Growing the new litigation nonprofit, Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC), to make factory-farm cruelty a liability | July 2022 |
| Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal | $50,000 | Animal Welfare in Public purchases and Legal requirements | July 2022 |
| Healthier Hens | $50,000 | Healthier Hens’ operations towards dietary interventions to improve layer hen welfare via keel bone fracture reduction | July 2022 |
| Animal Welfare Observatory (formerly Equalia) | $268,683 | General support for 15 months to extend expiring staff contracts and hire new key positions | July 2022 |
| We Animals Media | $26,000 | Funding to cover photojournalist expenses for investigative work in Africa, Asia and/or Latin America resulting in stronger campaigns and progress on farmed animal welfare issues in these regions | July 2022 |
| Anonymous | $15,000 | 12-month stipend and fees to develop social media to raise the awareness of farm animal welfare and law in Asia | July 2022 |
| Animal Advocates International | $10,000 | Raising animal welfare standards in poultry farming industry through campaigns, conferences, trainings and legislation | July 2022 |
| Animal Equality UK | $96,999 | Urge policymakers to enact laws for farmed fish at slaughter through movement building, lobbying and public education | July 2022 |
| Nature Imvelo Trust | $17,000 | A six months to one year campaign on effects of battery cages on laying hens and egg production | July 2022 |
| The Philippine Animal Welfare Society | $40,000 | Setting up of 6-month face-to-face and online seminars for Filipino farmers on more humane farming methods for pigs and chicken | July 2022 |
| Voters For Animal Rights | $100,000 | 12-month salary to protect the foie gras ban and advance legislation to protect aquatic & fur animals in NYC | July 2022 |
| Sinergia Animal | $157,000 | One-year funding for movement building, corporate and cage-free campaigns in Latin America and Asia, and support roles | August 2022 |
| Eurogroup for Animals | $68,681 | Developing a long term plan for Europe’s animal advocacy movement to counter the growth of insect farming | December 2022 |
| Vegan Hacktivists | $12,088 | A study to assess tech and data in the animal protection movement and present opportunities and recommendations | December 2022 |
| Education for African Animal Welfare | $10,000 | The workshop will impact local and international journalists in Tanzania with cage free movement information | December 2022 |
| Kate Verdalyn | $59,000 | Strengthening the farm animal advocacy in the Philippines by building community, capacity, and relationships | December 2022 |
| Humánny pokrok o.z. | $75,000 | Capacity building for animal advocacy in Slovakia and carp welfare campaign expansion | December 2022 |
| Animal Friends Jogja | $10,000 | A 12 month salary and expenses for a government advocacy coordinator to continue work on Cage Free/FA legislative change | December 2022 |
| Igualdad Animal Mexico | $39,000 | Research about aquaculture in Mexico and fish welfare to work on legislation to mandate stunning prior to slaughter | December 2022 |
| The Animal Law Foundation | $56,846 | Funding for The Animal Law Foundation to research neglected areas of animal law and bring high impact legal actions. This grant is restricted to research into fish farming legal interventions and conducting such interventions only (not pig tail docking). | December 2022 |
| George Stiffman | $15,000 | 4-month stipend to create a roadmap to grow the US tofu market, tofu community build, and raise tofu venture funding | December 2022 |
| Utunzi Animal Welfare Organization | $13,000 | A comprehensive cage free training and sensitization program for beneficiaroes of our ongoing cage free proje | December 2022 |
| Animal Advocates International | $25,000 | 3 months funding for raising animal welfare standards in poultry farming industry through campaigns, conferences, trainings | December 2022 |
| Modern Agriculture Foundation | $5,000 | 2nd cohort of alt. proteins accelerator to speed up the success of 5-7 startups, and run a cost-effectiveness analysis | December 2022 |
| Animal Charity Evaluators | $160,000 | Funding 10% of 2022-2023 operating budget to support expanded globally-distributed team | December 2022 |
| Faunalytics | $5,000 | Funds to produce new resources on neglected species, including a Faunalytics Fundamental infographic on Invertebrates | December 2022 |
| Africa Network for Animal Welfare | $100,000 | Establish status of battery cage farming in 3 Southern Africa countries,campaigns in E.Africa and conference in W.Africa | January 2023 |
| Shrimp Welfare Project, Ltd | $220,638 | SWP works with stakeholders to reduce the suffering of farmed shrimps, with a focus on India and Southeast Asia | January 2023 |
| Campaigns and Activism for Animals in the Industry (CAAI) | $40,000 | 12-month salaries and expenses to advocate for two bans in Bulgaria: fur farming and force-feeding of waterfowl | January 2023 |
| Expertise for Animals | $93,738 | 12-month salaries to strengthen animal advocacy by creating content and carrying out pro bono work for organizations | January 2023 |
| Open Cages Advocacy Ltd | $209,842 | Campaign budget to pressure Lidl and other retailers to produce broiler welfare policies in Europe | January 2023 |
| Anonymous | $40,000 | 6-month stipend to support video creation on EA and the welfare of farmed and wild animals targeting a Chinese audience | January 2023 |
| Anonymous | $132,000 | Annual expenditure for a college food literacy program and related events on Animal Welfare advocacy and Alt. Protein | February 2023 |
| Sentient (Nonprofit Organization) | $30,000 | Spread global use of disposable cellular cameras put on animals on the way to slaughter, enabling a personal narrative | February 2023 |
| Rethink Priorities | $85,000 | A 3-day forum to connect, coordinate, and strategize for the EAA movement | February 2023 |
| Asociacion para el Rescate y Bienestar de los Animales | $35,000 | Salaries for 2 full time economists and development of three surveys for one year | March 2023 |
| Tanzania Animal Welfare Society (TAWESO) | $36,000 | Funding for 2 surveyors to engage farmed fish stakeholders on a fish welfare survey document for policy and regulations inclusion | May 2023 |
| Veganuary | $92,004 | Funds to support 2-years of salary and on-costs for a Corporate Engagement Manager for Veganuary in Latin America | May 2023 |
| Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği (Farm Animals Protection Association) | $75,000 | 12-month salary for the staff and communications/ads costs to sustain capacity for cage-free campaigns and fish welfare | May 2023 |
| Animal Advocacy Careers | $75,000 | Support for the continuation of AAC’s work recruiting & matching talented individuals into high impact opportunities in the effective animal advocacy sector. | May 2023 |
| Animal Advocacy Africa | $80,000 | 1-year of funding to build African orgs’ capacities, research on preventing factory farming & regrant to promising orgs | May 2023 |
| Sentient Media | $66,000 | 1-year of funding to hire expertise in digital marketing/training/content production to an EAA-aligned high-impact welfare group and $15,000 for Spanish translations of top performing articles. | May 2023 |
| Fórum Nacional de Proteção e Defesa Animal | $80,000 | Operational funding (salaries, administration, travel costs etc.) for the Forum to enhance its cage-free accountability work approaching the 2025 cage-free deadlines. | May 2023 |
| Vegan Network Uganda trading as Uganda Vegan Society | $20,000 | General support for cage free campaign—an advocacy based project aimed at reducing cruelty towards battery caged hens through the promotion of plant based alternatives | May 2023 |
| George Stiffman | $11,000 | Funding for 4-months stipend to create infrastructure and raise funding for a tofu import business | May 2023 |
| Animal welfare competence center for Africa | $75,000 | 1-year funding to cover the operational costs of government outreach campaign to stop or slow the growth of industrial animal agriculture in Uganda | May 2023 |
| Aquatic Life Institute | $200,000 | 12 months of operational funding to build capacity and strengthen the global impact of the Aquatic Animal Alliance | May 2023 |
| Every Animal | $10,000 | Support Every Animal work to implement vegan rations in the Armed forces of Ukraine | June 2023 |
| One Health and Development Initiative | $40,000 | Promoting awareness, knowledge and capacity building of Nigerian fish farmers on implementing fish welfare practices | July 2023 |
| Education for African Animal Welfare-EAAW | $30,000 | This grant supports the scaling up of the Education for African Animals Welfare cage free project in Tanzania through strengthening media outreach, training, workshop, campaigns and surveys. | July 2023 |
| Scarlet Spark | $50,000 | This grant provides staff and operational funding for People Skills for Animal People—a program that builds both individual leadership skills and organizational capacity so that nonprofits working to end factory farming and develop alternative proteins and fabrics can reach their mission faster. | July 2023 |
| Utunzi Animal Welfare Organization | $60,000 | This grant provides funding for Utunzi Animal Welfare to continue its cage-free egg projects in Kenya through farmer outreach, student and general public awareness building and corporate outreach efforts to support both new cage-free egg commitment and implementation of existing commitments. | July 2023 |
| Asher Soryl | $9,883 | 6-8 months of funding to complete my doctoral dissertation & publish academic papers based based on its chapters | August 2023 |
| Institute of Animal Law of Asia | $50,000 | This grant provides operational funding for a project launching two Animal Law courses offered for free to individuals in Asian countries where access to information is limited. The goal of the project is to educate and raise awareness of the animal welfare movement, with a focus on land and aquatic farmed animals. | August 2023 |
| Kelly Pierce Manlangit | $12,300 | This grant provides a 6-months of technical support for a feasibility study and information session on alternative protein research capacity in the Philippines. | August 2023 |
| Legal Impact for Chickens | $85,000 | This grant will go towards technical assistance and capacity building for expanding Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC), to fight factory-farm cruelty through litigation. | September 2023 |
| Tälist | $87,601 | Tälist matches Alternative Protein businesses with the best talent from around the globe. This grant provides 1 year of operational funding to build and run a platform that automatically matches top talent with Alt. Protein jobs at scale. | September 2023 |
| Innovate Animal Ag | $70,000 | This grant provides 1 year of funding for a new nonprofit that will support agricultural technologies that improve animal welfare. The first focus is in-ovo egg sexing technology to stop the culling of male chicks in the egg industry. The funds are intended for operations and capacity building. | September 2023 |
| Anonymous | $60,000 | 12-month grant to support a policy advocacy organization dedicated to banning the use of live baitfish. | October 2023 |
| David Omale | $7,000 | A symposium to highlight the role students and academia can play in the transition to sustainable proteins | October 2023 |
| Animal Ask | $18,000 | This grant provides 6 months of funding for Ren Springlea to run a data collection effort assessing the current landscape of humane slaughter and the fish welfare industry. | October 2023 |
| Effective Altruism Germany | $27,439 | 840 hours for Fabienne Sandkuhler to work on EAA meta-analysis | October 2023 |
| DC Voters for Animals Education Fund | $30,000 | Grow community involvement in animal protection initiatives by identifying and elevating DC community’s priorities that align with animal interests, such as expanding access to produce and other healthy, plant-based foods throughout the city. Lead an education campaign for DC policy makers around the Plant-Based Treaty and aquatic animal protection. Lead a legislative campaign to pass a law in DC to ban foie gras. | October 2023 |
| Animal Ask | $37,500 | This grant will contribute to the continuing activities of Animal Ask, a research consultancy that assists animal advocacy organisations with dedicated research to inform their campaigns. The grant will help to support Animal Ask for 20 months, and will go towards salaries, personnel costs, external services, travel and events, office, IT services, contingency, and PPF fiscal sponsorship. | October 2023 |
| Good Growth | $20,000 | 1.5-day Asia strategy workshop to strengthen advocate connections, co-create initiatives and form working groups | October 2023 |
| Animal Welfare Observatory (formerly Equalia) | $90,506 | Support for Equalia to reach goals such as ensuring top 10 Spanish supermarkets have extended their cage-free policy, gaining major media attention for investigations into Spanish fish farming, and expanding their capacity to make fish welfare a public concern. | October 2023 |
| Anonymous | $5,000 | This grant will support a translation of “Animal Liberation” by Peter Singer into Thai to promote animal welfare awareness and ethical considerations in Thailand. | November 2023 |
| Oxford University Vegan and Vegetarian Society | $2,589 | Funding for Oxford Vegsoc—the largest society for vegans and vegetarians in the University of Oxford—to improve outreach, quality of events and quality of speakers available next academic year. | November 2023 |
| KU Green Student Society | $2,400 | This grant is funding a student-led campaign by Veganske Studerende for plant-based universities in Denmark, beginning with the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). | November 2023 |
| Shrimp Welfare Project, Ltd | $130,000 | This grant will enable the Shrimp Welfare Project to purchase 2 stunners for shrimp producers, enabling the stunning of a minimum of 1.4k MT (~100 million) of shrimps/annum per stunner. This is part of an effort to promote the adoption of electrical stunning as a standard in the shrimp industry. | December 2023 |
| Animal Equality (UK) | $45,852 | This one-year grant will fund research, production of materials, public awareness, legal advocacy and stakeholder engagement to lobby for better farmed fish welfare at slaughter and to halt the UK salmon industry’s expansion. | December 2023 |
| Rethink Priorities | $295,600 | This grant will support Rethink Priorities in their insect and decapod welfare research for a one-year period. The grant provides funds to be used to support the salaries of researcher roles as well as research and operational overhead costs. | December 2023 |
| Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation | $50,946 | This grant will fund three reports which highlight the economic benefits of Farmed Animal Welfare across government departments in the UK. The reports will contribute to government-directed messaging in support of farmed animal welfare. | December 2023 |
| Sentience Politics | $100,000 | This grant will go towards kickstarting a ballot initiative aiming to secure outdoor access for farm animals in Switzerland, aiming to reduce widespread animal suffering. | December 2023 |
| Asociacion para el Rescate y Bienestar de los Animales | $22,000 | This grant will support the Asociación para el Rescate y Bienestar de los Animales with salary costs, allowing ARBA to produce resources that help with corporate and governmental animal welfare outreach in Peru. | January 2024 |
| Crustacean Compassion | $2,181 | Funding to attend Effective Animal Advocacy Coordination Forum | January 2024 |
| Kelly Pierce Manlangit | $1,000 | Top-up fund to convert alternative protein culminating event from a virtual info session to an in-person symposium | January 2024 |
| Animals Aotearoa | $139,188 | Two years of operational costs for Animals Aotearoa, New Zealand’s primary charity for improving broiler welfare. | February 2024 |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | $79,668 | This grant provides technical assistance and capacity building for a 2-year study to develop a welfare auditing tool for black soldier fly larvae raised for food and feed. | February 2024 |
| Planet For All Hong Kong | $50,000 | This grant will support Planet For All Hong Kong with funds for a one-year salary to continue their work driving changes in the Hong Kong government’s aquaculture standards. | February 2024 |
| Het Harrison Collectief (The Harrison Collective) | $27,833 | This grant will offer starter funding for Het Harrison Collectief, an organization seeking to abolish harmful practices in the animal production industry in Belgium. | February 2024 |
| The Humane League UK (THL UK) | $192,222 | This grant will support THL UK with salary and discretionary costs to help secure progress from at least two UK supermarkets towards some or all elements of the BCC. | February 2024 |
| Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) | $100,000 | This grant will provide Animal Charity Evaluators with one year’s funding to incorporate lessons learned from their impact assessment into ACE’s strategy and operations. | March 2024 |
| James Ozden | $7,201 | This grant will support James Ozden in creating a podcast to cover effective altruist approaches to animal advocacy. | March 2024 |
| Effective Altruism Germany | $36,413 | This grant will support Lu Chen’s fish welfare work in East Asia. | March 2024 |
| The Mission Motor | $43,611 | This grant will support The Mission Motor with six months of running costs to develop an international pilot that will help charities in the animal welfare cause area increase the use of data to monitor and evaluate the efficacy of their interventions. | March 2024 |
| Crustacean Compassion | $84,925 | This grant will support Crustacean Compassion with salaries and expenses for their corporate and political engagement growth programme. This work will develop relationships and advance support for improving decapod welfare throughout industry supply chains. | April 2024 |
| Asia Research & Engagement | $100,000 | This grant will support Asia Research & Engagement in leveraging investor funds towards the following outcomes: - 1 to 2 listed companies have a public time-based commitment to phase in cage-free or phase out caged systems, or a whole of company animal welfare policy aligned towards FARMS. - Engage banks and solution NGOs, activating responsible lending or collaboration to support cage-free systems. | April 2024 |
Kudos for writing this up! It sounds like a lot of good global opportunities are coming up.
> Further, there are no other natural funders for animal-focused community building work in Asia, as the Centre for Effective Altruism will no longer support EA chapters outside of the UK, US, and a limited number of key locations in the EU.
I forgot about this. I could understand why they might have done it, but it is pretty disappointing, and puts more burden on groups like the Animal Welfare Fund.
I think if I’m imagining, “What is the main mistake that could be being made here”, the obvious thing is that these items are just very small. Similar to other EA Funds, it seems like the mean payout is fairly low, barely a 1-year salary. I’m not sure if this was done very intentionally, or that’s more a representation of who applied, but overall, I’m more net-optimistic about investments in larger projects.
Now, especially with the recent changes at OP, it seems like some significant animal cause areas (invertebrate welfare) will likely be overlooked by other funders. I’d expect that going forward, there should be significant opportunities for other funders to be active here, and I’d expect much of the gain would come from funding larger projects.
Thanks Ozzie!
> “I’m not sure if this was done very intentionally, or that’s more a representation of who applied, but overall, I’m more net-optimistic about investments in larger projects.
[...]
Now, especially with the recent changes at OP, it seems like some significant animal cause areas (invertebrate welfare) will likely be overlooked by other funders. I’d expect that going forward, there should be significant opportunities for other funders to be active here, and I’d expect much of the gain would come from funding larger projects. “
This represents who applied at the time, how developed some of the projects are, and how uncertain their outcomes are. We would often fund “an experimental, new project” for 6 months for a pilot, then for 1 year, and if it is proven, we would provide a larger-scale grant. Sometimes a project of this type also “graduates” to a larger funder like Open Phil and that’s why you do not see them here. EA AWF’s comparative advantage is often in funding small and medium-scale projects and I think it makes sense to serve this role in the project development pipeline.
That being said, there are some grantees that have a strong track record in areas where EA AWF has a comparative advantage and we provide larger grants ($150-$400k). Those typically include projects in wild animals, invertebrate-related work and research on neglected species, although not exclusively. We plan to continue and hopefully scale our grantmaking in those areas given the Good Ventiured update.
Additionally, there were also instances where we would like to provide a larger amount to top applicants, but thought that the value of the marginal grant was higher than more funding for top applicants. If we had more funding, we would have provided both and in the past, have communicated that EA AWF has significant RFMF. This is still the case.
Thanks!
> EA AWF’s comparative advantage is often in funding small and medium-scale projects and I think it makes sense to serve this role in the project development pipeline.
Yea, I’m curious how true that is. This assumes that OP does a job that’s hard-to-beat for the larger projects, among all sub-causes of animal welfare. Also, it seems unhealthy to me for OP to be such an overwhelming donor to some of these groups (I assume it is for Animals, similar to other some of longtermism/EA).
Again, I don’t place a huge amount of confidence here, but I think among the worlds where a big mistake is being made, this seems like a more likely case to me.
Thanks for the update!
I think the advantages you listed make AWF great, but I am currently planning to donate to The Humane League (THL) given AWF’s apparent lack of cost-effectiveness analyses[1]. From Giving What We Can’s evaluation of AWF (emphasis mine):
I estimated corporate campaigns for chicken welfare, such as the ones supported by THL, have a cost-effectiveness of 15.0 DALY/$, i.e. 1.51 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
Hey Vasco,
Yes, it’s right that we don’t conduct CEAs in all of our evaluations, but they are part of our analysis for some of our grant investigations. GWWC only looked at 10 grant evaluations, so it’s possible they didn’t come across those where we did model BOTEC CEA. With the upcoming increase in the capacity of the fund, we plan to invest more in creating BOTECs for more evaluation. We are hoping to be reevaluated by GWWC so the evaluation reflects the changes we have made and are planning to make in the future.
In the past, we tended to do CEAs more often if: a) The project is relatively well-suited to a back-of-the-envelope calculation b) A back-of-the-envelope calculation seems decision-relevant. At that time, a) and b) seem true in a minority of cases, maybe ~10%-20% of applications depending on the round, to give some rough sense. However, note that there tends to be some difference between projects in areas or by groups we have already evaluated versus projects/groups/areas that are newer to us. I’d say newer projects/groups/areas are more likely to receive a back-of-the-envelope style estimate.
Even in evaluations where we didn’t explicitly model CEA, we tended to look more at factors that help us judge marginal cost-effectiveness, such as the scale of the problem and potential number of animals affected, whether the work is happening in a country with high production of target species, how neglected it is (to get at the counterfactual impact), the goals of the grant and whether we think the applicant is likely to achieve them given their track record or strength of the plan. We also use and reference more in-depth independent CEAs, like the one on cage-free corporate outreach, shrimp stunning, ballot initiatives or fish stunning while noting that they have limitations and we do not take them at face value.
However, since then, we’ve started conducting BOTEC CEA more frequently and using benchmarking in more of our grant evaluations. For example, we sometimes use this BOTEC template and compare the outcomes to cage-free corporate campaigns (modified for our purposes from a BOTEC that accompanied RP’s Welfare Range Estimates).
For harder-to-quantify grants like movement or capacity building, we would also occasionally model expected outcomes in numerical terms and ask whether this outcome is something we would pay x amount (the expected cost per unit).
We also have a score calibration guide we use when we score grants to make them comparable across grants.
We do not put that much weight in applicant’s CEA as they are impossible to compare to CEAs that use different methodologies and are very sensitive to assumptions that we often cannot verify.
I hope that helps to understand our methodology. Let me know if you have any questions.
I found it super encouraging seeing such a wide range of org focuses and types across a wide range of geographies, with lots of them exciting me—especially some of the “firsts” and pioneering stuff.
Would encourage others to apply in future too, 17% is a reasonably high acceptance rate so the application may well be worth the effort.
Definitely agree that more people should apply! And I think our non-desk rejected acceptance rate (27%) is more representative for the type of applications that forum readers are likely to send in (e.g., projects actually related to improving animal welfare for large numbers of animals).
Do you have a rough sense of how much better [1] the grants discussed here—those “rated highly, usually because [investigators] thought the grant was very likely to be very cost-effective or the potential upside was very high”—than the current funding bar? That might be helpful to two groups: donors (who are presumably aware that the marginal effect of their donation isn’t as high as it would be if it counterfactually funded these specific examples) and would-be applicants (who shouldn’t be discouraged if their proposals are not as strong as the highlighted grants).
(for lack of a better word)
Hi Jason, great question! You and/or potential donors and/or potential grantees can look at the marginal grants writeup [1]that Kieran and Neil put together last December. I don’t think the bar has changed significantly in the last 6 months, though any AWF fund manager is free to correct me.
To answer your exact question, I don’t have a quantitative sense of how much better the highlighted grants are, compared to the marginal grants. I don’t think it’s strictly necessary here to have a cardinal ranking, because (as you’ve identified) exactly where the marginal grants are matters noticeably more than the number of times the best grants are better than the marginal ones.
(click through to the link, the headline is for a fundraising post but the section I linked detailed marginal grants).
Executive summary: The Animal Welfare Fund granted over $7 million across 109 projects from May 2022 to March 2024, focusing on high-impact interventions to improve farmed animal welfare globally.
Key points:
Highlighted grants included projects on aquatic animal welfare, community building, cage-free campaigns, and legal/policy work in various countries.
The fund prioritized neglected areas like fish and insect welfare, as well as work in underserved regions like Asia and Africa.
Grants supported a mix of established organizations and newer initiatives, with a focus on scalable, cost-effective interventions.
The fund aims to complement larger funders by supporting higher-risk or less proven interventions.
Key considerations for grants included potential impact, concrete plans, financial position, and avoiding charitable funging.
The fund noted having more high-quality projects to fund than available donations, suggesting room for additional funding.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Thanks for sharing more detailed writeups on some of your grants!