Thought to share some infographics on animal advocacy org expenses from the Stray Dog Institute’s 2024 State of the Movement report, which I learned about via Moritz’s excellent post.
Most org spending is in North America and Europe:
North American and European orgs accounted for most of the spend in sub-Saharan Africa and LATAM & the Caribbean, despite spending (say) only ~1% of their total expenses in SSA:
I don’t have any good sense of how this Global North-dominated funding potentially skews priorities, but this drill down by animal category may be a start:
As well as this drill down by intended outcome. Naively it seems that SSA’s allocation looks like North America’s for instance, except that the latter has a greater proportion of org spending going to increasing availability of animal-free products, which makes sense given relative wealth:
For what it’s worth, here’s what the funding allocations look like for animal categories as a whole: mostly terrestrial animals, mostly farmed.
I’d be keen to get takes from folks in the know on what seems underfunded here. Farmed insects jump out: just $135k out of $260m overall (~0.05%) seems nuts.
I also wonder about the skewing of priorities due to outside funding. Moritz wrote
Why this could matter:
Strategy and local context Money shapes movements. It affects which projects get tried, which organisations survive, what gets measured, and what kinds of risks are acceptable. If most capital comes from a different region, that may (subtly, unintentionally) shape priorities and assumptions.Some strategic questions are deeply context-dependent (politics, culture, institutional incentives, reputational dynamics). Local donors may bring different assumptions and highlight different opportunities or overlooked risks.
Most farmed animals live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but traditional Western animal advocacy tactics often fail there due to fragmented supply chains, informal markets, and weak enforcement.
Creating meaningful change for these animals requires exploring both building infrastructure for change and trying alternative pressure points like farmer cooperatives and local institutions.
although it also isn’t clear to me from the infographics above whether meaningful change in their sense would be reflected in the drill downs.
Wow around 100 million each for Europe and USA is crazy low—really illustrates how important EA money is to this cause. In the global health world this amount could have been spent on 3 fairly useless USAID projects (but no more). 3 GiveWell orgs spend 100million+ each. Crazy levels of success on these small budgets for the last 10 years as well.
This is a big part of why I (and many other global health folks) voted for marginal dollars going to animal welfare, even though I’m hugely skeptical about animal sentience and welfare ranges.
I’d be keen to get takes from folks in the know on what seems underfunded here. Farmed insects jump out: just $135k out of $260m overall (~0.05%) seems nuts.
Thought to share some infographics on animal advocacy org expenses from the Stray Dog Institute’s 2024 State of the Movement report, which I learned about via Moritz’s excellent post.
Most org spending is in North America and Europe:
North American and European orgs accounted for most of the spend in sub-Saharan Africa and LATAM & the Caribbean, despite spending (say) only ~1% of their total expenses in SSA:
I don’t have any good sense of how this Global North-dominated funding potentially skews priorities, but this drill down by animal category may be a start:
As well as this drill down by intended outcome. Naively it seems that SSA’s allocation looks like North America’s for instance, except that the latter has a greater proportion of org spending going to increasing availability of animal-free products, which makes sense given relative wealth:
For what it’s worth, here’s what the funding allocations look like for animal categories as a whole: mostly terrestrial animals, mostly farmed.
I’d be keen to get takes from folks in the know on what seems underfunded here. Farmed insects jump out: just $135k out of $260m overall (~0.05%) seems nuts.
I also wonder about the skewing of priorities due to outside funding. Moritz wrote
which I agree with; another angle is Tom & Karthik’s point that
although it also isn’t clear to me from the infographics above whether meaningful change in their sense would be reflected in the drill downs.
Wow around 100 million each for Europe and USA is crazy low—really illustrates how important EA money is to this cause. In the global health world this amount could have been spent on 3 fairly useless USAID projects (but no more). 3 GiveWell orgs spend 100million+ each. Crazy levels of success on these small budgets for the last 10 years as well.
This is a big part of why I (and many other global health folks) voted for marginal dollars going to animal welfare, even though I’m hugely skeptical about animal sentience and welfare ranges.
Aquatic animals look really underfunded (see Tom and Aaron’s post). But ‘number of individuals’ isn’t necessarily the best proxy for how much money should be spent; e.g., we probably shouldn’t be funding a welfare ask for every farmed fish out there until we have a better idea how to help them.