I left GFI in early 2021 for a new opportunity, but stay close with them. Nothing has drastically changed or degraded there. If truly one allegation of “retaliation” against an employee is enough to totally knock off Top Charity, I’m suspicious of the process. We know that The Counter article on the challenges to cultivated meat wasn’t the cause—as has been pointed out—because New Harvest (a cultivated meat NGO) is still a Standout Charity. Reading between the lines, it seems they think GFI is overfunded.
GFI plans to focus future expansions on their science and technology, corporate engagement, and policy programs, as well as several potential new programs. GFI also plans to expand GFI Asia Pacific, GFI India, GFI Israel, GFI Europe, and GFI Brazil. For donors influenced by ACE wishing to donate to GFI, we estimate that the organization can continue to effectively absorb funding that we expect to come with a recommendation status.
Based on i) GFI’s own projections that their projected revenue will cover their expenditures, ii) our assessment that they have sufficient reserves, and iii) our assumption that a loss of recommendation status would result in a decrease in funding, we believe that overall, GFI continues to have room for $2,424,000 of additional funding in 2022. See our Programs criterion for our assessment of the effectiveness of their programs.
It is possible that a charity could run out of room for funding more quickly than we expect, or that they could come up with good ways to use funding beyond what we expect. If a charity receives a recommendation as Top Charity, we check in mid-year about the funding they’ve received since the release of our recommendations, and we use the estimates presented below to indicate whether we still expect them to be able to effectively absorb additional funding at that time.
Looks like multiple people reporting retaliation and fear of retaliation for voicing disagreements at the organization:
We feel it’s important to note that several of GFI’s current and former employees have reached out to us to provide input on our evaluation of GFI. According to those who contacted ACE and responded to the culture survey, there appears to be several employees (current and former) reporting both retaliation and a fear of retaliation from top leadership for voicing disagreements at the organization. Because ACE prioritizes the confidentiality of those reports, we did not share details of the reports with GFI’s leadership, and therefore they have not conducted a full investigation to verify the reports.
I left GFI in early 2021 for a new opportunity, but stay close with them. Nothing has drastically changed or degraded there. If truly one allegation of “retaliation” against an employee is enough to totally knock off Top Charity, I’m suspicious of the process. We know that The Counter article on the challenges to cultivated meat wasn’t the cause—as has been pointed out—because New Harvest (a cultivated meat NGO) is still a Standout Charity. Reading between the lines, it seems they think GFI is overfunded.
ACE concluded GFI had enough room for more funding:
Looks like multiple people reporting retaliation and fear of retaliation for voicing disagreements at the organization: