Oscar: There are lots of researchers out there who would work on this if we offered them funding to do so.
Michelle: Wild Animal Initiative is primarily funding-constrained. Hiring can also be challenging, but not as much.
Peter: Funding-constrained. We have had to turn away talented people we didn’t have the funds to hire.
Given that most of the messaging in the EA community for a couple years has been that human capital constraints are greater than funding constraints, I was surprised to see this. I know there have been objections that this messaging is focused on longtermist and movement-building work and less representative of farmed animal advocacy, for example, but this is an update for me.
(Low relevance to the original post, but relevant to this discussion)
I’ve written the following for a draft “skills profile” I’m writing on fundraising roles at animal advocacy nonprofits for Animal Advocacy Careers. Feedback would be welcome. Message me directly (preferably email jamie.a.harris94 [at] gmail [dot] com) if you’d like to see/review the full draft or the footnotes, which I haven’t copied over here.
“There are reasons to doubt that the animal advocacy movement is substantially constrained by funding:
At the time of searching (March 2020), the Open Philanthropy Project had granted out $110 million since 2016 to organisations categorised as focusing on “farm animal welfare,” including $38.5 million in 2019. The 4 “top charities” in Animal Charity Evaluators’ ratings had received an average of $7.5 million each (covering on average about 50% of each organisation’s expenditure since 2016), compared to the wider average of $2.2 million per grantee. This seems to provide evidence that the most cost-effective organisations — at least by Open Philanthropy Project and Animal Charity Evaluators’ estimations — will receive substantial funding.
A 2019 survey of effective altruism organisations by the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) found that, on average, organisations rated themselves as more “talent-constrained” (average 3.8 out 5) than “funding-constrained” (average 2.4 out of 5). Using similar methodology, 80,000 Hours’ surveys from 2018 and 2017 had found similar results — 1.1 out of 4 and 1.5 out of 4 “funding-constrained” in 2017 and 2018, respectively, versus 2.6 out of 4 and and 2.8 out of 4 “talent-constrained.” 80,000 Hours’ surveys also found that, in general, the organisations were willing to sacrifice a lot of extra donations to hold on to their most recent hires. Importantly, however, in CEA’s survey, Animal Charity Evaluators and the Good Food Institute were the only included organisations that focused primarily on animal issues, representing 3 out of 29 listed respondents, and 80,000 Hours’ surveys had similarly low representation of animal advocacy organisations. The cause areas that CEA and 80,000 Hours are most interested in (and hence were best represented in the surveys) do not seem to be substantially funding constrained and 80,000 have noted that there are many other limitations of these results.
There are also reasons to expect that the movement is substantially funding constrained:
Despite the large amounts of funding received through Open Philanthropy Project’s grants, Animal Charity Evaluators’ “top charities” were only assigned this status because ACE concluded that they each had considerable “room for more funding.”
Animal Charity Evaluators and Open Philanthropy Project seem to frequently agree about which charities can make best use of additional funding. If you disagree with their views about animal advocacy strategy, then you might conclude that the movement is substantially more funding constrained, because important tactics and organisations are still not receiving much of this funding. Of course, these two funding bodies only provide a small portion of the total funding in the animal advocacy movement.
In our short initial survey and interviews with 12 CEO’s and hiring professionals from 9 of the “top” or “standout” charities currently or formerly recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators, 9 respondents selected “funding” as the bottleneck that they “identify most” with in their organisation, though most respondents selected more than one option. We asked participants another question that provided evidence that funding was a major bottleneck for organisations, but the answers seemed highly counterintuitive to us, so we don’t think that we should place much weight on this finding.
Our impression from a limited number of conversations (and these comments by three organisations working on wild animal welfare research) is that progress for effective animal advocacy research organisations seems to be slowed more by a lack of funding than by a lack of good candidates. Of course, these organisations may not be highly representative of the animal advocacy space more broadly.”
Yeah, it’s interesting to see that across the board. My sense is that wild animal welfare work (and farmed animal work), are very much funding constrained. Relevant to this—Open Philanthropy doesn’t currently fund EA wild animal welfare work.
I found this informative:
Given that most of the messaging in the EA community for a couple years has been that human capital constraints are greater than funding constraints, I was surprised to see this. I know there have been objections that this messaging is focused on longtermist and movement-building work and less representative of farmed animal advocacy, for example, but this is an update for me.
(Low relevance to the original post, but relevant to this discussion)
I’ve written the following for a draft “skills profile” I’m writing on fundraising roles at animal advocacy nonprofits for Animal Advocacy Careers. Feedback would be welcome. Message me directly (preferably email jamie.a.harris94 [at] gmail [dot] com) if you’d like to see/review the full draft or the footnotes, which I haven’t copied over here.
“There are reasons to doubt that the animal advocacy movement is substantially constrained by funding:
At the time of searching (March 2020), the Open Philanthropy Project had granted out $110 million since 2016 to organisations categorised as focusing on “farm animal welfare,” including $38.5 million in 2019. The 4 “top charities” in Animal Charity Evaluators’ ratings had received an average of $7.5 million each (covering on average about 50% of each organisation’s expenditure since 2016), compared to the wider average of $2.2 million per grantee. This seems to provide evidence that the most cost-effective organisations — at least by Open Philanthropy Project and Animal Charity Evaluators’ estimations — will receive substantial funding.
A 2019 survey of effective altruism organisations by the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) found that, on average, organisations rated themselves as more “talent-constrained” (average 3.8 out 5) than “funding-constrained” (average 2.4 out of 5). Using similar methodology, 80,000 Hours’ surveys from 2018 and 2017 had found similar results — 1.1 out of 4 and 1.5 out of 4 “funding-constrained” in 2017 and 2018, respectively, versus 2.6 out of 4 and and 2.8 out of 4 “talent-constrained.” 80,000 Hours’ surveys also found that, in general, the organisations were willing to sacrifice a lot of extra donations to hold on to their most recent hires. Importantly, however, in CEA’s survey, Animal Charity Evaluators and the Good Food Institute were the only included organisations that focused primarily on animal issues, representing 3 out of 29 listed respondents, and 80,000 Hours’ surveys had similarly low representation of animal advocacy organisations. The cause areas that CEA and 80,000 Hours are most interested in (and hence were best represented in the surveys) do not seem to be substantially funding constrained and 80,000 have noted that there are many other limitations of these results.
There are also reasons to expect that the movement is substantially funding constrained:
Despite the large amounts of funding received through Open Philanthropy Project’s grants, Animal Charity Evaluators’ “top charities” were only assigned this status because ACE concluded that they each had considerable “room for more funding.”
Animal Charity Evaluators and Open Philanthropy Project seem to frequently agree about which charities can make best use of additional funding. If you disagree with their views about animal advocacy strategy, then you might conclude that the movement is substantially more funding constrained, because important tactics and organisations are still not receiving much of this funding. Of course, these two funding bodies only provide a small portion of the total funding in the animal advocacy movement.
In our short initial survey and interviews with 12 CEO’s and hiring professionals from 9 of the “top” or “standout” charities currently or formerly recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators, 9 respondents selected “funding” as the bottleneck that they “identify most” with in their organisation, though most respondents selected more than one option. We asked participants another question that provided evidence that funding was a major bottleneck for organisations, but the answers seemed highly counterintuitive to us, so we don’t think that we should place much weight on this finding.
Our impression from a limited number of conversations (and these comments by three organisations working on wild animal welfare research) is that progress for effective animal advocacy research organisations seems to be slowed more by a lack of funding than by a lack of good candidates. Of course, these organisations may not be highly representative of the animal advocacy space more broadly.”
Yeah, it’s interesting to see that across the board. My sense is that wild animal welfare work (and farmed animal work), are very much funding constrained. Relevant to this—Open Philanthropy doesn’t currently fund EA wild animal welfare work.