Interesting Q! I think there’s a lot that would surprise 2015-me. A few highlights:
Plant-based meat: I didn’t expect Impossible to get into Burger King so quickly, the popularity of the Beyond Meat IPO, the surge in sales of plant-based meat in US retail over the last few years, or the resulting investing boom in the space in the last few years. I think following the industry more closely would have given me a bit more foresight here, but I’m not sure it would have resulted in a lot more good grants, since there are limited grant opportunities (and the top investment opportunities all got taken without us).
Corporate campaigns: I didn’t expect advocates to so quickly get most large North American food and European food businesses to commit to go cage-free, or to succeed in extending these campaigns globally. But I also didn’t expect US broiler welfare campaigns to get as slowed down as they have. I think the main update here is the significance of momentum. I think one wrong lesson would be that we should ask for more—this was a lesson that we took from rapid US cage-free progress which I think led us to ask for too much on the US broiler ask.
Mismanagement and sexual harassment at some groups. I think the movement had more internal problems than we realized, see e.g. the above comments. As a funder it’s hard to learn about these issues—you’re mostly talking to group leadership and it’s hard to have informal conversations with regular employees. But I think these issues have updated us on a number of things, including the importance of (a) trying to have more informal conversations with non-leaders, (b) requiring strong sexual harassment policies and procedures from grantees, (c) encouraging orgs to invest in org-development, e.g. higher salaries, and better governance, e.g. independent boards.
I could go on. There are many more things that have surprised me, though I think most have been positive and due to the fact that we’re still a young fast-growing movement where there’s less of a stable baseline to predict forward.
Interesting Q! I think there’s a lot that would surprise 2015-me. A few highlights:
Plant-based meat: I didn’t expect Impossible to get into Burger King so quickly, the popularity of the Beyond Meat IPO, the surge in sales of plant-based meat in US retail over the last few years, or the resulting investing boom in the space in the last few years. I think following the industry more closely would have given me a bit more foresight here, but I’m not sure it would have resulted in a lot more good grants, since there are limited grant opportunities (and the top investment opportunities all got taken without us).
Corporate campaigns: I didn’t expect advocates to so quickly get most large North American food and European food businesses to commit to go cage-free, or to succeed in extending these campaigns globally. But I also didn’t expect US broiler welfare campaigns to get as slowed down as they have. I think the main update here is the significance of momentum. I think one wrong lesson would be that we should ask for more—this was a lesson that we took from rapid US cage-free progress which I think led us to ask for too much on the US broiler ask.
Mismanagement and sexual harassment at some groups. I think the movement had more internal problems than we realized, see e.g. the above comments. As a funder it’s hard to learn about these issues—you’re mostly talking to group leadership and it’s hard to have informal conversations with regular employees. But I think these issues have updated us on a number of things, including the importance of (a) trying to have more informal conversations with non-leaders, (b) requiring strong sexual harassment policies and procedures from grantees, (c) encouraging orgs to invest in org-development, e.g. higher salaries, and better governance, e.g. independent boards.
I could go on. There are many more things that have surprised me, though I think most have been positive and due to the fact that we’re still a young fast-growing movement where there’s less of a stable baseline to predict forward.