I am also a former employee of Animal Equality. I just registered here anonymously because speaking out publicly will get me in trouble with the current AE-leadership that I can not afford to deal with financially or emotionally anymore.
With all respect – just from what I know, OPP has so much information about what is going on at Animal Equality – reading „I would like to hear more about your experience and other cases you’re aware of“ is very, very frustrating.
„We take this approach because we’re such a large portion of most grantees’ funding that us cutting off funding will typically result in them having to lay off employees, in some cases many.“
The number of people who where fired or have left AE because of the behavior of the current leadership is so high, that I do not think a complete cut of funding could have resulted in more lay-offs.
Thanks Charlie and Oat for sharing your experiences with Animal Equality. I understand your skepticism and I’m sorry to hear about how things have gone for you and too many others.
You’re right that we spoke with a lot of former and current AE employees in 2019. We heard concern about practices but also concern about the potential fallout of us just cutting funding. It was a tough decision, but we chose to use our leverage to push for changes rather than to cut funding.
I wish I could get into more specifics of the conversations with AE leadership, but think it would violate both their trust and that of a number of employees we spoke with. So all I can really say is that we’ve had ongoing candid conversations with AE leadership about our concerns and think they’re taking a number of significant actions based on our conversations, for example adding new independent directors to their board, making key personnel changes, and working closely with a consultant on management changes. But we’re continuing to monitor and engage on this—including continuing to welcome new information.
Hi Lewis, I am another former Animal Equality worker who prefers to remain anonymous for reasons already mentioned in the forum. I want to give more information and make a reflection on this issue:
- 85% of the team in Germany quitted the organization in the last months when the international board took over the control of the German organization. Most of the team opposed the management style and HR values of the international board. See here how ratings on the German anonymous employer review platform Kununu collapse over time, reporting the situation, when the international board took over management.
- Power continues to be held by the founders and their trusted people, some of them taking on other roles to make it appear as a more balanced management structure that does not exist. The systemic and structural problem will persist as long as large donors and the effective altruism philanthropists continue to allow this situation to persist.
- Predatory management, far from being isolated cases, the leadership model is based on coercion of employees. Hence, employees are afraid to speak up, as we have already seen here. A dissenting opinion means dismissal. It is common practice to motivate dismissals with professional law firms that advise on the best ways to fire “uncomfortable” people, without having anything to do with their performance.
- Fostering the culture of toxic competitiveness among organizations, as is known in some countries. Far from following the values and principles of effective altruism, the leadership model uses it to obtain funding, without sharing its values.
- Dismissals during medical leaves motivated by the predatory and toxic leadership model. Even victims of the predatory management taking medication for work-related anxiety episodes.
- It is common practice to sign non-disclosure clauses at the time of contract termination to prevent issues such as those described here from being known.
Far from being improved by the measures taken by Open Philanthropy Project (and other philanthropic organizations), the predatory management model imposed by the founders extends throughout Animal Equality’s international offices. As many prominent activists comment, “it’s an open secret.” If Open Philanthropy Project or other philanthropic organizations or major donors are not aware of this, it must be because they do not make the effort to know about it, not because of lack of resources. Something that is internationally known (a predatory and toxic model from top to bottom) is impossible that it cannot be managed by people with so many contacts in the environment.
As an example: after an employee satisfaction interview conducted in AE Spain in 2017, the results were so alarming that we know that the founders located in US expressed “you have to buy tickets for Spain”. Once they arrived there, they promised workers that they were coming to listen and solve problems created by the management in Spain (an AE founder). This made the workers express themselves freely, trusting the word of the founders located in the US. This was followed by the sudden dismissal of two key workers in Spain who had expressed the untenable incompetence of the Spanish management, something so well known internationally, that the former director of Spain was forced to retire from the management, although he still has full control of the decisions (same situation as with the current executive vice-president, who was just as well forced to retire from his previous position).
Everything mentioned here to improve the predatory model that the founders impose on AE does not do much to repair the harm done to dozens? hundreds? of victims of workplace harassment. Is this the best we can hope for?
Lewis, I would like to comment on your points in detail but I can not do that without jeopardizing my anonymity which I think it pretty clear. And I know that anything I could say OP already has been made aware of by several people. People have been treated and are being treated horribly and forced out of the organization after the changes you mentioned had been implemented. These are ongoing issues. Asking for more information at this point feels like people have been speaking out in vain so far. Reading things like this over and over again is really not helping the mental health of people who have been treated horribly but dared to speak out despite the risk.
Should people in positions of power who seem to have a track record of mismanagement be granted the same level of trust – and by extension protection – as the many, many people who are treated badly and people who want to hold people in power accountable? I can not imagine what more information could be necessary. How much worse do things need to become to justify more drastic action in your eyes? Animal rights advocacy is hard enough as we all know. But even without that baseline of stress – no one should be treated like a disposable human resource and be forced to witness unbelievably incompetent leadership being protected like this.
Quite honestly Lewis, what violates our trust in OP is seeing that after all the risk many of us took nothing has substantially changed. While you continue having “candid conversations with AE leadership”, AE leadership has not extended the same grace to its staff and has been anything but candid to its employees. As you confirmed yourself, OP has been aware of and addressing the problems with AE since 2019. You claim that significant actions were taken since, however, in 2020 what we actually saw was the issues escalating and not improving, culture becoming much worse to the point of affecting mental health of employees, leadership becoming much more authoritarian and despotic. To speak only about what is already public knowledge, in 2020 AE lost almost the entire Germany office and fired more than one employee on medical leave as retaliation. How then do you affirm that they are making significant changes? The said changes are clearly only on paper, and the discourse does not reflect the reality of the culture. People who are still working at AE continue telling us about the same problems, but they are afraid of speaking up since they know many of us already did and nothing has been done either by OP and others who we trusted would take action to hold the organisation accountable. As far as we know, independent directors joining the board aren’t actually that “independent”, but personal friends and very aligned with leadership. It is crystal clear to just about everyone who ever worked at AE that leadership is simply not qualified to manage the organisation. Unfortunately, OP’s continuous failure to act despite the piling amount of evidence received from multiple whistleblowers is part of the reason why so many of the most passionate and effective animal rights advocates are choosing to leave the movement and losing faith in effective altruism. We simply can’t in good faith believe that the most effective way to do the most good for animals entails continuing supporting organisations with such toxic culture. Still, donors like you keep pouring funds under the guise of effectiveness when we all know AE is anything but cost-effective unless you take their fraudulent metrics at face value, which you really shouldn’t.
Lewis, with all the respect but I want to point out how frustrating it is to see that OPP continues to overlook all these serious issues. As people have said in this forum, due to the leadership of Animal Equality, people are depressed, leaving the animal advocacy movement, unemployed, and/or sick. “Candid conversations” didn’t work and are not going to work with Animal Equality. What else needs to happen until OPP takes drastic measures?
I am also a former employee of Animal Equality. I just registered here anonymously because speaking out publicly will get me in trouble with the current AE-leadership that I can not afford to deal with financially or emotionally anymore.
With all respect – just from what I know, OPP has so much information about what is going on at Animal Equality – reading „I would like to hear more about your experience and other cases you’re aware of“ is very, very frustrating.
„We take this approach because we’re such a large portion of most grantees’ funding that us cutting off funding will typically result in them having to lay off employees, in some cases many.“
The number of people who where fired or have left AE because of the behavior of the current leadership is so high, that I do not think a complete cut of funding could have resulted in more lay-offs.
It seems at Animal Equality Germany alone enough people left just last year to justify drastic measures? https://www.kununu.com/de/animal-equality-germany-ev/kommentare
Can you explain what exactly has changed at AE since you have become aware of the issues?
Thanks Charlie and Oat for sharing your experiences with Animal Equality. I understand your skepticism and I’m sorry to hear about how things have gone for you and too many others.
You’re right that we spoke with a lot of former and current AE employees in 2019. We heard concern about practices but also concern about the potential fallout of us just cutting funding. It was a tough decision, but we chose to use our leverage to push for changes rather than to cut funding.
I wish I could get into more specifics of the conversations with AE leadership, but think it would violate both their trust and that of a number of employees we spoke with. So all I can really say is that we’ve had ongoing candid conversations with AE leadership about our concerns and think they’re taking a number of significant actions based on our conversations, for example adding new independent directors to their board, making key personnel changes, and working closely with a consultant on management changes. But we’re continuing to monitor and engage on this—including continuing to welcome new information.
Hi Lewis, I am another former Animal Equality worker who prefers to remain anonymous for reasons already mentioned in the forum. I want to give more information and make a reflection on this issue:
- 85% of the team in Germany quitted the organization in the last months when the international board took over the control of the German organization. Most of the team opposed the management style and HR values of the international board. See here how ratings on the German anonymous employer review platform Kununu collapse over time, reporting the situation, when the international board took over management.
- Power continues to be held by the founders and their trusted people, some of them taking on other roles to make it appear as a more balanced management structure that does not exist. The systemic and structural problem will persist as long as large donors and the effective altruism philanthropists continue to allow this situation to persist.
- Predatory management, far from being isolated cases, the leadership model is based on coercion of employees. Hence, employees are afraid to speak up, as we have already seen here. A dissenting opinion means dismissal. It is common practice to motivate dismissals with professional law firms that advise on the best ways to fire “uncomfortable” people, without having anything to do with their performance.
- Fostering the culture of toxic competitiveness among organizations, as is known in some countries. Far from following the values and principles of effective altruism, the leadership model uses it to obtain funding, without sharing its values.
- Dismissals during medical leaves motivated by the predatory and toxic leadership model. Even victims of the predatory management taking medication for work-related anxiety episodes.
- It is common practice to sign non-disclosure clauses at the time of contract termination to prevent issues such as those described here from being known.
Far from being improved by the measures taken by Open Philanthropy Project (and other philanthropic organizations), the predatory management model imposed by the founders extends throughout Animal Equality’s international offices. As many prominent activists comment, “it’s an open secret.” If Open Philanthropy Project or other philanthropic organizations or major donors are not aware of this, it must be because they do not make the effort to know about it, not because of lack of resources. Something that is internationally known (a predatory and toxic model from top to bottom) is impossible that it cannot be managed by people with so many contacts in the environment.
As an example: after an employee satisfaction interview conducted in AE Spain in 2017, the results were so alarming that we know that the founders located in US expressed “you have to buy tickets for Spain”. Once they arrived there, they promised workers that they were coming to listen and solve problems created by the management in Spain (an AE founder). This made the workers express themselves freely, trusting the word of the founders located in the US. This was followed by the sudden dismissal of two key workers in Spain who had expressed the untenable incompetence of the Spanish management, something so well known internationally, that the former director of Spain was forced to retire from the management, although he still has full control of the decisions (same situation as with the current executive vice-president, who was just as well forced to retire from his previous position).
Everything mentioned here to improve the predatory model that the founders impose on AE does not do much to repair the harm done to dozens? hundreds? of victims of workplace harassment. Is this the best we can hope for?
Lewis, I would like to comment on your points in detail but I can not do that without jeopardizing my anonymity which I think it pretty clear. And I know that anything I could say OP already has been made aware of by several people. People have been treated and are being treated horribly and forced out of the organization after the changes you mentioned had been implemented. These are ongoing issues. Asking for more information at this point feels like people have been speaking out in vain so far. Reading things like this over and over again is really not helping the mental health of people who have been treated horribly but dared to speak out despite the risk.
Should people in positions of power who seem to have a track record of mismanagement be granted the same level of trust – and by extension protection – as the many, many people who are treated badly and people who want to hold people in power accountable? I can not imagine what more information could be necessary. How much worse do things need to become to justify more drastic action in your eyes? Animal rights advocacy is hard enough as we all know. But even without that baseline of stress – no one should be treated like a disposable human resource and be forced to witness unbelievably incompetent leadership being protected like this.
Quite honestly Lewis, what violates our trust in OP is seeing that after all the risk many of us took nothing has substantially changed. While you continue having “candid conversations with AE leadership”, AE leadership has not extended the same grace to its staff and has been anything but candid to its employees. As you confirmed yourself, OP has been aware of and addressing the problems with AE since 2019. You claim that significant actions were taken since, however, in 2020 what we actually saw was the issues escalating and not improving, culture becoming much worse to the point of affecting mental health of employees, leadership becoming much more authoritarian and despotic. To speak only about what is already public knowledge, in 2020 AE lost almost the entire Germany office and fired more than one employee on medical leave as retaliation. How then do you affirm that they are making significant changes? The said changes are clearly only on paper, and the discourse does not reflect the reality of the culture. People who are still working at AE continue telling us about the same problems, but they are afraid of speaking up since they know many of us already did and nothing has been done either by OP and others who we trusted would take action to hold the organisation accountable. As far as we know, independent directors joining the board aren’t actually that “independent”, but personal friends and very aligned with leadership. It is crystal clear to just about everyone who ever worked at AE that leadership is simply not qualified to manage the organisation. Unfortunately, OP’s continuous failure to act despite the piling amount of evidence received from multiple whistleblowers is part of the reason why so many of the most passionate and effective animal rights advocates are choosing to leave the movement and losing faith in effective altruism. We simply can’t in good faith believe that the most effective way to do the most good for animals entails continuing supporting organisations with such toxic culture.
Still, donors like you keep pouring funds under the guise of effectiveness when we all know AE is anything but cost-effective unless you take their fraudulent metrics at face value, which you really shouldn’t.
Lewis, with all the respect but I want to point out how frustrating it is to see that OPP continues to overlook all these serious issues. As people have said in this forum, due to the leadership of Animal Equality, people are depressed, leaving the animal advocacy movement, unemployed, and/or sick. “Candid conversations” didn’t work and are not going to work with Animal Equality. What else needs to happen until OPP takes drastic measures?