Resources: Pursuing a career in animal advocacy (even if you’re a longtermist!)

[Ren Ryba]

This is a collection of resources that I recommend for how, and why, to pursue a career in animal advocacy—particularly if you think animal advocacy might not be for you.

At EAGx Australia 2023, I’m giving a lightning talk on why and how to pursue a career in animal advocacy. I thought I’d make an EA Forum post with links to everything I talk about, as it may help to have all of these resources in one place. The slides from my lightning talk are available here.

Launching independent projects in animal advocacy

• Charity Entrepreneurship incubation programme

  • Applications open until September 30

  • Please apply!

  • Link

• How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit, handbook by Charity Entrepreneurship (link)

  • I can confirm this is a truly excellent resource

• “Who Is a Good Fit for a Career in Nonprofit Entrepreneurship?” (link)

• “I Have a Charity Idea. Any Advice?” (link)

• Global list of funders, maintained by Animal Advocacy Africa (link)

• Manifund regranting (link), with some opportunities for longtermist animal advocacy

• How-to guides on lobbying policymakers for animal advocacy, written by Coller Animal Law Foundation (CALF) (link)

Careers in animal advocacy

• Animal Advocacy Careers, which offers an online course, skills profiles, a job board, and information on volunteering (link)

• Rethink Priorities 2022 survey that discussed some skill gaps in the movement (link)

• Difficult to get a job in EA not living in the West? Animal advocacy careers can impact millions of animals anywhere in the world (EA Forum)

• Personal fit is extremely important when assessing animal advocacy career paths (EA Forum)

Longtermism and/​or AI in animal advocacy

• Animal Advocacy in the Age of AI (EA Forum)

• Longtermism and animals: Resources (EA Forum)

• S-risks: Center on Long-Term Risk (link)

• Yip Fai Tse’s papers on the effects of AI on animal welfare (link)

Online communities

• Impactful Animal Advocacy (Slack): Join here

  • Has a channel specifically for AI discussion

  • Has a channel specifically for Australia

• Animals and Longtermism (Discord): Join here

• Fish Advocacy (Slack)

Other top-notch resources

• Podcast: How I Learned to Love Shrimp (link)

• Newsletter: Impactful Animal Advocacy Community Newsletter (link)

• How will we know if we are doing good better: The case for more and better monitoring and evaluation (EA Forum)

• Rethink Priorities’ Welfare Range Estimates (EA Forum)

  • Especially the key takeaway: “Given hedonism and conditional on sentience, we think (credence: 0.65) that the welfare ranges of humans and the vertebrate animals of interest are within an order of magnitude of one another.”

Worldview diversity + skepticism on expecting an automatic victory

• Pathways to Victory (link)

• Potential Theories of Change for the Animal Advocacy movement (EA Forum)

• Empirical evidence on whether moral circles exist and how they work:

  • Goodwin 2015, “Experimental Approaches to Moral Standing”, Philosophy Compass, DOI: 10.1111/​phc3.12266 (link)

    • Especially see section 7 and endnote 9

  • Singh & Hoffman 2022, “Individualist moral principles and the expansion of the moral circle”, DOI: 10.31235/​osf.io/​​pqem7 (link)

    • Especially see their discussion on historical contingency, the relevance of moral conditions, and contractions of the moral circle

• Non-Consequentialist Considerations For Cause-Prioritization Part 1 and Part 2 (EA Forum)

• Kempers 2022, “Transition rather than Revolution: The Gradual Road towards Animal Legal Personhood through the Legislature”, Transnational Environmental Law, DOI: 10.1017/​S2047102522000139 (link)

• A new framing to replace “Welfarism vs. Abolitionism” (EA Forum)

• Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat (EA Forum)

  • Especially see the discussion + resources in this comment thread

Specific interventions I referenced in my talk

I have written these articles on a) political advocacy for animals, and b) outreach for reducing meat consumption. They will be published in the coming weeks on the Animal Ask research database.

• Party Politics for Animal Advocacy—Part 1: Animal-focused minor political parties

• Party Politics for Animal Advocacy—Part 2: Establishing groups across or within major political parties

• Meat reduction: How much can digital media and mass media help?

Organisations I referenced in my talk

• Animal Advocacy Careers (link)

• Charity Entrepreneurship (link)

• Fish Welfare Initiative (link)

[MHR🔸]

This is a great list of resources! One thing I’d add is that the effective animal advocacy space is pretty seriously funding constrained right now, and I don’t see any signs that the situation is likely to change in the next few years. For that reason, I think it’s worth calling out earning to give as a potentially uniquely promising path to impact. Animal Advocacy Careers had a good post on ETG for animals a few months ago.

[lukasj10🔸]

Thanks for putting this together, Ren!

Double link for Animal Advocacy in the Age of AI (EA Forum), I think.

[Ren Ryba]

Thanks, fixed :)