If anything, for new types of charities, the fact that these countries have “a relatively limited animal charity presence and a small chance of developing it” seems like a disadvantage rather than advantage. It’s an indicator that maybe animal advocacy is less tractable in these countries. Also, you would have no local activists who could help you to understand the specifics of the country and give support in other ways.
I think the other criteria are intended to approximately capture tractability (and all other considerations besides neglectedness) exhaustively (or well enough to get an unbiased estimate of the causal effect of the size of the animal advocacy movement on animal welfare), but there’s always the possibility that some have been missed (maybe the presence of local activists, especially underfunded or not so effective ones, is one, as you suggest). If we could be thorough enough in scoring the criteria that influence how good it looks to work on animal protection in a country, the independent effects of the size of the animal advocacy movement would be only to indicate how neglected it is there, as well as the consequences of neglectedness. In other words, while the fact that the movement is small on its own might suggest important barriers to progress, it’s only a correlate, and when you control/adjust for all the actual barriers, the size of the movement would no longer indicate anything about tractability.
If we found two countries were overall equivalent, except one country had a smaller animal advocacy movement, that country would be a better opportunity to work in, since it would be more neglected there.
Maybe size of the movement (in terms of funding or people) is too broad, and we should be using something closer to the amount of resources spent on effective advocacy priorities, more specifically. If there were a large or well-funded movement working on lower priorities, shifting their priorities or otherwise just doing independent work on those priorities could still be very promising. EDIT: Judging by some of the notes for “Animal advocacy organization” for a few countries, I think they might have considered this.
I think the other criteria are intended to approximately capture tractability (and all other considerations besides neglectedness) exhaustively (or well enough to get an unbiased estimate of the causal effect of the size of the animal advocacy movement on animal welfare), but there’s always the possibility that some have been missed (maybe the presence of local activists, especially underfunded or not so effective ones, is one, as you suggest). If we could be thorough enough in scoring the criteria that influence how good it looks to work on animal protection in a country, the independent effects of the size of the animal advocacy movement would be only to indicate how neglected it is there, as well as the consequences of neglectedness. In other words, while the fact that the movement is small on its own might suggest important barriers to progress, it’s only a correlate, and when you control/adjust for all the actual barriers, the size of the movement would no longer indicate anything about tractability.
If we found two countries were overall equivalent, except one country had a smaller animal advocacy movement, that country would be a better opportunity to work in, since it would be more neglected there.
Maybe size of the movement (in terms of funding or people) is too broad, and we should be using something closer to the amount of resources spent on effective advocacy priorities, more specifically. If there were a large or well-funded movement working on lower priorities, shifting their priorities or otherwise just doing independent work on those priorities could still be very promising. EDIT: Judging by some of the notes for “Animal advocacy organization” for a few countries, I think they might have considered this.