Hi! I wonder if there is a reason why all recommendations are in the area of outreach/advocacy (with the exception of wild animal welfare). The Good Food Institute, which works on research and development, used to be recommended by ACE, but it is no longer recommended. I am curious about why this might be the case, though perhaps it is simply that other organizations have more pressing funding needs.
Hi Pablo, important question! GFI decided to postpone re-evaluation to a future year to allow their teams more time to focus on new opportunities and challenges in the alternative proteins sector. Our researchers will be available to answer more questions about our 2024 charity recommendations in our AMA next week (Nov 19, 8-10am PT) on the FAST Forum. We hope to catch you there! Thanks, Holly
Yes they do some but the Research Grants Program is on the order of $2-6M and GFI’s overall budget is around $42M, so only about 10% of their budget goes towards direct research. I would say a much bigger focus of their work is corporate, investor and policymaker engagement.
Interesting to see the same from the EA Animal Welfare Fund, who only gave ~1.2% of funds to explicit alternative protein work. I suspect this is emblematic of a broader shift within EA toward getting easy, quick wins in neglected countries (?)
Hi! I wonder if there is a reason why all recommendations are in the area of outreach/advocacy (with the exception of wild animal welfare). The Good Food Institute, which works on research and development, used to be recommended by ACE, but it is no longer recommended. I am curious about why this might be the case, though perhaps it is simply that other organizations have more pressing funding needs.
Hi Pablo, important question! GFI decided to postpone re-evaluation to a future year to allow their teams more time to focus on new opportunities and challenges in the alternative proteins sector. Our researchers will be available to answer more questions about our 2024 charity recommendations in our AMA next week (Nov 19, 8-10am PT) on the FAST Forum. We hope to catch you there! Thanks, Holly
FWIW I would consider GFI as doing outreach and advocacy, just applied to the area of alternative proteins.
I would say they also do a fair amount of helping foster an alternative protein market, see eg $1 million dollars in Science and Technology (https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-good-food-institute/2021-nov/) and also has (or had) a research grant program (https://gfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Research-Grant-Program-RFP-2023.pdf).
Yes they do some but the Research Grants Program is on the order of $2-6M and GFI’s overall budget is around $42M, so only about 10% of their budget goes towards direct research. I would say a much bigger focus of their work is corporate, investor and policymaker engagement.
Interesting to see the same from the EA Animal Welfare Fund, who only gave ~1.2% of funds to explicit alternative protein work. I suspect this is emblematic of a broader shift within EA toward getting easy, quick wins in neglected countries (?)
But they also gave 0.5 million to research which is a 14% roughly.