Animal Welfare Fund: Ask us anything!

Hi all,

Managers of the EA Animal Welfare Fund will be available for an Ask Me Anything session on Friday, 14 May. We’ll start early that morning and try to finish up by early that afternoon PST, so ideally please try to get your questions in on Wednesday or Thursday. Included below is some information that could be helpful for questions.

Our latest grant round comprised a new set of highs for the fund, which included:

  • A new high of 96 applications for funding (upping last round’s previous high by 20%). We then desk-rejected 11 of those, and evaluated the remaining 85 applications.

  • We selected 18 of those for funding (upping last round’s previous high by 20%), granted out most of the available balance (which at ~$2.7M at payout date was also a new high), with a total grant volume of ~$1.5M for the round (another new high, and ~100% increase on the previous round).

  • We significantly increased our grantmaking capacity through increasing the number of fund managers (recently increased to six from four), implementing a new evaluation system, and significantly increasing the time commitment per fund manager.

Here’s a list of grantees’ names, a very brief description of what the grant is for, and grant amounts from our first payout round of 2021:

  1. Wild Animal Initiative, research and advocacy for wild animals, $360,000

  2. Rethink Priorities, research to inform effective animal advocacy, $225,000

  3. Sinergia Animal, Farmed animals in neglected regions, $165,000

  4. Insect Welfare Project, mitigate problems associated with insect farming, $135,000

  5. The Humane League UK, campaign work on broilers and layer hens, $120,000

  6. Global Food Partners, expedite the shift to cage-free egg production in China, $75,000

  7. Fish Welfare Initiative, Improving the lives of farmed fish in India, $70,000

  8. Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations, policy work on fish in India: $50,000

  9. OBRAZ, general support for promising farmed animal group in Czechia, $50,000

  10. Vegans of Shanghai/​xiaobuVEGAN, restaurant and public outreach in China, $50,000

  11. Animal Rights Center Japan, cage-free work in Japan, $45,000

  12. Coalition of African Animal Welfare Organizations, influencing South African farmed fish legislation, $40,000

  13. Institute of Animal Law of Asia, supporting a new group on Asian farmed animal law, $30,000

  14. Modern Agriculture Foundation, promoting plant-based alternatives co-manufacturing site, $30,000

  15. Education for African Animal Welfare, expanding the cage-free movement in Tanzania, $26,000

  16. Jah Ying Chung, assessing the viability of an industry tracker for alt-proteins in China, $20,000

  17. WellBeing International, academic review of invertebrate sentience, $15,000

  18. Daniel Grimwade & Mark Borthwick, researching how to reduce the number of fish and insects killed for fish feed, $12,000

The full payout report will be published soon.

And here’s an updated request for proposals which we will be using to help solicit proposals for our second round of 2021. The application deadline for that round will be the 13th of June.

Ask any questions you like; we’ll respond to as many as we can.

EDIT: Thanks for the great questions everyone! We are going to call it for the day. Hope to return next week in case there is anything outstanding.