Thanks for posting this! If you are able to share, I would be interested in not just the marginal grant but also what some of your biggest hits from the past one or two years have been. I think it would help me to get a sense of what the upside from donations to AWF could be expected to be.
Sure. Before doing that a couple of quick notes. First, I think it takes a while for grants to mature and impact to play out, so that makes it difficult to judge at this point which were the biggest hits from the past year. Second, there are some grants that I have a COI with, but think may have been hits from 2022, but nonetheless won’t list them here. Third, as some further background context, the general categories of grants that I am most excited by are early-stage support to aligned groups, working on neglected animals, or in neglected places.
Then being quite brief, some hits that come to mind for me:
Our early 2022 grant of $185,000 to the team at EA Singapore to run a capacity-building fellowship throughout SE Asia. They have run multiple iterations of a 14-week fellowship, have had tens of people go through that fellowship, and partnered with tens of organizations on the fellowship. They were renamed as Welfare Matters, and secured a $1M grant from Open Phil earlier this year. In my view, the movement basically went from not really having a very promising movement-building option for much of SE Asia (which is a critical area for the movement[1]) to having one in the space of 1-2 years, in large part because of the EA AWF.
Our early 2022 grant of $45,000 grant to the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP). I think our support of SWP was quite important to their growth and they went on to secure larger grants from us, and be ACE-recommended. In my view, the movement went from not really having a promising option for addressing shrimp welfare, to having one in the space of 1-2 years, in large part because of the EA AWF. And by SWP’s estimates, they already now (in expectation) help 1 billion shrimps per annum.
Various grants we have made to support chicken welfare campaigns internationally seem to have been quite good investments in my view (e.g., Sinergia Animal and Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği).
I hope that gives some more sense of the potential upside but feel free to follow up further. Also as noted in response to a different question, there is variance in views within fund managers. Here I am reporting my own relatively quickly put views, while others on the fund may have slightly to somewhat different views.
Throughout much of SE Asia there’s little to no organized effective animal advocacy. Many of these countries are highly populous and some of the largest animal product producers. Somewhat dated but see p.16 re: total number of farmed animals.
Thanks for posting this! If you are able to share, I would be interested in not just the marginal grant but also what some of your biggest hits from the past one or two years have been. I think it would help me to get a sense of what the upside from donations to AWF could be expected to be.
Sure. Before doing that a couple of quick notes. First, I think it takes a while for grants to mature and impact to play out, so that makes it difficult to judge at this point which were the biggest hits from the past year. Second, there are some grants that I have a COI with, but think may have been hits from 2022, but nonetheless won’t list them here. Third, as some further background context, the general categories of grants that I am most excited by are early-stage support to aligned groups, working on neglected animals, or in neglected places.
Then being quite brief, some hits that come to mind for me:
Our early 2022 grant of $185,000 to the team at EA Singapore to run a capacity-building fellowship throughout SE Asia. They have run multiple iterations of a 14-week fellowship, have had tens of people go through that fellowship, and partnered with tens of organizations on the fellowship. They were renamed as Welfare Matters, and secured a $1M grant from Open Phil earlier this year. In my view, the movement basically went from not really having a very promising movement-building option for much of SE Asia (which is a critical area for the movement[1]) to having one in the space of 1-2 years, in large part because of the EA AWF.
Our early 2022 grant of $45,000 grant to the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP). I think our support of SWP was quite important to their growth and they went on to secure larger grants from us, and be ACE-recommended. In my view, the movement went from not really having a promising option for addressing shrimp welfare, to having one in the space of 1-2 years, in large part because of the EA AWF. And by SWP’s estimates, they already now (in expectation) help 1 billion shrimps per annum.
Various grants we have made to support chicken welfare campaigns internationally seem to have been quite good investments in my view (e.g., Sinergia Animal and Çiftlik Hayvanlarını Koruma Derneği).
I hope that gives some more sense of the potential upside but feel free to follow up further. Also as noted in response to a different question, there is variance in views within fund managers. Here I am reporting my own relatively quickly put views, while others on the fund may have slightly to somewhat different views.
Throughout much of SE Asia there’s little to no organized effective animal advocacy. Many of these countries are highly populous and some of the largest animal product producers. Somewhat dated but see p.16 re: total number of farmed animals.
This is very cool, thanks Kieran!