New Study Establishes Salary Trends in the U.S. Animal Advocacy Movement

New research from Faunalytics establishes salary and benefits trends in the U.S. farmed animal protection movement. The report provides salary data across organizational revenue size, job level groupings, and job families. Furthermore, executive salaries among farmed animal advocacy organizations were compared with those of other animal-related nonprofits, environmental nonprofits, and social advocacy organizations.

https://faunalytics.org/compensation-in-farmed-animal-advocacy

Key Findings

The median pay across all U.S. farmed animal advocacy positions in our sample was approximately $80,000, but organizations with higher revenue and more staff tend to pay more than lower-revenue, smaller organizations. Organizations with a revenue over $1 million paid a median salary of $84,000 across all job levels compared to a median salary of $68,350 for organizations with a revenue below $1 million. Organizations with 1 to 10 employees paid a median salary of $70,000 across all job levels compared to a median salary of $81,800 for organizations with 11 or more employees.
Advocates from marginalized groups earned 85 cents for every dollar that a non-marginalized advocate makes. On average, advocates who are members of marginalized groups (identifying as BIPOC, having a disability, and/or being LGBTQIA+) received salaries that are 15% lower than the salaries of non-marginalized advocates. This statistically significant difference (p <.05) isn’t due to employment differences such as job level or years of experience, which we accounted for in our analyses. Even though most participating organizations had transparent and formal pay practices, this finding suggests that these strategies alone may not be enough to prevent or eliminate these pay gaps.
Pay corresponds with job level to a greater extent at higher-revenue organizations. At organizations with a revenue over $1 million, the median salary was $67,250 for individual contributors, $84,500 for management, $114,000 for leadership, and $128,000 for executive directors. In contrast, median salaries at organizations with a revenue under $1 million were much flatter, around $70,000 at each job level.
Most U.S. farmed animal advocacy organizations we surveyed provide a medical plan, but dental, retirement, and vision benefits are less common. While 78% of participating organizations offered a medical plan, only 56% provided dental benefits, 52% offered a retirement plan, and 44% provided vision care benefits. For paid time off, all participating organizations offered a minimum of 15 vacation days, 84% offered at least five sick days, and 80% offered at least 10 holidays.
Median executive director (ED) salaries were generally lower than EDs of social advocacy and environmental organizations, especially for EDs of lower-revenue farmed animal advocacy organizations. Comparing our sample of EDs against U.S.-wide ED data from Candid, EDs of lower-revenue farmed animal advocacy organizations (< $1 million) make $20,000 to $25,000 less than EDs of social advocacy and environmental organizations with a similar revenue, while EDs of higher-revenue farmed animal advocacy organizations ($1 million +) make approximately $2,000 and $7,000 less. Our median ED salaries tended to be higher than the median for Candid’s category of “animal-related organizations” ($70,000 vs. $65,262 for organizations < $1 million and $128,000 vs. $98,375 for organizations > $1 million). However, we suspect this is due to Candid’s category being dominated by direct work with animals (e.g., animal services, zoos, and aquariums).
36% of farmed animal advocates said they were somewhat or very likely to leave the movement if offered a similar role with better pay, particularly if they belonged to a marginalized group. 45% of marginalized participants were somewhat or very likely to leave compared to just 29% of non-marginalized participants (p = 0.05). While we don’t know whether this marginal difference would appear in a sample of advocates who haven’t obtained higher education, it suggests that our movement is at risk of losing talent, especially those belonging to marginalized groups.
When given an opportunity to discuss barriers to pay, most organizational leadership said that they want to increase pay and know their employees are worth more, but can’t afford it due to funding constraints. Most organizations sampled have a formal pay process (70%) and determine raises based on cost of living (70%), although a few participants said that considering cost of living standards made determining equitable pay more challenging (e.g., when employing individuals from different countries and regions). Despite such barriers, most participating organizations are transparent about pay with their staff (78%), which is an important step in establishing pay equity. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of organizational barriers, we suggest reading our accompanying blog on this subject.

Background

The farmed animal advocacy movement has professionalized and grown within the nonprofit sector over the last 50 years, with over 285 organizations in the United States alone and more than 800 groups worldwide (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2023). The movement continues to grow, with new organizations launching or being developed through incubation programs each year. This report will analyze pay and benefit trends among farmed animal organizations and how they compare with nonprofits in other cause areas. Our goal is to provide benchmarks, recommendations, and tools in order to help strengthen this rapidly growing movement.

In general, nonprofit organizations face many complexities and barriers to providing competitive pay and benefits: 66% cite budget constraints/insufficient funding and 72% cite pay competition as barriers to hiring and retaining employees (The National Council of Nonprofits, 2023). In particular, the farmed animal protection movement faces unique funding constraints: only 3% of charitable giving is awarded to animal and environmental causes combined (Giving USA, 2021), and most of the funding for animal charities goes towards companion animals (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2023).

Low pay and inadequate benefits can lead to employee turnover. Faunalytics (2020) found that 21% of animal advocates in the U.S. and Canada left an animal advocacy job because of dissatisfaction with pay and benefits. In the same study, advocates who were members of marginalized groups (BIPOC, disability, LGBTQ2IA+) were significantly more likely to list low pay as a reason for leaving compared to non-marginalized advocates, indicating that the animal advocacy movement likely faces challenges in welcoming and retaining animal advocates from marginalized groups.

In order to provide more professional environments and competitive pay and benefits, we first need to understand how much pay and what type of benefits we’re providing to employees. This is the first report to compare the pay of U.S. employees between farmed animal advocacy organizations of similarly-sized revenues, as well as the benefits offered by U.S. organizations.

We also examined whether pay gaps exist between marginalized and non-marginalized individuals in the farmed animal advocacy movement (hereinafter referred to as the movement), given that such pay gaps are common across many sectors. For example, as of 2016, white men in the U.S. earned $24 per hour, while Hispanic and Black women earned $12 to $13 per hour, even after accounting for any differences in education levels (Pew Research Center, 2016). Similar pay gaps have been found in the U.S. work sector between people with and without a disability (American Institutes For Research, 2014) and between LGBTQ2IA+ and non-LGBTQ2IA+ individuals (Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 2022). We therefore hypothesized that people who are BIPOC (i.e., Black, Indigenous, or People of Color), women, non-binary, LGBTQ2IA+, and/or have a disability would earn less money than everyone else in our movement as well.

By addressing pay inequities and developing a purposeful approach to pay and benefits, organizations can create a more inclusive, equitable, and engaged work environment where staff feel more supported and rewarded. Such environments will also help employers attract and retain diverse talent within the organization and movement.

Research Team

The project’s lead author was Research Scientist Dr. Andrea Polanco (Faunalytics) and Dr. Jo Anderson (Faunalytics) reviewed and oversaw the work.

Conclusion

The State Of U.S. Farmed Animal Advocacy Pay & Benefits

Although this report is imperfect given the limited data available, it is the first report of its kind in our movement and we hope it will encourage advocates to have more discussions around pay and benefit equity within the movement.

We observed a few patterns in the median salaries that are worth highlighting. As is to be expected, salaries tend to be higher at organizations with a larger revenue and more staff, and salaries tend to increase with each progressing job level (particularly for larger-revenue and larger-sized organizations).

As well, median ED salaries from our sample of farmed animal advocacy organizations tended to be lower than those of EDs in social and environmental movements, especially for smaller-revenue organizations, but higher than those of EDs in the broader animal-related nonprofit sector (Candid), likely because of the prevalence of direct work with animals in that sector compared to in our sample. Direct work with animals accounts for some of farmed animal advocates’ work (e.g., sanctuaries, rescues), but much of our movement’s work is more similar to the social advocacy and environmental sectors, suggesting that they are a more appropriate salary benchmark.

Regarding benefits, while most organizations in our sample offered a medical plan, most didn’t provide optical benefits, dental benefits, or a retirement plan. While we didn’t ask advocates their benefits preferences, a recent sample of U.S. employees rated healthcare benefits, followed by life insurance and a pension/retirement plan, as the most important types of benefits. Farmed animal advocacy leadership may want to survey their employees on the types of benefits that they would like to have, while keeping in mind that minimum standards will vary according to regional regulations.

In our sample, none of the participating organizations offered fewer than 15 vacation days, which is higher than the average number of vacation days provided to those working at the U.S. state or local government and those working in the private U.S. sector after one year (13 and 11 days, respectively: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). In contrast, while the average number of sick days for those working at the U.S. state or local government after one year is 11 days (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023), only 42% of organizations sampled provided 11 sick days or more, including unlimited. Although only a minority of organizations in our sample provided unlimited sick days (25%) and unlimited vacation (33%), it should be noted that some people take less time off than what’s typically offered when giving a set number of days due to workplace pressures. To avoid this, we encourage employers to set a minimum required amount of PTO if using an unlimited PTO structure.

Pay Equity

This is also the first study to date that has examined whether pay gaps exist in the movement. Even though most of our study participants worked at organizations with formal strategies to set pay bands and raises, marginalized advocates still earned, on average, 15% less than non-marginalized individuals. This statistically significant pay gap isn’t due to differences in job levels or other employment factors, as we accounted for those in our analyses. This suggests that pay gaps do exist in the movement and that formal and transparent pay structures aren’t necessarily enough to prevent or eliminate inequities.

Closing these pay gaps is crucial to attract, support, and retain advocates from marginalized groups, especially considering how marginalized advocates in this sample tended to be more likely to leave the movement if offered higher pay elsewhere, in addition to more marginalized advocates having left a role in the past due to insufficient pay (Faunalytics, 2020). Non-marginalized individuals may be more able to accept low-paying jobs due to facing fewer financial barriers, which is sometimes referred to as the “white advantage”—one study surveyed over 5,000 U.S. nonprofit employees and found that, compared to BIPOC employees, white employees reported more additional sources of income and were less likely to support family members outside of their household (Building Movement Project, 2020). Speculatively, this may be why we found that BIPOC and other marginalized advocates in our sample tended to hold lower-level jobs and be younger than other advocates: they may not be able to stay as long in the face of financial constraints. We therefore recommend that organizations address barriers to career advancement and invest more in developing competitive pay and benefit packages to attract, retain, and improve the experiences of marginalized talent within the workforce.

Such systematic barriers should be addressed in our movement by following the recommendations set out by the Building Movement Project (2020) and Fund The People (2019). These include acknowledging the “white advantage,” developing equitable salary policies that raise the minimum level of pay, recruiting and promoting marginalized staff at higher job levels (e.g., Black women are less likely to be promoted to manager than other women and all men: LeanIn, 2018), and investing more in mentorship and professional development opportunities. It’s also important to support marginalized individuals who are promoted so that they can succeed as they’re more likely than non-marginalized individuals to be promoted during organizational instability (Cook & Glass, 2013). Organizational leadership can also help close pay gaps by monitoring how pay varies by their employees’ demographic traits (e.g., by distributing an optional self-identification survey to employees), and addressing any gaps identified.

Cost Of Turnover

Employee turnover, though not always a bad thing, can have a devastating impact on the organization as well. One individual can cost an organization 30% to 200% of their salary to replace. Turnover may also increase the workload of other team members as the responsibilities of the vacant position get redistributed, thereby affecting team morale and wellbeing, and further contributing to work-related stress and burnout.

For employers who want to better understand the financial cost of turnover, you can use our calculator and fill out any cells that are relevant to your organization. Based on the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), this calculator is meant to help employers roughly estimate the total cost of turnover for a particular position, including the costs spent in hiring and training a replacement, and the loss of productivity during the position’s vacancy. PERT calculates an expected time for each activity outlined by taking the average of ‘optimistic time’ (the minimum time required for completion), ‘pessimistic time’ (the maximum time required), and ‘most likely time’ (the best estimate under normal conditions). Each organization and position will have a unique cost of turnover profile.

Establishing a competitive pay and benefit package is a key way to reduce employee turnover. Other strategies include ensuring reasonable workloads, enacting work policies that reduce burnout, and establishing a psychologically safe and meaningful work environment where employees feel like they’re supported and are able to make a difference (Faunalytics, 2020).