Great post on a really important subject! I did have a question that came up after clicking through to the Effective Animal Advocacy Survey results. The results say:
We asked direct work respondents the following question: “Imagine that someone has been working for 10 years building up experience and expertise that would make them an excellent candidate for one of the roles that is *hardest to hire for* in your organisation. Would you be more excited about that person applying for one of those roles at your organisation, or donating money to your organisation that was the equivalent of 50% of the salary of that role?” We then asked them the same question again but replaced “one of the roles that is *hardest to hire for* in your organisation” with “*a campaigns, corporate engagement, or volunteer management* role in your organisation.”[25]
For both questions, we offered them the following options: “Much more excited about them applying” (coded as 1), “Somewhat more excited about them applying” (2), “Roughly similarly excited either way” (3), “Somewhat more excited about them donating” (4), and “Much more excited about them donating” (5).
Here are the average scores:
These results seem like a vote in favour of careers in direct work in general, even for role types that are not necessarily “hardest to hire for.” We note below that the average salary seems to be around $50,000 or so in animal advocacy nonprofits in the global North, though the average salary might be higher for roles that are “hardest to hire for,” such as leadership and senior management roles. So you could interpret these results as suggesting that organisations would rather receive one additional very-high quality applicant for the roles that are hardest to hire for than receive $25,000 or more (each year for the length of time that the applicant might otherwise have been employed for).
I’m curious if you have any thoughts on a slightly different variation on this question, which is how organizations working in low and middle income countries would respond if they were given the choice between one more qualified candidate and $25,000 more funding each year. I ask because as you pointed out in the piece, someone in a high income country considering ETG could choose to donate to organizations working in LMICs. It would strike me as pretty surprising if orgs in LMICs would prefer one additional highly qualified candidate over enough funding for ~2 FTEs.
Great post on a really important subject! I did have a question that came up after clicking through to the Effective Animal Advocacy Survey results. The results say:
I’m curious if you have any thoughts on a slightly different variation on this question, which is how organizations working in low and middle income countries would respond if they were given the choice between one more qualified candidate and $25,000 more funding each year. I ask because as you pointed out in the piece, someone in a high income country considering ETG could choose to donate to organizations working in LMICs. It would strike me as pretty surprising if orgs in LMICs would prefer one additional highly qualified candidate over enough funding for ~2 FTEs.