For nearly a decade, I’ve had the privilege of partnering with hundreds of individuals to create effective change for animals through philanthropy, growing THL’s supporter base and scaling our programs and impact. I was previously part of the EA Philly meetup, and contribute my direct work to high impact nonprofits.
Caroline Mills
Karma: 432
Hi Pablo! I wanted to offer two thoughts that are admittedly not answers to your questions, but complicate how I think about questions like this.
1. I don’t typically think of questions like this as either/or questions, but “to what degree” questions. A movement that successfully eliminates animal suffering, ends factory farming, or however you might frame the goal of organizations like THL and GFI will likely require both approaches. The question then is to what degree should each intervention be funded to create an optimal movement ecosystem.
2. One consideration that I wanted to offer, which may not fit neatly into a model like what you’re looking for, is the role of philanthropy as a funding source for that intervention type. From what I understand, an organization like GFI is able to attract non-philanthropic sources of funding, like venture capital and perhaps government funding, as you suggest. An advocacy organization like THL, due to its adversarial role, is not. This increases the importance of philanthropic funding for an organization like THL.
A marginal $ 5000 should go to:
FAW offers a clearer path to tangible impact than WAW from what I can see. While WAW is massive in scale, the field is still largely in a the research phase, lacking the proven interventions needed to absorb large amounts of funding effectively. FAW has established interventions that are already delivering measurable results. I think my personal bias is more toward tractability, given that both FAW and WAW are neglected IMO.
Accelerating the End of Cages: THL’s Room for More Funding (2025)
Thanks Vasco! At this point, we’ve decided not to do so, for the reasons I mention above and because we don’t see someone outside the organization being able to use the data in an effective way. Our perspective was that it was most important to share the calculation and the methodology. If our position on this changes in the future, we will definitely let you know!
Thanks for posting this! I’m a fundraiser, and I work with both funds and individual donors. From a charity perspective, I’ve noticed a few potential advantages of direct donations that might be worth considering alongside the points you raised:
Direct gifts help diversify funding and build organizational resilience. When most funding comes through a few large funds, charities can become more reliant on those sources, which may increase financial instability if priorities shift.
Direct gifts sometimes unlock matching funds or time-sensitive opportunities, which can amplify their leverage.
Donations made directly to charities can often be deployed more quickly and help sustain longer-term donor relationships, while funds might distribute on fixed schedules.
Some of the efficiency gained through coordination might be offset by the extra layer of infrastructure and decision-making.
That said, I think many of the arguments for funds carry weight. I’d love to hear examples where coordination through funds clearly improved outcomes to help me calibrate my own bias toward charity-side concerns.
Hi Vasco, thanks for these questions!
Yes, we went back and forth quite a bit on sharing data to back up our calculation, as we understand that doing so is the norm. We ultimately decided not to because we felt there was a significant chance of the data being misinterpreted. What would make sense to share is our table of hens impacted and funds spent on an annual basis, which reflects how we track both impact and costs. However, most people we asked to review the data intuitively tried to draw inaccurate conclusions about individual years, when a key piece of our methodology is that costs and impact don’t typically occur in the same year, among other misinterpretations.
And thanks for the point about acceleration. The way our model is presented allows someone who has this view to then multiply our number by the number of years of suffering they estimate to be averted, whether that’s due to a switch to barns for another reason, the end of intensive confinement due to technological advances, or whatever else may accelerate this transition. We don’t take a view on this, but if you do, you can add that layer onto our model.
Hi Abe, thanks for this post, it was really interesting! I largely agree with you, and I want to add some complexity from my decade of fundraising experience.
So it might be significantly easier in principle to convince a philanthropist to move from giving at the 1 unit to the 10 unit level, even if not arguing on the basis of cost-effectiveness: there are just more opportunities to move a donor from 1 to 10 units of value than from 101 to 110.”In principle, sure! But I think you miss the practical reality that this is incredibly difficult. Most philanthropists’ giving, especially non-EA philanthropists’ giving, is a very complex personal (or institutional) decision informed by a variety of hard-to-influence factors. So while there are many more opportunities to shift philanthropists giving at the 1 unit level, the actual success rate is low. I suspect this is why many advisors focus on shifting EA or near-EA giving.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to shift ineffective funders—most fundraisers I know engage in this work, and do it really well. But in philanthropy, we focus a lot on affinity: how likely is this person to engage with a cause at all? People without any indication of affinity are just very unlikely to support your cause. I think your post gets at this, as you call the New York foundation example a huge victory, which I wholeheartedly agree with. And I often hear an expectation that it should be easier to bring in new donors, when in reality this work is very painstaking, can take years, and you fail far more often than you succeed.
Cost-Effectiveness of THL’s Corporate Cage-free Campaigns
I’m glad it was helpful! No, the follow-up would not necessarily be online, unfortunately. It’s something we track internally for our own strategic purposes and impact assessment. But a lot of progress is made through behind-the-scenes negotiations—we only launch public campaigns if companies don’t make progress during the negotiation phase. And if there is a public campaign, sometimes part of the final negotiation is that we agree to take all our public materials down in exchange for the company publicly reporting its progress.
Trader Joe’s is a bit of a weird example—it seems like they are making progress (they have lots of in-store signage, for example) but they haven’t publicly reported their cage-free progress. But since we suspect they’re already making progress, they wouldn’t be a particularly meaningful campaign target. So your suspicion about Trader Joe’s is right, there haven’t been follow-up campaigns, but you couldn’t generalize that to other companies.
Thanks Elijah! Great summary. To your question “Why did they put in effort if not to get customers to see them more positively? I would guess that follow through is much more about avoiding negative publicity than gaining positive reputation.” This is basically right. Some companies have been more proactive, even fulfilling their pledges early. Some drag their feet and it takes public pressure for them to move. Groups like The Humane League (which I work for, as a disclaimer) have been running the same types of campaigns used to get the original commitments to ensure that companies actually implement those pledges. These have been successful, but avian flu in the US is a major complicating factor.
As for gaining new commitments, this is now focused outside the US, so maybe that’s where your impression came from? For more context, Asia, where the majority of hens live, is focused on getting new commitments. Latin America is a mix of securing new commitments and working on accountability. Parts of Europe are widely cage-free with other parts still advancing this. Africa is securing new commitments, as well as convincing company to stay cage-free as a lot of farming is less industrialized, but companies elsewhere want to export their cages there.
I’m writing this comment as both a fundraiser and someone who has been involved in leading an organization’s participation in an evaluation process. I don’t have the knowledge base to engage on whether ACE or Sinergia’s claims or evaluations are accurate, but reading your posts makes me worry that you lack some essential understanding of how charities work, which would be greatly improved if you discussed your reviews with charities prior to publishing.
I think you’re underestimating how difficult cost-effectiveness estimates are in animal advocacy. The work is highly complex and interdependent, and reliable impact data is not always available. My organization does not currently publish our own cost-effectiveness estimate because we have found it too complex and time consuming to meet the standard of accuracy we anticipate some supporters or potential supporters might hold—essentially out of fear of reviews like yours—and rely on external evaluators like ACE and Rethink Priorities, though their estimates are not really suitable for a general donor audience as they are not widely accessible.
As we have been developing our measurement & evaluation capacity, we are working on creating a cost-effectiveness estimate for our work. Seeing your reviews makes me very hesitant to go through with that process, even though I think overall publishing such an estimate would increase our funding and enable us to spare more animals from suffering. We know that our estimate would be imperfect (different reviewers use different methodologies—there is simply disagreement about what matters and the best methodology) and we would plan to publish our assumptions and work, in line with your expectation that “charities to provide sufficient and publicly stated evidence to justify their publicly stated important claims.”
In fact, I think reviewers reaching out to us makes us more likely to publish evidence for our claims, contrary to your Other Reason #1, as we understand the expectation for this and what kind of evidence we might need to collect and publish. On the other hand, anonymous, scathing reviews make us less likely to publish anything at all. In addition, I disagree with the level of seriousness you assign these types of mistakes and the idea that there needs to be some sort of severe public accountability. There is enormous pressure to produce cost-effectiveness estimates because they are such effective fundraising tools, and too make them broadly legible, contrary to what you or an EA reviewer would expect of them. I would conservatively estimate that I’ve been asked by a potential supporter, meta-charity, or other interested party for a cost-effectiveness estimate at least every month since I started fundraising for an animal advocacy non-profit over 8 years ago. In that time, I’ve seen plenty of cost-effectiveness estimates be revised, or fall in and out of favor. I’m not defending deliberate misinformation, but without talking to charities I think you have no way of knowing whether those mistakes are deliberate, simply mistakes, or valid philosophical disagreements.
Thanks for posting this! I saw the tool and was intrigued, appreciate the opportunity to learn more about it, and about what you all are finding is working.
The Humane League is hiring a Director of Philanthropy
Agree on all counts, Aidan!
Thanks for writing this, Aidan! As a fundraiser, this take resonates. One of the strategies we use to acquire new donors is encouraging our existing supporters to engage in relational fundraising, whether that’s a peer-to-peer birthday fundraiser as you suggest, or a larger time investments (and potentially $, as hosts will also sometimes offer matching gifts to incentivize their friends) like hosting a fundraising event in your home or leading a giving circle. (I’ve also participated in non-EA giving circles that do political education as part of the gift allocation process, which EAs could emulate, but that’s an aside.) Your network likely shares many of your values, and educating them about effective giving opportunities is super helpful to charities.
That said, it is difficult to convince people who don’t care about a particular cause area to care. For those in the farmed animal advocacy space, consider how difficult it can be to get people to reduce or eliminate their animal product consumption. It’s more about presenting values-aligned people with opportunities to enact those values, rather than changing people’s values altogether, in my experience.
Hi there, writing on behalf of The Humane League!
THL is grateful to GWWC for their support of our corporate campaigns to reduce farmed animal suffering, previously as a recommended program and moving forward as a supported program. GWWC provides an important service to the philanthropic community, and the funds they have directed to THL have driven highly impactful victories to reduce animal suffering, including a recent groundbreaking victory that will spare 700,000 hens from immense suffering annually once implemented and kickstart the cage-free supply in Asia, a neglected yet highly important region for corporate campaigns.
While we are disappointed that our corporate campaigns to reduce farmed animal suffering will no longer be listed as a recommended program, we understand GWWC’s decision to limit the scope of their recommendations in line with their evaluating evaluators project. We hope that donors will continue to support our corporate campaigns and the Open Wing Alliance as highly impactful giving opportunities to reduce the suffering of millions of sentient beings and build an effective global animal advocacy movement, given the strong marginal impact of our supported regranting programs in neglected regions. We are grateful that GWWC will continue accepting gifts on THL’s behalf; in addition gifts can be made directly to THL, or through our other international charity partners for donors outside the US seeking tax deductions.
If you have any questions about THL’s programs or high-impact funding opportunities, please reach out to Caroline Mills at cmills@thehumaneleague.org.
With gratitude,
The THL team
Answering on behalf of The Humane League (THL)! THL currently has room for funding of $10.5 million to grow our Open Wing Alliance and our Animal Policy Alliance.
We have developed a robust expansion plan for the OWA through 2030, which we would be able to put into place with significant additional funding. The goal is to free one billion hens from cages by 2030 and achieve a critical tipping point in the fight to eradicate the battery cage. .
To achieve this, we aim to strengthen the OWA by recruiting new member organizations in high priority regions around the globe. But to do that, we first need to build internal capacity. Our current model—having a single regional OWA coordinator to support many member groups with differing needs across an entire continent—is no longer sustainable. But we see great interest from groups in the OWA’s offerings, so we know we are poised to build an even more robust global coalition.
To meet the need, we need to create small teams in key regions around the world to support the specific needs of groups in each region, including in Asia-Pacific, the Americas, and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). We would need to hire more campaigners, corporate negotiators, animal welfare scientists, and regional support team members. We estimate we will need an additional $8 million in 2025 and beyond. In addition, we would also need to scale up our core supporting teams (Operations, Communications, and Development) in order to meet the needs of the expanded OWA and Global Teams—a lesson learned from historical THL growth periods.
In addition, we also aim to provide much-needed grant funding to animal protection groups. Each year, we hope to distribute $2 million to $2.4 million in OWA grants. (In 2024, we provided more than $2 million in grant funding to 38 OWA groups.) These grants are transformative and flexible, covering general operating support, staff expenses, and campaign materials. But as of November, we have no committed funding for OWA grants in 2025 and beyond. Consequently, these grants will come from THL’s final 2025 annual operating budget budget.
Another program primed for expansion is our Animal Policy Alliance, a coalition of organizations across the United States fighting for meaningful change for animals through public policy.
Launched by THL in 2022, the APA organizes, unites, and empowers local and state-level animal advocacy groups focused on issue-based advocacy and legislative change for animals raised for food. The APA has been behind some significant victories for animals, including getting octopus farming banned in Washington and California.
Our current goals for the APA include growing it from 23 to 30 active members, building power, and providing grants that will permit APA groups to carry out meaningful work.
While we distributed $500k in grants to APA members in 2022, we’ve been unable to sustain that level in the years since. But we are confident that in 2025 we could effectively deploy up to $750k in grants to APA members. The need for funding among our member groups is strong, and there are dozens of groups eager to expand their advocacy for farmed animals. But as of November, we have no committed funding for APA grants in 2025 and beyond, and any funds available will depend on THL’s 2025 operating budget. Any regranting funds we receive could allow us to maintain momentum as we build progressively stronger US policy protections for farmed animals.
As we expand the alliance and rebuild our grant program, we would also need to expand the APA team and core teams, which we estimate would cost $1 million in 2024 and $1.5 million in 2025.
For full details of THL’s room for more funding, check out this post!
Expanding Coalitions to Amplify Impact: The Humane League’s Room for Funding
omg, I did! Thank you for the correction :)
I wholeheartedly agree :) Thanks, Pablo!