Hey Will.
In the first email that I mentioned, we were informed that the funds will be frozen until the current round of evaluations is done by December, so for about 4 months. The reasoning was that ACE wanted to reevaluate Anima International effectiveness with the possibility that they will not release these funds. We were also informed this information will be announced on the ACE website and in their newsletter. The decision was based on the events they observed in regards to CARE that ACE was worried about—Animal Charity Evaluators wanted to investigate these concerns further. Around December, after evaluations were done, we were contacted to let us know that the funds were unfrozen.
Please note that the amount was not substantial and we, in Anima International, don’t necessarily claim here that this behavior displayed by ACE was either proper or improper. I can see reasons to do it for ACE and it was explained to us that this is consistent with the actions Animal Charity Evaluators has taken in the past. The reasons I mentioned it in my original comment is that this was the first communication from ACE that we received concerning the CARE conference, which contradicts what some commenters in this thread implied, and to provide our perspective of how concerning it was.
I’m part of Anima International’s leadership as Director of Global Development (so please note that Animal Charity Evaluators’ negative view of the leadership quality is, among others, about me).
As the author noted, this topic is politically charged and additionally, as Anima International, we consider ourselves ‘a side’, so our judgment here may be heavily biased. This is why, even though we read this thread, we are quite hesitant to comment.
Nevertheless, I can offer a few factual points here that will clear some of the author’s confusion or that people got wrong in the comments.
We asked ACE for their thoughts on these points to make sure we are not misconstruing what happened due to a biased perspective. After a short conversation with Anima International, ACE preferred not to comment. They declined to correct what they feel is factually incorrect and instead let us know that they will post a reply to my post to avoid confusion, which we welcome.
1.
The author wrote: “it’s possible that some Anima staff made private comments that are much worse than what is public”
While I don’t want to comment or judge whether comments are better or worse, we specifically asked ACE to publish all of this material for the sake of transparency, which they declined to do. They also stated that they would not give Anima International permission to share the correspondence for the same reasons of confidentiality. We are happy that ACE noted our request in a footnote, but we still believe it can be very damaging to the reputation of the organization to mention private conversations in the context of racial equity without explicitly publishing them or paraphrasing them for the review’s readers to judge. We are afraid this may make the reader consider a lot of scenarios in their mind and some of them can make them anxious to support our work, admit publicly that they support our work, participate in our recruitments or engage with us. For example, some of the worries we have are that readers may think that in Anima International we express or tolerate discriminatory actions or views; are against or don’t work on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; or that we consider the linked Facebook discussion as a conversation norm that we support.
2.
Ben West wrote in the comment that he suspects that our rating about poor leadership and culture was based on removal of our CEO due to misconduct rather than other causes. According to our knowledge this is not true. In our exchanges with Animal Charity Evaluators which took place after the removal of our CEO and after the Facebook thread with mentioned comments had taken place as well as during the review process, there was nothing that would indicate that this was a factor. Our view was and still is that Animal Charity Evaluators supported Anima International in its leadership transition and congratulated us on our practices in protecting staff and organizational culture.
3.
I concluded that it’s worth clarifying that Anima International is the owner of the CARE conference and hosts change occasionally, as we share our conference with other organizations in the animal advocacy movement. The host in 2020 was an organization called Humánny Pokrok.
4.
Anonymous00 wrote that they assume that “The CARE Conference schedule came out, and said ED was speaking on a panel about Black Lives Matter and diversity in the movement.”—I would like to clarify this is not true. The talk at CARE was about effective campaigning tactics using Black Lives Matter as an example. The topic was not about diversity or any topic related to similar issues. While in principle there is nothing wrong with discussing DEI issues at CARE and people could still be negatively affected by it, the difference can matter in the context of this post.
5.
Larks wrote that they don’t believe ACE offered Anima International the opportunity to see their statement about withdrawing from CARE in advance. I would like to clarify that ACE did send their statement regarding the withdrawal of their speakers from the CARE conference to Anima International’s leadership in advance of posting it in the interest of transparency, which we were grateful for. We let ACE know that we didn’t agree with their statement and the following day we informed ACE that if their team strongly supported the statement they should go ahead and post it, as on principle Anima International didn’t want to interfere with other groups’ actions and their public statements.
6.
I agree with Eric Herboso that there doesn’t need to be a dichotomy between welcoming, inclusive communities and the ability to openly discuss ideas and evidence. I also agree that communities have an obligation to level the playing field for disadvantaged groups and in their work control for their biases.
I also agree with the statement in EricHerboso’s “Withdrawal from 2020 CARE Conference” post section that what happened is much more nuanced than Hypatia makes. I feel that EricHerboso misses a lot of details that he most likely doesn’t possess, this in consequence may give the wrong impression of either Anima International or of our staff member who was to give the talk, or in general obscure the facts.
EricHerboso writes that ”ACE, as an organization, did not intend in any way to cancel this speaker” which is in some sense right. But while there was no official request from Animal Charity Evaluators towards the organisers of the conference, the first email Anima International received about issues with CARE was information that ACE had chosen to freeze Anima International’s funds from the Recommended Charity Fund with the stated reasons being what they believed to be racist behaviour of our staff members and the lack of appropriate response to this from Anima International’s leadership. ACE based these opinions on the example that our team continued to allow Connor Jackson to represent Anima International on the topic of BLM at the CARE conference the following month. As one can imagine the unannounced information of freezing funds and, what is more, potential damage to organizational reputation is an enormous concern. Furthermore, morally, the accusation of racist behavior is an incredibly serious one that should warrant further investigation.
We hadn’t been informed that ACE had any concerns with CARE before these actions. If we had been contacted, ACE would have learned that the person who posted these comments—Connor Jackson, had already decided to change his talk at CARE to avoid unnecessary controversy or hurt towards others, even though the original talk wasn’t connected to any DEI issues, but campaigning.
The communication that followed when we pointed out to ACE that Connor had already agreed to change the subject of his talk and that an accusation of racism should be thoroughly investigated was quite demanding and complicated and it’s probably not the place to discuss it without Animal Charity Evaluators’ participation as it may be too one-sided.
I decided to mention these facts as I believe that EricHerboso’s account of events could simplify the events to the detriment of factuality, as they may give the impression that ACE was passive, which wasn’t what we encountered.
Final remarks
It is worth stating explicitly that while we have some deep disagreements with ACE regarding this and other topics, we strongly support their mission and enjoy working with their team to improve the animal advocacy movement’s effectiveness.
I want to repeat that I feel a bit conflicted about commenting here. Transparency in public discourse is on the one hand important, but seeing that ACE downgraded Anima International it can be treated as “scoring points” at the expense of Animal Charity Evaluators’ reputation or some kind of revenge. Please let me know if some of my clarifications seem disingenuous and I will try to improve clarity. I can also not promise I will reply here quickly, because I would prefer to, if they are willing or have time, get comments from ACE on drafts of my comments to avoid unnecessary damage for both organizations.