(posting anonymously due to working closely with some CE groups)
I like CE a lot, and think that some of their charities are great. I donate to multiple CE charities (including one animal welfare charity). I appreciate their ambition and think that what they do is very difficult, and they’ve had a lot of success in the face of that difficulty.
However, I’m very concerned about their work in the animal welfare space, and wanted to flag some of these concerns if they are considering expanding in this space. I don’t think donors should take much guidance from them, compared to OpenPhil or the EA Animal Welfare Fund, and I would personally wager that CE leading giving in the animal space would be net-negative for the space compared to the status quo (which, to be fair, is very bad already). These comments are pretty light on a serious topic, but I want to flag them to donors considering joining this funding circle. These are one person’s impressions, and I’d encourage people considering joining these projects look into this more.
Concerns:
1. CE’s research on animal welfare is extremely low quality
There is a widely held view in the animal research community that CE’s reports on animal welfare consistently contain serious factual errors, and their research is broadly not trusted by others in the space. My personal experience with this was reading a report I was an expert on, noticing immediately that it had multiple major errors, sharing that feedback, and having it ignored due to their internal time capping practices.
Another animal advocacy research organization supposedly found CE plagiarizing their work extensively including in published reports, and CE failed to address this.
2. CE’s charities working on animal welfare have mostly not been very good, and listening to external feedback prior to launching them would have told them this would happen.
Here are some very light evaluations of CE’s animal charities:
Current CE incubated animal charities
Shrimp Welfare Project: Very promising, doesn’t do CE’s original proposed idea anymore, rough impression is that more feedback ahead of time would have told them the original idea was bad.
Animal Advocacy Careers: Okay, but not a super promising/scalable intervention, still does CE’s original proposed idea
Fish Welfare Initiative: Hasn’t worked very well, and seemed like it wouldn’t in advance, doesn’t do CE’s original proposed idea anymore, more feedback ahead of time would have told them not to do the original idea
Animal Ask: Was a bad idea prior to launching, hasn’t had much impact, people in the space were skeptical ahead of launch
Healthier Hens: Was a bad idea prior to launching, hasn’t had much impact, people in the space were skeptical ahead of launch
Animal Policy International: Was a bad idea prior to launching, too short a time has elapsed to assess
Incubating charities is difficult, and CE definitely shouldn’t expect 100% to work out. I think 1.25 charity out of 6 being good is still a quite solid success rate. But, most of these charities seemed like bad ideas to many other people in the space prior to launching, CE was given that feedback, and seemed to fail to act on it. This is also the case with their most recent batch of charities that haven’t yet launched. CE is typically much more confident in their own research than external feedback, which seems bad given concern 1.
3. CE is fairly hostile to external feedback on their animal welfare work
CE has a fairly strong reputation of being hostile / non-collaborative in the animal welfare space. While their charities and founders tend to be very open to feedback and willing to work with others, CE itself has consistently been non-collaborative to other groups in the space to the degree that their staff are sometimes not invited to coordination events or meetings.
Using an anonymous account because this is sensitive. The below is critical, but I love GWWC, and personally agree with your recommendation of the EA AWF as the best opportunity for most donors in the AW space.
I’m quite surprised you chose to include The Humane League specifically and not other ACE Top Charities, and based on the evaluation, it sounds like this is largely based on RP and Founders Pledge work from 2018/2019, and not more recent evaluations, as well as a referral from Open Phil.
A few comments on why this seems like a bad decision:
My impression is that basically everyone within the animal space who has read them thinks those cost-effectiveness analyses are no longer accurate, and reflect an earlier period of success. Most people also seem to think corporate campaigns are no longer nearly as effective as they were historically (even staff within The Humane League).
Open Phil said just last week that they think marginal opportunities in the AW space right now are 1/5th as cost-effective as RP’s estimate (a claim I don’t buy fully, but seems like evidence against using this for your recommendation)
A cursory glance at the trackers for corporate commitments shows that:
Cage-free commitments secured annually have been massively declining (from a peak of around 500 per year in 2018/2019 when the analyses you used are from, to under 150 in 2023 (so far, though seems on track to not get to 150).
The vast majority of broiler commitments were secured prior to 2020. In 2023 only 6 (!) have been secured, all from fairly tiny companies.
It looks like the majority of recent commitments are from smaller companies (e.g. looks like the majority of “household names” in many countries committed years ago or have never committed), so my using “companies” as a metric of success is likely distortingly positive, so things could be even worse.
Most cage-free work now is focused on enforcement of past commitments, not new commitments.
This likely means the situation is even worse, as while dollars spent today might increase the number of animals helped, it likely means the estimates you used are overly optimistic (if they didn’t account for future spending needs to secure high levels of enforcement).
People who work in the space generally seem to view the broiler ask as bad / unlikely to be realized at any scale.
I haven’t really looked at this in detail, but I’m just pretty surprised you decided to recommend THL (and that THL is still the default giving option still in the animal space) without even checking the status of those analyses today, where I think they pretty obviously fail a basic sense check as still being accurate.
Obviously the historic figures no longer being accurate doesn’t necessarily mean THL isn’t the best option today, but it seems strange to not even glance at the current state of evidence prior to singling out a single charity when rejecting ACE’s evaluations. I personally suspect THL is no longer the best opportunity for marginal donations in the space by a somewhat wide margin, and would guess that most people who work in the space also don’t think this.