Since 2018 I have been working with Charity Entrepreneurship, now as a Senior Recruitment & Digital Media Manager. Prior to joining CE, I obtained my PhD in Philosophy, specializing in the moral status of animals, and published a book on the topic in Polish. My professional experience includes working as a Project Manager and PR & Marketing Manager for startup projects affiliated with Michał Kiciński, a Polish billionaire and investor who co-founded CD Projekt, the company behind the popular video game series, The Witcher. I had the pleasure of building a Pay What You Want eBooks portal and opening a trendy vegan restaurant in central Warsaw as part of my work with Michał. I have also worked as a Communications Manager for ProVeg International in Poland. For over 23 years, I have been a vegan and dedicated animal activist.
Ula Zarosa
I agree with part of the comment above. I think moving to EA forum can be very beneficial but it will definitely make us more conscious about posting—so we’ll be afraid to publish anything unpolished and rigorously double-checked. Maybe this is good, because we shall publish mostly high-quality stuff but for newbies like myself I think the bar (at least from what I heard) is so high that I’d probably start my own thing on side.
Interestingly, I don’t believe re-posting stuff here as link-posts will work well. I can already see the differences in traction with link-posts and standard posts. So I think what one can do is actually to publish more professional things here (things that one really needs to discuss) but leave simpler blogs for Medium/ their own blog.
Congratulations on your launch! I am very glad that an organization focusing on such an important and large-scale problem was created within the framework of effective altruism. Thank you guys and good luck!
Thanks Saulius, this is very helpful!
This is such a nice welcoming! Great that 80K is supporting this project, it is very much needed in the animal space.
This is super useful, we’re just about to go through similar process (hiring full-time editor). Thanks for sharing!
Probably Joey has already send it but if not: https://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/full-time-editor.html
I have heard that TYLCS prepared a great event promoting the book in London (the guest list was small but amazing, the venue as well—so I heard). So I was wondering how much time was spent on preparing the event? How much money did you spend on it (stuff hours + venue/catering costs)? And what are the tips on putting a great guest list (like i.e. you want to funders, influencers, experienced EAs in the same room in the same time—that is super tough). Basically, I would like to know more on promoting via this kind of events. Do you think money wise it’s worth it? How do you judge if it was a success or not? And how you did it?
Do you think it will be possible to create high-impact, EA (complied to GiveWell standards) charities for animals? If yes—what would be the first step to achieve this? (Like what is missing in current animal advocacy that could brought it to this kind of cost-effective rigor?).
Wow, this is a really helpful reply! Thank you very much!
I know I am biased because I work at CE, but I am extremely grateful for all the entrepreneurs and their work so far. I worked in a startup environment, so I know it’s not easy to take this enormous responsibility that includes: providing high-quality research, managing contacts with business owners/governments/charities, responsible hiring, communications, operations, tons of traveling, and many many more. I am particularly excited about Fish Welfare Initiative since my biggest wish for fish is that they have their own “Open Wing Alliance”. I hope many of you here on the EA forum will support these new charities and share your experience with them.
I am beyond impressed how fast this was put together. Great work!!!
If you’re interested in who will be starting some of these charities, we have now posted a video with our 2020 Incubation Program participants: https://youtu.be/2DC25RBzsQM We’re very grateful because we received over 3,000 applications this year. In the video we ask participants why they decided to join the program.
Just send you a message!
Congratulation on your launch! Very impressed so far on how much progress you’re making in a short amount of time. Good luck in Malawi!
Huge congratulations and thank you for creating this org! I think it’s very much needed, mostly because I am an animal activist for 20 years now and I think we could do even better when choosing which campaigns do we implement as a movement. I really hope that thanks to Animal Ask’s help we will progress even faster for animals. The time is crucial, the amount of suffering and deaths unbearable. Thanks, Amy and George for taking this important challenge, and I really hope many organizations will use your talent and experience.
Congratulations! This is a very much needed research project. I’ve seen orgs scaling up to i.e. SA without any research, which resulted in not very successful programs. I also know very little about animal movement in African countries, so really looking forward to your reports.
This is a super important question, I’d love this to be addressed since it also seems to me this is very pessimistic and extremely important. This is not only a huge part of GFI’s or ProVeg Incubator’s work that probably absorbs a lot of money but it also was this kind of “hope” for animal activists like myself. Would it be reasonable to shift more resources towards alt proteins?
Question: In the past 2-3 years, we have heard troubling news about how employees in the animal movement are treated. Are there any plans of creating a safe, global space for employees, where they could:
Safely complain about their situation.
Seek psychological and legal support.
Could safely share their stories.
Problem: I have two examples in mind:
On 17th April 2020 Anima International shared a post on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AnimaInter/photos/2521160348151381 where they explain their reasoning for firing their CEO: “However, no matter how much we value her merits, there are issues in regards to everyday behaviour towards employees that we as an organization cannot accept.” Do we know what happened to the employees? Did they get support, help, where they apologized to, compensated?
In 2018/2019 ProVeg International was taken out of ACE standout charities list because of (among others) “concerns about their workplace culture”. What was mentioned is that ACE “received multiple testimonials from former employees with detailed reports of culture and HR problems”. The question is—what kind of support have these employees received? Has the organization apologized to them, compensated them? There was maybe no public reaction from ProVeg, as far as I can recall. Where ACE is mentioning “Much of ProVeg’s staff seems concerned about internal discrimination and the unequal treatment of employees, particularly along gender lines.” Source: https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/proveg/#comprehensive-review
These are only two examples. I have no knowledge if these kinds of problems are wide and common. My question is: How can the global animal movement protect employees from this kind of hostile work conditions? How can we support them?
What criteria do you use while deciding which charities are gonna be given funding from EA AWF?
I wonder, what were the obstacles that didn’t allow you to make cost-effectiveness analysis for ProVeg?: “For ProVeg in particular, we believe that our best estimate of their cost effectiveness is too speculative to feature in our review or include as a significant factor in our evaluation of their effectiveness.” Is this supported by a promise that they will measure the cost-effectiveness in the future? And why it was possible to do the evaluation for other stand out charities and not for this particular one? Finally why do you think a cost-effectiveness analysis is not “a significant factor in our evaluation of their effectiveness”.